(previously published at dmiracle.com)
Being a successful life coach or business coach is within your grasp. Read on!
So what is it exactly that separates you from the life coaches or business coaches you see being more successful than you?
While you may think that successful coaches are such because they have some advantage over you – think again. Sure, it happens sometimes that a business coach has the right connections and almost falls into success. Or that a life coach just finds the perfect niche market that’s been waiting to be lead.
But most of the time their success came because of a few simple principles that they practice in their business every day. None of these are difficult to learn. None of them are difficult to do. Yet each of the five steps I list below are essential to having success as a coach. Follow them and you’ll find that you’ll accomplish more than you probably thought was possible!
Step One: Successful coaches keep their eye on the goal
You know how it goes. Let’s say you develop and market a new coaching program for your clients. When you start, you’re filled with enthusiasm. But time passes and while you’re still happy about the project, but you start noticing the difficult things. More time passes and you’re no longer enthusiastic at all. However, you keep going because you know it has potential. Finally, you start to question why the heck you are doing this in the first place. Then it happens. A new coaching project pops up. You feel excitement start to build again, but for this new project instead of your current one. You decide this one will be MUCH better, and jump ship to pursue this new, exciting opportunity. Sound familiar?
Fortunately, there is an easy remedy for this. Commitment!
I know, that seems too simple, but it’s true. Setting clear, realistic goals is essential to your coaching success. As is being committed to completing the journey whatever it takes. If you continually bail out on your goals, you are training yourself to believe that your goals are not important. And as your goals seem less important, you will be tempted to quit before you even start. Instead, set daily reminders about your goals so they stay fresh in your mind and you will stay encouraged to achieve them. Make the resolve to finish what you start – no matter what – and you will be shocked at how much you can accomplish!
Step Two: Successful coaches manage their work efficiently and rarely procrastinate
If I could only tell you one thing about how to manage your coaching workload, it would be to make a plan and stick to it as much as possible! Proper planning is the key to saving time and getting things done. Without a plan you’ll find that days and weeks go by without you accomplishing much of your goals. Usually your work will suffer. And I guarantee you without good planning your coaching practice will suffer. So prepare ahead of time, ideally the night before. Make a prioritized list of things that need to be done on a day to day basis and resolve to finish those tasks no matter what!
For some people, completing all the tasks on their prioritized list will be easy. However, others may run into procrastination issues. Why do people procrastinate? Often times, they are trying to avoid a difficult task. It’s no secret that tasks that take longer are less desirable than those that can be completed quickly.
Many people decide to do desirable tasks first, regardless of how important these tasks are. The problem with this is that people sometimes fall into the trap of unconsciously allowing themselves to be consumed by enjoyable “busywork” instead of more important tasks.
Making a resolve to finish the biggest, most important tasks first (enjoyable or not!) will give you a sense of accomplishment that will make the other tasks on your list seem like a breeze. Do this, and you will keep procrastination at bay!
However, others procrastinate for deeper reasons. Sometimes procrastination is due to fear of failure. No one wants to be embarrassed by a lack of knowledge or skills, so it’s easy to try to avoid doing those tasks that make you afraid or uncomfortable. However, it’s important to realize that motivation comes from within. Coming to grips with personal issues is the first step in realizing why you procrastinate. Once you do so, you can start taking steps to chance.
Step Three: Successful coaches learn from criticism
Let’s face it, it can be hard to hear someone tells us our faults as a coach. But criticism can be much more useful than you may think. If you take the time to listen and evaluate various criticisms, you’ll often find the keys to reaching your full potential as a life coach.
It really is in your best interest to accept the criticism, apply the suggestions, and grow throughout the process instead of allowing yourself to become defensive or upset. I’m not suggesting it’s always easy to do. I struggle with certain types of criticism myself. And none of us like to hear what’s ‘wrong’ with us or our coaching practices. But if you can wade through the difficulty and adapt to the feedback, you will find jewels hidden in the mix.
By learning to accept criticism, you will see yourself grow in ways you never thought possible.
Step Four: Successful Coaches keep a positive outlook
In order to achieve success as a coach, a holistic practitioner or any other sort of service provider, you need to think positively about yourself and your chances for success. Many coaches mistakenly believe that being positive and thinking optimistically is just part of someone’s personality – either you’re born an optimist or you’re not! But this isn’t true at all. Optimism is an acquired habit. It’s a skill that can be learned and developed – and then used to motivate your and your coaching practice forward.
In order to become optimistic and motivated, you need to become conscious of ’that little voice inside.’ I’m not being smug here. You know the voice. You even could tell me what it says to you sometimes. And I know you’ve pushed it away whenever it made you feel weak or small.
But now it’s time to listen to what it says in situations. Catch yourself saying something about what’s going on. If it’s negative, immediately stop and put a positive spin on it. So a negative thought like “I don’t know how to market my coaching practice” could be changed into “I can learn how to market my coaching practice.” Try doing this for a month, and I think you will be absolutely amazed at how energized you are about not only your work, but your life in general!
Step Five: Successful Coaches leave time each day for reflection
This is way more important than it sounds. Self evaluation and self reflection is something every coach, every healer and every business owner should be doing on a daily basis. How else can you know whether your day was efficient and successful?
And since it’s so easy to get caught up in the motions of ‘go to work, see clients, come home,’ you want to do something to breakdown the monotony on it. You need to break the patterns of ineffectiveness to create more effectiveness – lack of success to create more success. Truly successful life coaches and business coaches know that reflection is one of the best ways to keep yourself on the fast track to success.
Try this exercise:
At the end of the day, try to reflect back on the hardest part of the day, then ask yourself the following questions:
- What did I learn from that experience that will help me in the future?
- How can I that experience to help improve myself or my future?
- How can I do better next time around?
And really be honest with yourself. If you’ve been screwing off, then admit it to yourself. Then go back through each step and take something you can do from each. Just remember that there is always room to learn and to grow into greater and greater levels of success. Your self reflection time will pay huge dividends in your coaching and your personal life. Not bad when one thing can reach many aspects of your life. Just remember to do it daily – even if only 5 minutes.
To sum up, being a success coach is really not a mystery – not at all. These 5 steps are a beginning. And, they’re a powerful beginning. There’s enough in these 5 steps to double your business in the next 12 months. I’m not kidding about that. You just have to do the steps, use them – apply them to the best of your ability. If you miss a day, then miss the day and start again the next. But don’t leave them behind.
Here’s to all the success you could ever want.
I’d love to hear what you’re doing now as a coach to create the success you want. Something? Nothing? You have no idea?
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Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her 
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