How To Coach Yourself Through Fear, Anger, and Sadness - Dawn's Real Toolkit | #197

Sometimes you have to be everything for yourself — the one having the experience, the coach encouraging you, the witness honestly assessing it all. In Daily Dose of Dawn #197, resilience coach Dawn Super breaks down exactly how she coaches herself through life's hardest moments, including fear, anger, and sadness, using the same tools she uses with her paying clients. This is part one of two, focused on coaching yourself when you're alone trying to figure it all out. The accountability formula, the four stages of learning, and why it's never too late — all of it is here, and all of it is free.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

A sports coach gives you a plan and gives you exercises to make you more fit to accomplish the plan and then helps you deal with the things that might be getting in the way of the plan. A resilience coach does the same about your life. Whether you're playing sports or the game of life, everything is easier when you coach yourself through it.

Today I'm going to give you my tips on how I coach myself through life. While anyone would benefit from these tips, resilience clients are people who are dealing with lifelong health issues, complicated matters that are going to take a long time to resolve, or past trauma that kept them underexposed and without the proper tools to get through it. And if learning how to do that is something you want to think about, welcome in to your daily dose of Dawn at Dawn — videos designed to expand your thinking.

Sometimes you have to be everything for yourself. You have to be the you that's having the experience, the coach encouraging you, finding tools for you to try and exercises to get you more fit to be equipped to deal with what life's handed to you. And sometimes you have to be the witness — honestly assessing it all so that you can heal instead of staying stuck, feeling lost, or shoving it down for later. Being there to notice when you do something good and encouraging you when you fall short.

When all your thoughts about you are good, life becomes a lot easier. And it becomes easier to hold good thoughts about others. When we deeply realize that we're always doing our best, even when we suck, it's a lot easier to see that we're all doing our best and to give everyone grace — us and them.

So today's tips focus on when you're alone trying to figure everything out by yourself. And next week I'll talk about how to coach yourself through when other people are around you.

Number one — don't ignore the issue. Whether you're just trying to change something simple about your personality, trying to extricate yourself from a traumatic situation, or trying to push through a challenging circumstance, having radical acceptance is the best path forward. It's happening now. Let's make a plan to get through it.

Number two — everything has a tool. If you're talking about something physical, you might be using a hammer or tape. And if you're talking about something mental, you might be using emotional tools. If you're smart, you'll use both. I have tools myself — my little note cards to help me stay on track and not talk about something random.

Number three — figure out what tool might help you. Just like with a physical issue that you needed to fix, but with an emotional issue you're looking for something like boundaries, distraction, emotional regulation. Remember to follow the four stages of learning. You've identified something that you want to have be different in your life. You came up with a strategy, a mantra, a tool to help you try and change it. And then you practice, practice, practice and practice more.

Stay on the path. If you want to be an accountant, you don't read one book or watch one video. If you want to get fit or run a marathon, you don't just work out once. You make it a daily thing and you immerse yourself in it. And it's no different when you're trying to change something about your personality.

Number six — changing your identity. I used to be somebody who gossips and now I am someone who does not gossip. I am a no drama llama.

Okay. So here are some real world examples of ways that we can coach ourselves.

Coaching ourselves through fear — like if you have to ask for a raise, if you are talking to someone that you like, if you are saying no to someone and you're not sure how they're going to respond.

If you're working on anger and dealing with someone who broke their word, someone who broke something valuable or sentimental, or someone who stole from you or lied to you.

If you're dealing with sadness, either temporary or long term.

Okay, so here are some of the tools I use to coach myself and share with my clients. One thing my clients love about working with me is that I take their specific circumstance and help them find a way through it using who they are and how they like to operate in life. But these will give you a little springboard — something to try to see if you can help yourself through them if you are dealing with these particular things.

So when I'm dealing with fear, I always go to — what's the worst that can happen? Deal with accepting that and then everything else is kind of gravy. Radical acceptance, holding my own hand through the process the whole time. And if you don't try, you'll never know. That's another one I tell myself. You can't find out if it would ever be successful if you don't give it a go.

Anger. Anger was a big issue for me. It was a lifelong issue and it took a long time until I even tried to turn it around and it was definitely a good year before I really started to see massive differences. And now I don't get angry much at all. Being a no drama llama, it's a lot easier to remember that anger is a messenger. It's a servant that shows up and says, "Hey, time to address this one."

If anger is something you're going through, I'll drop in the below my five rules for arguing and also my accountability formula.

I'm going to share the accountability formula with you here now — it really changed my life. We're all human and we all make mistakes and it's very easy to beat ourselves up if we do make a mistake. So having a formula to get through it, to figure out what to do — it gives you something to focus on besides beating yourself up. And it really works. Give it a try.

I have a lot of trauma in my past and sometimes I get sad for no reason. I mean, I'm sure there's a reason, but I'm just not conscious of it in the moment. And so I do a lot of self soothing. I just did a dose recently on my self soothing tips. If that's something that you need, just hop back a couple doses and that's there for you.

All of this is the free help. I'm a resilience coach. I charge a lot of money and I help a lot of people. If you go over to my posts, I'm going to share a poster that one of my coaching clients did, named Jane. She lives in the UK and she's struggled through some very serious narcolepsy and other health related issues and she put together the ways that my program "happy matters" helps her deal with a very, very challenging life.

The key to it all is to truly just get on your own side. Hold your hand through everything. Encourage yourself through everything. No matter how bad you screw up, be there for you.

I never had anyone to help me through this when I was little. So now I take little Dawn's hand and I guide her through all of these lessons, teaching her now like I was not taught back then. And I'm 56 years old. It's never too late.

If you have issues with your self-worth or your confidence or having healthy relationships, being alone, being on your own, coping with chronic pain or being exhausted all the time — there are solutions in everything in life. There are workarounds and ways to comfort yourself. Never stop trying.

📊 Accountability formula:

Accept the mistake was made.

Figure out how it happened.

Figure out what can be done about it.

Make a plan to prevent it from happening again.

🎯 Watch Dawn's five rules for arguing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-6Y4tzxdU

🎯 Watch Dawn's self-soothing tips — Dose 186: https://dawnsuper.com/post/dailydose186

Dawn is currently on a wait list for coaching clients.

Want to see if she can help you? Schedule a strategy session.

Visit DawnSuper.com or text COACH to 805-870-9740 to get started.

Get the Dose delivered weekdays at 11:30 AM PST! By email or text.

Sign up here 👉👉👉 https://dawnsuper.com/joindose