With each step and concept that you explore with your vision, it will grow and change. When we stay committed to embracing that change our vision not only becomes clearer, it is motivating and exciting.
Dr. Moira Hanna
Introduction
I’m Dr. Moira. I’m a college professor, instructor, coach, and passionate mentor to health coaches around the world, but I haven’t always been that confident and committed to my coaching career. I wasn’t sure if I could make it work or even what the best approach was to success and fulfillment. I decided to step up and step into my dream of guiding health coaches on their journey from Hesitant Health Coach to Committed Health Coach. With a unique approach to coach growth, the Health Coach Catalyst program creates a strong hexagonal effect. The Coaching Hive podcast is your glimpse into the concepts, ideas, and approaches that underscore the Hexagonal Effect while giving you the opportunity to implement tools and tips along the way. Are you ready to dive into today’s podcast? Then let’s go and remember that this podcast is family friendly so go ahead and play it through your speakers!
This month of June is all about change. From changing your limiting beliefs in Episode 18 last week to changing your business momentum by crafting your vision this week. Change is required; why not embrace change. Albert Einstein said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” It is important to remember that we have to put thought and effort into change. It doesn’t just magically happen. It takes patience, guidance, and action steps to move forward.
If you are ready to take action, embrace the change, and craft your vision then let’s get started.
The Topic
Before we dive right in, I want to be very clear. Your vision is uniquely yours and it always will be. When I first started as a health coach, I didn’t really have a vision and that made attracting clients very difficult. In fact, I didn’t have much direction at all because I didn’t know my purpose and what I wanted at the end of the day. My vision was murky at best.
When I tried again to build my coaching business after time away teaching, I was much clearer on who I wanted to serve, what I needed to learn, what support I needed and even what my financial goals were. With a clear vision in mind, I was able to identify the right next steps.
Now that the Coaching Hive is nearing its 6th month, I find that my vision for this community has become laser focused. That vision helps me better serve our members and plan for the future. I also have a sneaky suspicion that it helps me be more creative when solving challenges and thinking of next steps. Definitely an added bonus.
When you think about your coaching practice, remember your vision is uniquely yours. I have one question for you. Are you ready to embrace change and craft a clearer, more committed vision of your journey to becoming a committed health coach?
If you answered yes, let’s get started.
The Steps
When you think about a vision, what comes to mind? Is it a single sentence? A paragraph? Something longer? Something shorter? Maybe it is a picture. What is included in your vision? What topics are covered?
We all have a slightly different view of what makes a compelling and useful vision. In my Health Coach Catalyst System, the very first step is a 10-week course on crafting your health coaching vision. In other words, crafting your quality vision takes time. It is detailed and there is a lot of different information that goes into it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t pursue your coaching in the meantime, but it does mean that a vision takes not only time, but silence, thought, tweaking, and numerous revisions. After all, it is a living, breathing creation.
When you are ready to craft your vision, I’d like for you to do something. Grab a stack of post-its, sticky notes, or open your favorite application like Miro or Trello and write all of the things that you want to include in your vision. One idea per sticky note, no editing, 5 minutes. See what comes out. One idea per sticky note, no editing, 5 minutes. just set your timer for 5 minutes and go. Now what happens at the end of 5 minutes, your timer goes off, and you’re not done, you still had ideas. Set the timer again. The idea is that you are not spending all day getting your ideas down onto post it notes, whether it is virtual or paper.
Now, you’ll notice that I didn’t give you a definition of what to include in your vision, what you think of when you think of a vision. I didn’t really give you any instructions other than to go with your gut for now. Put those ideas down. No editing. This keeps your brain and heart from arguing over what should be included. That can come later. For now. Five minutes and a stack of post-it notes.
Once you have your sticky notes, I’d love for you to organize them into themes. Do you notice any commonalities among your ideas? Can you group them together? This is the beginning of your vision. Each person’s vision will look different. Remember I said your vision is uniquely yours. In our vision course we include values, dreams, client base, support, professional development, self-care, and so many other components, but for now keep it simple.
For now, look for the commonalities. Can you stack those sticky notes together?
Once you have those identified, those commonalities, I’d like you to take another stack of sticky notes and write down your biggest values. These are the ones that come to you right away. These don’t have to be business related, but they do need to be your core values. The one you hold to be true and deep. For example, one of my core values is that learning. I know that probably doesn’t come as a big surprise. It is infused in all that I do, think, and believe. So, what are your values. What are those values that are infused in all that you do, think and believe? Can you identify your top 5? Now, it you’ve not had a chance to identify your core values before, I know it can be difficult to come up with the words that you’re looking for. Maybe you have that feeling but you don’t know what word to assign. So, I will post in the show notes a link that gives you 50 of the most common personal values (https://jamesclear.com/core-values). Hopefully this will get you started, and it will spark your creativity. You can always then use a Thesaurus or something like www.wordhippo.com to find just the right word that you’re looking for.
Now, I want to you to look back at your vision sticky notes. That first stack. Take some time and identify which value is evident in each sticky note. Just make a little note on your sticky note. You can also do this at a higher level too and look at the groupings. If you don’t have a sticky note that corresponds with one of your top 5 values, maybe of your sticky notes seem to correspond to 4 of your 5 values, that’s ok. And it might be ok, but I would encourage you to sit in the silence and explore if that value is in fact important to your business. If it is, how does it fit into your vision? Remember how I said no editing. Well, you can add. So, add those ideas to new sticky notes and group them with the other stickies that you already have created.
Hopefully at this point you’re already gaining a little bit of clarity. Just two simple steps. You have the ideas you think belong in your vision. You have your values, and you have connected them. You’re starting to gain some clarity on your vision of health coaching. Imagine now if you take a step back and think about your dream day in health coaching. What does it look like? What are you doing? Where are you meeting clients? What about this day makes it your dream coaching day?
Now, you can edit. What additions do you need to make to your sticky notes? What revisions? What needs to be pruned. Maybe you’ve got something on that sticky note and you realize it just doesn’t belong. It doesn’t fit with anything else. It doesn’t align with your values easily and it doesn’t fit into your dream coaching day. So maybe it’s time to set it aside. If you’re like me, I probably wouldn’t throw it away, but I would move it off into the maybe bin for later because then I don’t have to remember it.
So I want you to take a look and notice how those sticky notes shift, get revised, get added to or even get pruned.
Embracing Change
With each step and concept that you explore with your vision, it will grow and change. When we stay committed to embracing that change our vision not only becomes clearer, it is motivating and exciting instead of something that we feel like a weight just dragging behind us. It is thrilling. It gets you moving in the morning and excited to be a health coach.
Conclusions
If you are ready to craft a clearer vision, remember the steps we discussed here. For now, keep it simple. Get all of your ideas down onto sticky notes, virtual or paper. Next identify your 5 core values and see how they tie back to your sticky note ideas. If any of your core values have been left out, take time to sit in the silence and explore how they fit into your coaching vision. Finally do a bit of dreaming about what your ideal day looks like as a health and wellness coach. What changes, additions, deletions, or revisions have you made?
Now take these ideas and craft them into a statement. This isn’t meant to be a final draft, but a working document that will change over time. As you learn and grow you will adjust your vision along the way.
Now, if you are interested in learning more about crafting a thoughtful and detailed vision for your health coaching business, if you want to take it that next step, I invite you to join the Coaching Hive Wait List to be the first to find out when the course is released and to learn more about the 8 modules across a 10-week course.
