Music and Intro
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 was hesitant to take the next step and wasn’t sure what the best approach was to success and fulfillment. I decided to step into my passion and purpose of guiding health coaches on their journey from hesitant health coach to committed health coach, with a unique approach to coach growth, the Coaching Hive Blueprint combines creating a mindful vision with inspiring guidance and progress-driven learning. The coaching hive podcast is your glimpse into the concepts, ideas, and approaches that underscore the coaching hive 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.
Connecting to the Health Coaching World
The world of health coaching is blooming before our eyes. The opportunities that are arising from health coaching are opening up in a way that we have never seen before. More and more companies are opening positions for health coaches, entire businesses are making health coaching their focus, and boutique health coaching businesses are also rising in number.
But the problem is that health coaching opportunities are still so new that it can feel like we have to be someone other than who we are. It can get scary to stick to who you are and not sway. After all, in a new career in an emerging field it is easy to feel like you need to bend to fit in. The opportunities feel like they are exclusive, and you have to have the magic key to open the doors.
I mean how many times have you thought to yourself that you need to shift your niche because you aren’t sure that you can work in the niche that really excites you? Or perhaps you’ve asked yourself if people will hire you without this or that credential. Maybe you are concerned that clients will not be willing to partner with you if you don’t conform to more norms.
But along with this emerging health coach job market is a real opportunity to be who you are. It is my job…it is our job to disrupt that drift toward operating to fit in. It is our job to stand up for the change we want to see. It is our job to use our message so powerfully that we can be exactly who we are and recognize that this is who we are meant to be.
Now is the time for us to stand and believe in who we are as individual health coaches from individual backgrounds with individual niches, expertise, and desires. It is time for us to celebrate one another exactly as we are.
In the Coaching Hive, we have monthly calls that cover MasterClass content, Mentoring topics, and Implementation. As a peer community these are unique times to come together and support one another and be that change. This past Monday was one of those calls. We were gathering to discuss the previous two MasterClasses, one on Group Coaching and the other on Emotional Intelligence. These calls are a forum to express out thoughts, ideas, and questions in a non-judgmental space. What comes from these opportunities is nothing short of inspiring. This week was no different. We began discussing the concept that we are not for everyone and that is ok. Instead of forcing ourselves to fit into a box that may not fit, we discussed the idea that some people may not be our ideal client and that is ok. We do not have to serve each person nor does each person have to like our coaching style and philosophy.
Self-Care and Shifting our Approach
But how does this fit into our September podcast theme of self-care?
Spending time trying to fit in and shift who we are so that others will like us, support our niche, or offer us that magical health coaching position is exhausting. As tempting as it is to just go with the flow if you do that, you will soon feel the effects of burnout and discontent. And that is definitely counterproductive to self-care and nourishing who we are personally and professionally.
I understand why you might want to shift and bend just a little. You are in a new career in an emerging field and may need to make some sacrifices, right? Maybe you don’t love to work with adults and seniors, but can you really turn down an opportunity when it arises?
The real question is what you are then saying no to when you say yes to that opportunity that doesn’t really fit who you are and the health coach you want to be?
You might be taking hours away from meeting your ideal client, you may be experiencing heighten stress or worry about how to serve this particular client. Maybe you are even using all of the time you would have allotted to growing your career in the direction you desired by creating content and plans for this client who doesn’t fit your desired vision.
So, what do successful health coaches do? What do we talk about inside the Coaching Hive? You make sure that you are clear on who you are and what your values are for your business. You join a peer community and find a mentor where you can find support and guidance along the way, and you make sure that as you are deciding on different learning opportunities that they are grounded in making progress.
Let me ask you. Do you want to give into the sway or shift into someone you are not and risk the burnout and exhaustion or do you want to stay true to who you are as a form of self-care?
If you answered that you want to stay true to who you are. How are you going to do this?
Maybe you have a clear idea of what your business values are but you don’t quite know where to find a peer community who will have your back or a mentor that is genuinely interested in seeing you succeed. Or perhaps you have the peer community and mentor identified but you haven’t really nailed down your Mindful Vision for your coaching business. What if you are listening to this thinking, “I have those, but what I’m missing is the idea of making sure I’m make progress-driven learning decisions. “
How can you find all three of these things and still have time left over for everything else in life and your business? I’m glad that you’re asking those questions because most never do. Most Hesitant Health Coaches will stop when they find a community, or a new training, or decide on what they want their coaching career to look like.
