Use these life coaching questions to plan for and achieve success

20 Powerful Coaching Questions to Help Set and Achieve Your Goals

What do you most want to achieve in life? Which is your biggest personal goal? Do you know what you need to do in order to succeed? Would you like some good coaching questions to help you?

Don’t worry, help is here! In the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee you can work through the coaching questions in this post and have a much better plan for achieving your life goals.

As a coach, I spend a lot of time helping people think through their life goals and how to achieve them. I ask questions to help them through their decision-making process and then to outline an action plan that they can follow.

Self-coaching using coaching questions

You cannot beat going through this process with a professional coach (yes, I am biased, but evidence supports this claim) but there is a lot you can achieve on your own. I have produced this list of questions so that you can coach yourself through setting and achieving your goals.

The idea of the question process is to capture those big life dreams and break them down until you know exactly what the first step towards success is. To do this the questions are used in order, to explore your desires, delve into the motivations behind them, look at options for achieving your goals and then develop a plan for succeeding in that aim. By the end of the process, the questions lead to working out exactly what needs to be done, when, and who can help with your plan.

Answer the questions in the order they are written down here. You can answer these questions in a journal, on your device or even a scrap of paper, but I recommend you keep your answers. Recording your answers means that you have an action plan that you can refer to and refine.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

20 self-coaching questions to set and achieve your life goals

  1. What is the issue that you are thinking about most that you want to change?
  2. What do you want to achieve to address that issue?
  3. If you achieved that, what would success look like?
  4. How would achieving success feel?
  5. What is it that you really, really want?
  6. What is going on in your life right now that affects this desire?
  7. Who else is involved or affected by what you want to achieve?
  8. Which obstacles need to be overcome to achieve success?
  9. What assumptions are you making about achieving this goal?
  10. What effect will each of these activities have?
  11. Which options do you have or in which ways could you complete your goal?
  12. What else could you do that would have the same effect?
  13. How would you proceed if you had no constraints?
  14. What would a really wise friend do in your situation?
  15. How would you rate your options?
  16. Which is your best option?
  17. Which actions do you need to complete to do this option?
  18. Who can help or support you in this option?
  19. What is the deadline for achieving your goal and each action step?
  20. Which is the first step you need to take?
YouTube video: 20 good coaching questions for setting life goals

What next?

Well done! Even just taking the time to think and work through these questions means that you are closer to achieving your goals. The next thing to do is to commit to that first step. Put it in your diary straight away. It might also help to tell someone else about what you plan to do – it is easier to commit to a plan if you have shared it.

Then, as soon as you have succeeded in that first task, plan for the next one. Then the next. It is those little steps that lead to achieving big goals.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”

Vincent Van Gogh

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If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

Need help navigating your journey to success?

I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and assisting them in achieving their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!