Being in active practice as a coach is both rewarding and challenging. Many coaches in private practice are, or have to set themselves up as business owners, mastering activities such as marketing, networking, practice management and thriving financially. It requires a range of tasks and the ability to keep them all managed well enough at the same time. Oh and of course you have to actually coach your clients too! Phew!
In all of this stress can build up and we can lose sight of the most important person to make sure is looked after in all of this…..you! So here are 6 pointers to make sure that you stand the best chance of keeping yourself in balance and in the best shape possible to.
Look after the PEARLS
Play:
Put playing around and having fun into your schedule. Play activates parts of the brain that are often ignored. Playfulness produces positive emotions and good feeling. ( see Laugh below)
Eat and exercise:
Make sure you looking after yourself with what you eat. Good nutrition we all know balances the whole system and keeps you properly fueled. Then, get and keep your body moving. It aids digestion and helps your muscles eliminate stress hormones.
Accept:
You have limited control over your clients, your practice, all aspects of your practice and life. Accept the things you cannot change and work on the things you can, the first of which is you. That way you will generate the habit of letting go, feel less stressed and be able to move on quickly.
Rest:
People confuse sleep with rest. They are different. Make sure you have time when you just allow yourself to kick back, lie around, relax reading a book, hang out with those you love, whatever it is for you.
Laugh:
Having and working on a sense of humour will assist in relaxing you as well and generate some positive endorphins.
Sleep:
Get enough. You need enough for you and you need the right type of sleep. Quality is important as well as quantity. Keep screens out the bedroom as much as you can.
2. Get a support team
Have a team of people who are supportive of your professional coaching goals. Find a mix of people that compliment each other who you can check in with across different topics. Make sure one of them is a coach you like and trust. Make sure you also have someone with similar business experience and ask them to mentor you.
3. Have a plan
Make sure you have a business plan and you revise it every 6 months. Don’t beat yourself up when your plan does not come out exactly as you created it. It is a guide not an absolute path. In reality there are things you just cannot control and they will influence the plan. Focus on learning from comparing your business development with the plan so you can get more clarity on what you can influence and improve.
4. Focus on Meaning and Purpose
Make sure you regularly revisit your own personal meaning and purpose for being in private practice as a coach in the first place. It is the heart of the whole project and should be what drives it. Don’t let money and other issues obscure this. That is not to say you s=do not want to aim to be thriving financial but not at the expense of the purpose behind your work. Oh and if the purpose is to get rich, then maybe think about changing career. Getting well off as a coach is a by product of the main purpose of being a coach not the end game. Sorry to all those “Build your 6 figure business in 10 minutes” programmes out there.
5. Go for quality in your CPD (Continuing professional development) choices.
If you need to keep your accreditations ( which almost all professional coaches do ) then don't box tick it. MAke plans ahead of time and go for CPD that you really feel is aligned with what you are aiming to achieve in your practice. If you don’t feel excited about CPD then you are almost certainly not going to get the full value out of it. It is a great opportunity to both meet those requirements and have a break yourself. If you can, get away and do weekend CPD course you like the look of.
6. Be adaptable and change easily
You want your practice to be working for you, not the other way around. Don’t be shy to change your practice as you see fit. It is not failure to adapt and most of us don’t get it right first time. It's a process over time and change happens anyway so embrace it.