The Life Coach in Your Pocket: How to Get the Most out of Symblify
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Tímea Csízik Coach | OD Consultant | Developer | HR Professional Follow me on Linkedin → |
1. Phrase a specific question
It can be hard to specify our topic that’s bothering us in the form of one single question. Still, it is very useful, because it focuses our attention and mental energy to the important part of our issue.
It can be really beneficial if you consider this step being a significant part of the process. Because it is.
The problem solving starts here by setting your focus, that’s why it is essential not to skip this step by adding some general words representing the situation.
Let’s see some examples!
‘How to provide my son with help in order to feel good at school?’
is more effective than ‘School’
‘What should I do to manage my personal conflicts better with Bob?’
is more effective than ‘Relationship with Bob’
What should I change to have a job I like more
is more effective than ‘I hate my job’
‘How should I balance my time between my family and my work?’
is more effective than ‘Work-life balance’
‘How can I find time for my personal projects besides family and work?’
is more effective than ‘I have no time’
‘How to improve my coaching sessions?’
is more effective than ‘My coaching sessions’
Use open-ended questions instead of yes-or-no types. Symblify is not a spiritual medium to tell your future. But it is very good in revealing new perspectives and solutions if you open your mind for discoveries by phrasing open-ended questions.
Yes, it takes some time and energy to phrase these kind of questions regarding your topic. But it’s a good deal, because by doing this you’ve already made an important step in making a change: you’ve came clear about what you really aim to and have set your focus on your goals.
2. Manage your environment
Symblify is available for you 24/7. You don’t need to make an appointment with somebody else to start a session.
However, to get the most out of your dedicated time, it is wise to find a quiet place where you can engage in the problem solving process.
It is ok to turn your other devices off and retreat from social interactions for that approximately 20 minutes. Lack of outer stimuli helps you to attune to your inner contents. But you can listen to your favorite music as well, if it helps you to focus. Or you can bring a cup of tea to chill you.
Sometimes the best fitting environments for this purpose are suitable combinations of timing and location, for example:
> Early morning in bed before starting your day
> Morning during breakfast when others are still sleeping or have already left
> In a cosy weekend afternoon on the balcony
> You have half an hour in the skype room of the office because of a postponed meeting
> At the end of the day, already in bed before you decide to go to sleep
> You work from home and after lunch you decide to have a break to start a session
> On holiday you have found a quiet corner where you can organize your thoughts
> In the evening when your friend has just left after an inspiring conversation, and being too excited to go to sleep you decide to organize your thoughts in the study room
> In the woods when you stopped for a short relaxation during hiking, because as you walked so many thoughts and feelings came to your mind
> In your car while you are waiting for your kids to finish their tennis class after school
3. Say it and mean it
During your Symblify session it helps a lot if you say out loud what you are thinking about. It may sound strange, but it focuses your attention on the topic. Speaking instead of “just” thinking has another very important effect: it makes you walk through your whole chain of thoughts, instead of jumping back and forth between them without any result.
It is much easier to head somewhere instead of running around in circles when you speak, not only think about your problem.
Sometimes it gives a different perspective when you hear your own words. When you say out loud, for example: ‘This sounds good,’ it gives you more energy than just thinking on it. In other cases, when you discover some contradictions in your words, it can prompt you to take a deeper look at the situation. As you talk, you put more energy into the process, which enables you to understand your thoughts and feelings more precisely.
Spoken words always feel more tangible and are one step closer to actions than thoughts. It is also much easier to make a reality check when you say something out loud. Your spoken words may sound ridiculously simple to accomplish, or you can identify the core problem easier if you listen to and not only think about it.
Of course this step is not obligatory, some might have a very clear and straightforward self-talk and can focus their attention to their inner happenings without saying them out loud. The important thing is to take your time to phrase your thoughts.
4. Slow down & listen to your voice
You are asked a lot of good questions during a Symblify session. These carefully formed questions have an important contribution to the success of these sessions. However, it is not enough to read all these questions: we need to slow down and answer them thoughtfully.
We need to listen to our answers as much as we listen to the questions. And listening takes silence and time.
If you want to make the most out of Symblify, you do not run through the session by giving quick answers to the questions. Instead, you slow down, think your answers through and observe your own words carefully. Chances are you will be surprised about the deep understanding you gain by that.
One of our users mentioned that she could use more guiding questions during the sessions as the existing ones are so good to think about. We talked through her comment together and finally came to the conclusion that there were more than enough guiding questions, but next time she would slow down when using them.
