- What do you need to embrace that will add to your purpose?
- What can you do, to elevate your capabilities in what you decide is your purpose?
- What do you need to let go off to move forward?
- What decisions do you need to take now to move forward?
For the past few days, I have been thinking about how we, as coaches, can assist in the wider world at this moment of challenge. It is likely that you have your own demons at work in your mind, sharing their unhelpful critique with you frequently It is possible that you are or have been directly affected by what is going on perhaps at a medical level or perhaps at a business level as you strive to make sense of what this means to the world that you have been working in previously. This is where I have got to. We are humans that have feelings and emotions. These feelings and emotions need to be expressed so that we can depart from that space. To do this, we need to get ourselves to a position of acceptance from which we can then build. It could be that this is not an agreed acceptance. We have always had situations around us that we may have had a view on, but this view was usually a personal view. A personal view that perhaps we could not change the wider world with. We need to look after ourselves, our loved ones and our community. The boundaries between each will probably never be tested more in our lifetimes than they are or are likely to be. We need to check in with people regularly, we need to extend our reach (virtually) to others and we need to engage/chat more as a community to ensure those around us are safe. Earlier, I mentioned business. We are at a fragile time and we need to accept this. The skills that we have as coaches are what I term ‘bounce back able’. Our income is determined by the work that we do, but as others around us are in desperate measures, the income will decrease. That is fine, and we need to get to a position where we let go of the attachment to existing models. I have the confidence that our services are needed by people around us – and have experienced this already with some of my clients as they want to explore beyond just the current crisis but focus on the future beyond. We need to accept that it might / is getting tough. Our government is trying to help – although, at some point (and we might have reached it already), the line of no more support might be reached. As the government announced the ‘furlough option’, I looked at my business and considered ‘for a split second’. Being furloughed means that you should not work on your business, but effectively take a leave of absence as opposed to being made redundant. For some industries that we rely so heavily upon, this type of support is so critical – but as a small business offering the coaching services that I do, it does not fit. I am certain that I need to keep the focus, I need to develop the business around me. We are likely to want to learn, so how can we learn more. There are an abundance of online programmes that you can learn from. I listen extensively to podcasts, and one of these (Goaldigger) has an offer with a platform called Skillshare. Click here to get two months of free access to this platform. Of course, there are also significant resources that you can find online that can aid in your learning. Some things that I have decided to turn off or regulate. The news – I find that this is not too helpful. With the populous requirement to focus on sensational headlines, I find this distracting and obfuscating. I am also limiting my access to some social media as similar to the online news, there are a lot of stories that are really not useful or are factually wrong. I have also developed an acceptance that if my car needs a wash, it needs a wash. Let me explain more. There are and have been many jobs that need to be done that have always had an excuse as to why they have not been done, Some of these jobs are small, some less so – but now with a greater requirement to be around the house, these jobs just need to get done. So I need to wash the car and give gratitude to that. What does all this mean? I think it means that as we re-establish a new balance, we can adjust that balance to be what we need it to be on terms that work for us, our families and our communities. We have a great opportunity to take control of elements of our lives where we had little control in the past. We can focus on what we choose to focus on and for me, this is upping my skills as a coach / mentor / supervisor to provide an even better learning space for those I engage with. I leave you with a few questions:-