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If you are not looking after yourself, you cannot look after anybody else. I know we all want to help everybody, but the airlines really do have it right, don’t they? If you don’t look after you, then how can you look after yourself?
Especially now that you have your own business, who’s pushing you? You’re pushing yourself, as well as potentially your clients, financial pressures, your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children—you name it. So, stop. Let’s take a moment. Take a breath. You really do need to make sure that you are looking after yourself because we do have all these external pressures.
Take Care of Yourself
When we have a corporate job, we might work a lot of hours, but quite often at the end of the day, the day is done. Whereas with business, sometimes that’s not the case, is it? I was coaching a client just recently, and she said she had a study where she had a home office. I said, “Sure, does the study have a door?” And she went, “Yes.” And I said, “Have you closed it?” No—light bulb moment. So, you have to have a hard stop, close the door, and make sure that you are looking after yourself. Because if you’re overextended, if you’re burnt out, then you’re not going to be giving the best to your clients, yourself, your family, or anyone else.
Yes, we can push through in front of the wall. Sometimes, when we’re doing a launch, it might be a bit frantic, but that can’t be the norm. That can’t be our day-to-day. So, make sure that you are looking after yourself, taking care of you so that you can take care of your clients. Yes, we need to be empathetic, but we can’t take on all our clients’ work-life stresses and pressures.
Set up Healthy Boundaries
So what do you put in place to make sure that doesn’t happen? I love the expression “getting in the pool.” If you’re in the pool with somebody, if there’s a potential you’re in a rip or something like that, if it goes out, there’s no way you could help anybody. So, if you’re in there, in the emotion with them, if you’re deep-diving, you can’t be thinking with that coaching brain. You can’t be distancing yourself enough to help the client get to a place where they can come up with creative ideas. So, remember to be empathetic, but also to have those healthy boundaries to make sure that they’re not emailing you hour after hour.
Make sure that you’re not doing the work for them. Because as a coach, that is not your job. Yes, you can guide and help, and sometimes accountability needs to happen as well. But set it up so that it’s not actually you having to track it down all the time. One of the things I love to do, if I’ve offered to do emails, is set them up directly after the call. So therefore, they are getting the check-ins, they’re getting the emails—they’re scheduled out, but I’m not having to worry about doing it at a different time. It’s all part of the timing that I’ve allowed for that call. So just think about the little tips and tricks that you can do to make it so much easier.
Make sure that you are setting those boundaries. If you’re offering Slack or Voxer, do you answer it immediately, or do you have a time when you do it? What kind of boundaries can you put in place there? Or is it something that you no longer need to offer or should be offering? That one I can’t answer for you, but just think about what you’re including in your packages and making sure that it works for you and that you’re not on call 24/7 because that is not your job as a coach.
Make sure that the boundaries benefit both you and your client. And if they don’t, then maybe that client is not for you, or maybe you’re not the coach for that client. Sometimes that can be the case as well.
Be True To Yourself
We’ve spoken a lot on the podcast about how you can outgrow your coaches. Sometimes you can outgrow your clients as well. So just think about those kinds of things and make sure you’re communicating and sticking to those boundaries. It’s no point saying, “I’m not going to answer your texts immediately,” or “I’m not available 24/7,” and then waking up at 2:00 in the morning and thinking, “Oh, I’ll just answer that one.”
Be true to yourself as well as your client, and make sure that you are looking after yourself so that you have some resilience and can do this for the long term. There’s no point putting all this work into it and then burning out so that you can’t continue. So, make sure that you do that.
Practice Gratitude
For longevity and self-care, what kind of rituals can you bring in? You’ve heard me talk about The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. Fantastic book. One of their little rituals is three gratitude’s at the end of the day. When could you take a break? Do you take your lunch at your desk? Do you take your coffee at your desk? Is it a case where you’ve got to get up and walk around? As you know, I do 8,000 steps a day, and one of the things is it does a little tick-off at the end of the hour to say, “Have you done at least 250 steps?” And if I haven’t, it gives me ten minutes to do it, which gives me a couple of minutes to procrastinate and do something else as well.
But it doesn’t take very long to do 250 steps, and it means that I get up and walk around at least once an hour. So what is it that you can do to have that simple break that can recharge you and take the time between clients? If you’re writing notes, you need to make sure that you’ve got that all done so that you don’t have to then try and work out which client said what, and all of that kind of thing.
Make sure that your schedule is set up to have those breaks and that self-care. Also, do you have a coach? Is that something that you need to build into your self-care? Having somebody who can listen to you, hold you accountable, and make sure you’re not bottling things up or stressing about unnecessary things. Make sure you have a coach as well. Think about what else you can do. What other types of rituals? Self-care, meditation?
What is it that works for you? Is it getting out into nature? Is it going for a walk? Is it going down to the beach? What’s your special day? Make sure that you’ve got that built in as well, so that you’re not always available, and that you are building in resilience and self-care.
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Self Care and Boundaries Thriving For Coaches
A stressed-out coach is not who I want to work with. And yes, you might be very good at hiding it and bottling it all up—which, once again, isn’t good—but it does leak out, and it leaks out in your marketing. And if you have financial pressures, you may become needy, which repels clients—not what you want. So, make sure you’re looking after yourself, taking care of yourself, and doing those small things that make a big difference.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 268.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
