How Your Environment Shapes Your Coaching Success

Show Notes

Today’s topic is how your environment can influence your coaching. How much do you think about that? Now, that could be what is outside, it could be what is inside, it could be what is in between your head.

Have a Comfortable Space

Location is a big thing. Do you have a dedicated space? Not just a lounge chair or the kitchen where you are always having to pack it up. Do you actually have a space that you can call a workspace, and preferably with a door on it that you can close? You see, when you don’t have your space, you will have difficulties separating home and work and setting boundaries. It’s a great idea if you are in a room with door on it. When you walk through the door, you open and close it, it sends a mental stop on you, a signal that your work is done for the day and anything can wait until tomorrow.

Setting boundaries about your location can make a huge difference. It is also about the quality of your location. If you are bouncing around in coffee shops, trying to fit in between other people while making sure it is not too noisy, it can get you flustered. You want to have a nice location where you can leave your stuff and not have to pack it up all the time. That is why co-working spaces are often popular. It is not quite as good if you are hot desking, but at least you have a dedicated space.

What is your space, your location? Is it quiet? Is it light? Does it give you the opportunity to get up and walk around rather than just sitting there the whole time? Thinking about your location can really affect the way you coach.

Mental Clarity & Focus

Another thing that can affect the way we coach and how we feel about ourselves is our mindset. Are we happy with our location and mindset? Are we trying to ration everything else and fit it all in, or do we have time? Have we put that buffer in between times? Are we making sure we are not running meetings one after another, right up until a coaching session, running a coaching session, and then jumping off to something else?

For some people, you really do need to block out, “This morning is coaching. This afternoon, I am going to do accounts.” Sometimes it is even a day, not just a time block. Thinking about that helps you avoid mind switching between coaching, accounting, marketing, and everything else, especially if you do not like some of those other tasks.

How can you start to segment what you are doing? Decide what you are going to do and how you are going to make it work. If you listen to Alex Hormozi’s podcast, he talked about three stonemasons working on a cathedral. He asked the first, “What are you doing?” The stonemason said, “Cutting stone. I am a stonemason.”

The second said, “I am cutting stone, supporting my family. I have a great job.”

The third said, “I am cutting stone, building an amazing cathedral that will outlast me and my children. My great-grandchildren will say, ‘Poppy built this.’ I am building a legacy.”

Same job, different mindset. You can imagine who had the better day, who was excited to get up and go to work, and who dragged themselves out of bed.

Establish a Routine

What is your routine or rhythm? What is the way you like to do it? How does that work best for you? What are the things you do that help you get into that calm state so you can coach properly? Do you have a routine at the end of the day where you finish? Are you working fairly standard hours? In the afternoons, do you go for a walk and that becomes the end of your day, especially if you are working at home?

Or are you coming from your day job into your coaching? What are you doing in between? Do you have some travel time, or do you have a routine that helps you finish one job before you start the other? What can you do there rather than just running your brain on that little hamster wheel from one topic to another?

Particularly if you are still in a job, which is great and amazing because it gives your business time to breathe, you need to make sure you are drawing that line in the sand. That was my job. Now, this is my business. These are the things I need to do.

Create Relationship Boundaries

This can also relate to relationships. If you have children in the background making noise, are you stressed that someone might hear them? Or are they coming in, knocking on the door? Or animals—our fur babies—deciding they want attention? What is it around those relationships? If you are in a job, do you need to decompress from the relationships there? You certainly do not want to bring toxic relationships into your coaching space.

Efficient Digital Environment

If we are posting because we have to and we are not really liking it, we can get frustrated. We end up posting a lot, then doing nothing, and we are not being clean and clear. Is our digital space somewhere we want to go? Have we just put up a website because someone said we needed it, but we are not really happy with it? Does it have code errors, does it not load, are the colours wrong? Maybe it is better not to have a website at the moment, which is a bit odd for a website designer to say. If it is not done well, then maybe you need to pare it back to just a landing page or use one of the platforms that does it all for you—landing page, calendar, diary setup, all of that.

Look at what you need right now. What are the things you got but not useful to you? Subscriptions you do not need anymore? Social media platforms you are not using? Things with old branding that have not been updated? What does your digital environment look like? Is that an area you need to spend a bit of time on to really hone it and make yourself feel good about your coaching environment?

SBT Episode 275 was You Are Not The Only 1. Many of us have these issues and challenges or have had them. Do not worry, it is not just you. It is nice to be in a room of coaches and realise we all have the same sort of challenges

It is time to draw some lines in the sand. What you put on your calendar must be done today. If you have a coach, great. If not, why not? We have had episodes about making sure you have a coach. Being a coach is great, but you need one too.

SBT Episode 228 was The Power of Personal Connection; connection with your coach, your clients, and yourself. That can help your mindset and environment.

Another episode to check out is SBT Episode 194 was Adding Value. Always remember to add value to yourself too.

Contacts

Linkedin
Facebook
Cathy Smith Coaching