Self coach to success using your computer password

One of the more essential techniques for coaching and self-coaching is obtaining an achievable goal as a well-formed outcome. Once you have this goal and an action plan in place, it helps to remind yourself regularly, as this helps you focus on why you are doing what you are doing.

Some like to use sticky notes on the bathroom m, and some like to chant them on the way to work. In reality, there isn’t a textbook right or wrong way of doing it. What they choose depends on the individual and how they will find it beneficial. The other day while changing my password on a system for one of my corporate clients, I realised that for many years without really thinking about it, my passwords were reminders for goals.

For anyone in the corporate world or where you’ve been on a website that indicated the strength of your password, you’ll know that it needs to be pretty cryptic to make a strong password. My simple approach, which seems to meet most systems’ requirements, is to use the first letter of the words from a short goal sentence as your password.

Let me demonstrate using a goal from someone I have recently coached.

“I am going to be better at public speaking” to “Iagtbbaps”.

To help with the complexity requirements, I recommend always making the first or last letter a capital letter. You might also want to throw in a single-digit number and non-alpha-numeric (!,”‘; etc) at the end. If you, therefore, add “9:” making it “Iagtbbaps9:” we get a score of 77% from passwordmeter.com

The power of this approach is that you will use this password many times per day. In remembering your password, you will recite your goal every time you enter your password. It also makes it easy to remember a password that meets the criteria set by the system you are using.

Be careful
One word of warning, I can remember some years ago now when I had a password that was quite negative, I must have been in an off-mood when I set it, and I found it got me down, and I had to change it within a few days.

What goal will you remember, or what story will you tell yourself through your password?