And that’s why they get stuck. Getting stuck can be just as exhausting as not honoring who you are as a health coach and individual. They are taking actions that don’t serve their vision or maybe they are even getting stuck in a space of inaction, which is why they experience the same challenges over time.
That doesn’t have to be you. You are steadily becoming a confident and committed health coach because you are listening and making adjustments so that you CAN be true to who you are and take action as a health coach.
What Can You Do?
So here it is. The way to stay true to who you are as a health coach while making progress and shedding that hesitation you might be feeling.
Craft your mindful vision, identify and use Inspiring Guidance, and pursue progress-driven learning.
Let’s talk Mindful vision first. When you were a kid, say 5 or 6. Did you worry about what others might think of your vision for that Lego build or the playdough? No. You stayed true to your vision and built a fantastic creation. Allowing someone to choose your coaching vision for you is like letting someone else pick out your clothes, food, and which hand to write with each day. When you are crafting your vision, it is a Mindful Vision when it is grounded in your personal and business values.
By grounding your vision, you are reducing the stress of accepting opportunities that don’t align with your vision. This is self-care.
By grounding your vision in your business values you are ready to share, without hesitation, who you are and what you are doing as a health coach. This is self-care as you pursue your dreams more freely.
Finally, by grounding your vision in your values you have a unique opportunity to reach clients who might not otherwise be served in your community. Serving others is self-care.
Let’s take the identification and use of Inspiring Guidance next. I sometimes hear coaches say that they aren’t confident enough or good enough yet to join a peer community or engage with a mentor. My question, if you have said this, is how will you know when you are confident or good enough? What happens if you continue to tell yourself that you aren’t good enough or confident enough and it doesn’t work out? Isn’t that a waste of time, energy, and resources? What if, instead, you said from day 1, “I am confident and good enough to be a member of a peer community and learn from a mentor?” What do you think will happen?
I can almost guarantee that your confident and commitment will go up with the inspiration you will gain from these relationships. Confidence and commitment are supports to self-care.
By leaning into the inspiring guidance of your peers and a mentor you will find the safety and strength of social support. Social support is integral to self-care.
By sharing your challenges with peers and a mentor you have the opportunity to explore possibilities and grow your mindset. A growth mindset and willingness to explore is self-care.
And this brings us to the third pillar – pursuing progress driven learning opportunities. Are you aware that over $255 billion each year is spent on online education (https://www.thinkific.com/blog/online-course-business/)? This was a number from 2017. I can only imagine what it is in 2021 after the last 2 years. This number tells us that many people are pursuing many learning opportunities online.
In what ways does this booming online education industry help us? The answer is that it doesn’t unless you are making decisions with progress in mind. Having a Mindful vision and Inspiring Guidance will bring a lot of clarity to what learning to pursue.
Now you may be thinking, how is THIS self-care? Easy. When you are financially responsible with your learning, that is a form of self-care. You are saving more for a rainy day, emergencies, business growth, and even retirement.
You are also making sure that you are taking action instead of getting on the hamster wheel of procrastination. Taking action, feeling that progress and recognizing the joy this brings is self-care.
And last, but certainly not least, when you set your intentions to pursue learning that will help you make progress you have more time for the other important things in your life. You have more balance and that is certainly at the heart and soul of self-care.
Conclusions
So here we are. We have talked about being a health coach who is true to who you are. We have talked about the consequences of not following your unique path and we have talked about the ways to follow your unique path with more ease, confidence, and commitment.
Here is my last question for you. Which path will you choose? The one that is mired in hesitation, exhaustion, and burnout or the one that leads to confidence and commitment as a health coach?
If you are ready to be a confident and committed health coach, I invite you to join me inside the Coaching Hive as we put into action the three pillars of the Coaching Hive Blueprint that we discussed today. Self-care and honoring who we are is at the core of the Coaching Hive with Mindful Vision, Inspiring Guidance, and Progress-Driven Learning.
Until next week, I invite you to think about how your business practices can be adjusted to allow for more self-care.
~ Dr. Moira