That means she decided to
> read the questions carefully,
> listen what the question rings in her,
> wait silently for the emerging answers,
> start to answer by real talking,
> listen again when she stopped after one block of answers,
> read the summary questions again in the header to keep focus,
> reframe or rephrase the questions to find more personalized answers,
> read the questions again when answers are reluctant to show up.
Slowing down and listening to the questions you get as well as the answers you give is not only useful in Symblify. It improves your social skills in face-to-face conversations too. You will experience that you start to understand your partner in the conversation better, and to give him or her more specific and meaningful answers.
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5. Track your progress
At the end of your Symblify session you may feel it was an enlightening experience. You are filled with energy and ready to take actions.
Nevertheless, you can be more effective in reaching long lasting discoveries and changes if you pay attention to tracking your progress.
You can do it by your calendar events you have set during your Symblify session. Besides, you can print your memo or use it as a wallpaper on your device’s desktop or main screen to remind you of your key takeaways. You can also break down your main Symblify task that you set in the calendar into specific actions by making further calendar events or reminders attached to them.
To provide yourself with more support, in every few days you can check in and ask yourself these follow-up questions:
What have I done to implement my takeaways since the last time I checked?
What progress have I made?
Is it still an issue? Or is it closed down? Am I satisfied with result and quality of the closure?
What is holding me back from taking the steps I planned?
What have I learned from making these steps?
What was the key to succeed in these steps?
Is the situation I have arrived to raising other issues up?
You may run into new or related issues when answering these follow-up questions. No worries, feel free to start a new Symblify session to face with them too.
6. Come back and step forward
You probably know that even one Symblify session can be enough to solve the issue you raised. But you can also come back to your topic and continue your work after you made some steps forward, either in real actions or in understanding your situation better.
Maybe you haven’t achieved your goals completely in the first round and you still have the same issue. But as some time has passed, your awareness has been awakened and your thoughts has been reorganized in your head. Therefore, even if you ask the same question again, your perspectives and insights will be different in the second round.
On the other hand, you might have successfully completed what you planned (Congrats! ☺). However, the issue is still not solved entirely, new problems and obstacles have come up. Then you can use the energy gained from the sense of success to bring you to the next level: don’t give up, phrase your new question from your new position about the new difficulties you are about to solve.
All in all, the message here is: your trials are not failures, they are called experience, so just keep doing.
It’s important to note that although Symblify provides your self-coaching process with professional support, it does not mean that you are alone with your problems and solutions.
7. Discuss your results
Once you have finished a session and you got your takeaways and conclusions, or you already have results, we egg you on to share them with your friends, family and colleagues. As you discuss your experiences, inspiring conversations can blossom.
You may exchange perspectives and review the possible consequences of your actions and changes in behavior that happened due to the Symblify session. These discussions may develop trust between you and the ones you share your experiences with, and can strengthen your relationship as well.
8. Invite others
Symblify is a life coach application originally developed to be able to handle your difficulties on your own, through a fun, still professional workflow. Although this app is designed to help you out when you can’t or won’t talk about your problems with others, we encourage you to use it together with your partner, friend, family member or colleague to discuss with them what matters. You can read more about the advantages of this type of co-creation here.
9. Transform your feedback
Sometimes it’s hard to deal with and integrate feedback. We discussed this topic in details in another post. As a summary, we can say that feedback often stirs our mind and soul up. We find ourselves thinking about its deeper content, and puzzle over what we should change.
To leverage the positive effect of feedback you can use it as an input to phrase a self-improvement question regarding its most bothering or most surprising part.
Start a Symblify session with this question in focus, and start to turn that feedback into a tangible change in your behavior.
10. Recommend it as a help
Many of our users mentioned that while they were using Symblify, some of their friends or colleagues came to their mind, because they thought these people could also benefit from using this app. They decided to recommend the app to these friends.
This is a kind of expression of care and interest towards that person.
Especially if you recommend the app by mentioning the specific topic or issue that you suggest your friend should deal with. It’s a sign of a close relationship when you know that your friend is hardly coping with a specific situation and that its resolution would be a true relief for him/her.
Feel free to comment your own experiments and experiences with Symblify below, or write them to us in email.
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Hi, I think your website might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your blog in Ie, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping.
I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, fantastic blog!
Thanks for the heads up! We regularly test our website and our blog on the major browsers, including IE. Our latest test shows no overlapping or other techniqual issues on any page. Maybe you could try update your browser, that might solve the problem. Thanks for the feedback anyway, we do our best to create quality content regularly to our audience. Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest articles and updates on Symblify Magazine. Also, try our life coach app, Symblify, if you haven’t already: https://www.symblify.net/symblify-life-made-simple-app