Looking back over the decades of history I see that due diligence, self care, and awareness have all been around since the day dot. Attentiveness continues to make a distinct contribution in the areas of self growth, personal development, mentoring, coaching for success and its attainment.

Furthermore the level of care involved in any action does prohibit the outcome. Therefore I’d like to introduce the notion of extreme self care. I’m not alone in my thinking on extreme self care, other coach authors have broached the subject and found it to be a selective sensible approach to living life and attaining those dreams and ambitions.

Extreme Self Care
The gist of the word extreme describes excessive action including thoughts to push personal borders, in coaching terms we’ll opt for ‘thinking outside of the box’.

Pushing those boundaries and raising personal limits does reward with a fuller, happier and successful lifestyle – ask any coach.

Health and Business
Many of us experience a demanding lifestyle with stress creeping in whenever we let our guard down, for some that can be a little too often so that not only the body, mind, spirit and heart go into stress mode but business can suffer under pressure too.

Looking after oneself requires an holistic encompassing self, health, relationships, career, wealth building and spirituality. A total re-think and move, towards incorporating the internal conscious growth mechanism with the manifestation of those thoughts and appropriate following actions.

Thankfully there is a diverse mix of professional help out there for anyone who seeks assistance in closing the divide to a better work life balance.

Meanwhile I’d like to raise a few powerful pointers based upon the basics of personal and business development that you’ll find useful, practical to create breakthroughs in your life while taking account of extreme self care.

Strategies To Transform Your Lifestyle
Behaviour stems from mindset resulting in either negative outcomes or the more desired positive ones. Starting as you mean to go on is a good plan to have and practising extreme self care and business management from the outset is by far a better choice than waiting for any ideal situation to arise.

Develop The Habit of Self Care
Practice the art of being assiduous in all that you do. Take time out in your personal life to enjoy special time with family and friends but more importantly review your time calendar with ample ‘windows’ for both basic health care and self indulgence by putting yourself first. Bring joy into your life and be serious about laughter, laugh often, encourage yourself to live in a relaxed atmosphere and abundance. Share a smile with the people you meet every single day.

Developing this type of attitude to your personal life will produce an amazing amount of renewed energy to build huge resources of positive abundance and prosperity.

Develop The Habit of Total Business Awareness
Extreme self care moves over into the world of your business which will contribute more time, better quality of life and wealth. I’m sure you would agree with me that a proficient coach entrepreneur is a leader of their own life and have the fortitude to create a productive vision for their business.

Apart from the usual strategic requirements to grow a business of a working business plan, marketing and sales plans to avoid getting stuck in a rut, you need to be totally aware of your business objective.

Awareness Breeds Objective Success
Working diligently in daily consistent action and awareness does require a substantial dose of extreme self care. This can be achieved by future pacing your business.

Future Pacing
Stepping up to daily review of the business operations of where it is headed (hence knowing your business objective) is your main task to ensure you know exactly what is going on in your business and what steps you need to take to continue its growth. Make it your business to be innovative and provide the best coaching possible.

Answer

It is always an excellent idea to have a selection of talks pre-written on the general benefits of coaching, such as a 15 minute talk, 30 minute talk, 1 hour talk etc so that you are prepared to talk on coaching at short notice. These can always be altered slightly depending on the audience/topic if necessary.

Practice what you want to say so that you are familiar with the talk, know the timing and only need prompt cards.

Keep in mind the purpose of your talk and the conclusion or outcome you want to reach. Engage the audience as much as possible by inviting interaction and questions from the audience. Use props where appropriate to enhance the point you are making.

Remember that although the aim is to inform the audience, it is also an opportunity to promote your own coaching services, so always finish your talk with a call to action from the audience. This could be a discounted coaching rate if booked at that time only, product you are promoting, etc but it is essential that you make it clear how the audience can access this and what they need to do.



Question - "What advice would you give to a coach looking to start group coaching?"

Answer

1. Get involved in groups or forums with people you identify with and who you would like to be around to get experience of the dynamics of groups, how the individuals interact and how they are facilitated/lead. Being on the receiving end will highlight good and bad practices.
   
   
2. Think very specifically about what you want to group to achieve so that you can market the service to a very specific client base who would find the service of benefit. It is important to develop a sense of commitment and belonging among the group members so be clear about the goal you are offering to coach them on eg. weight loss, time management, managing teams.
   
   
3. When looking to set up a group, start looking at the people in your immediate network ie. friends, colleagues, past clients who may be interested in the coaching you are offering. Then, extend this out to people in your business network. You could also approach clients about this service to see if they have any contacts who might be interested. If they are already receiving the benefits of your coaching, they will be able to recommend you. An ideal number would be 6-8 to start with.

 

Answered by Helen Jones, Email Helen Jones
© 2010 Helen Jones; All Rights Reserved

There is a science to getting what you want it’s called ‘motivation’, and yes it is a great way to get what you want.

Whether your motivational driver is intrinsic or extrinsic you can set the course for success. Just get on with it.

Making sure you keep your natural motivation levels high is just about telling yourself a story. We all have stories to tell and the lighter, fun, inspiring stories create further motivation to remain on track.

Eliminating all feelings of insecurity and negative emotion are a real boost to the system and lifts the spirit which allows persistence to act positively and get the job done.

Projecting Forward Guarantees Clarity
Coach training instils the use of correct tool methodology to enable coaches to stay motivated and remain at the coaching process thus not taking on any baggage ensuring a positive and productive result. This system of using coaching tools guarantees a projected outcome. Do not confuse my words with the will of the coach coming forward and dominating the client’s will, but rather the client is able to tap into their core belief system and access a clearness to stir their own deep rooted motivation to move forward.

Knowing How
Motivation heightens confidence which improves competency. One of the ways to develop competency is to overcome fear by simply becoming better at what you do.

By building competency, you become more familiar with the territory that you’re working in; your coaching niche. The fears, of either failure or success begin to lessen so confidence grows. With time you’ll become less fearful, you’ll believe in yourself more, your talk track will project itself, your actions will become focused and you’ll have raised your motivation levels enormously.