Building Self-Worth and Efficacy with Coaching
Fun fact: Change doesn’t happen unless you are fully understanding of your own self-worth as well as your efficacy. Self-worth is valuing yourself and all the healthy boundaries that come with that. Your efficacy is how much you believe in yourself and your ability to make changes. To feel empowered enough to change and work towards your goals, your client needs to have both and see themselves as a change agent. And believe me, I know the world makes it difficult for us to see ourselves in such powerful ways.
Social media and constant images of how others are doing so much better than us.
Gaps in representation in the work that we want to do or the spaces we want to be part of.
Powerful people are often seen differently depending on who they are and the identities they hold.
The sheer number of problems that exist, those in conflict with our core values, those that impact our communities and folks saying, “How can one person…”
The negativity others bring when they somehow find their way into our business instead of minding their own.
And this is by no means an exhausting list of all of the barriers. But a portion of what we do as coaches is build self-worth and self-efficacy. Let's talk about how we can help folks grow their self-worth and efficacy.
Help folks understand ways that they have been effective in other situations: Let people tell you how they have been able to grow/work through situations and exact change in their lives and the community around them. When you, as a coach, say how they’ve grown, it’s nice. When they, as the client, are confronted with the task of identifying their own power, there’s a change that occurs. The instances where they have moved towards change or were successful are no longer just words that were said to them by a professional. They become parts of a larger story of the person that the client is trying to grow into.
Note how that individual defines and scales self-worth: My definition of self-worth is in singular words; belonging, care, self-love, prioritizing self, knowing needs and want. My self-worth is based in fulfilling what I believe my calling is: caring for others, holding space, and encouraging growth throughout the lifetime. Now, you’re definition of self-worth and what it’s based in might be completely different. It’s important to know how your client understands self-worth because that will tell you where to start. Scaling how worthy they feel of the changes being made is also a game-changer. Having them assign a number to how worthy they feel encourages them to confront places where they need to address their self-worth.
Learning to prioritize is probably one of the hardest pieces of this: No one really teaches us how to prioritize our lives in the most effective ways. But what we all do is, if it’s personally important and currently impactful, it’s heading to the top of the priority list. If it’s less important to us or maybe something we don’t have to worry about anytime soon, it’s headed to the bottom of the list. Sounds good, right? Yeah, until you factor in what those things are. Have your client identify the 5 things on their priority list this week. Have them rank these in order from what has most of their attention and what currently has the least of their attention. Note what makes the list and what doesn’t. Note the listing of what is taking up the most brain-space. Ask them what their ideal priority list would look like. Talk about what it would take for them to get there.
Include some daily practices to improve their self-worth and efficacy: I used to think journals were corny (I’m sorry ya’ll, I was wrong). But now, I blog here, I write in a journal, I have kept a gratitude jar, I’ve listed one great thing about each day, I’ve made bullet lists of how I have moved towards a goal (small steps included), and you know what? It worked. My self-worth and efficacy are improving. When we help clients engage in daily practices to increase self-worth and efficacy, they begin to prioritize their own growth and empowerment.