Ten reasons to hire a clarity coach - part two
If you haven’t read part one of this series, please do so. Then come back as we have another five reasons why you might want to hire a clarity coach.
6. Help you work smarter not harder
Whether you are employed or self-employed there are times when you just seem to be trudging through treacle. Not getting anywhere fast despite expending a lot of effort.
Sometimes, you just need to think through how to work smarter not harder. Let me give you a common example. If you are self-employed you will no doubt be sending out invoices every month. Many people don’t keep good records. They might not track their time, or even have the relevant client billing contact details, which makes the process very time consuming, not actually in sending out the invoices but in gathering all the relevant information together. This often leads to exasperation and overwhelm. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Having someone to help you think through your process can be a God send, saving you time and thus money, as every minute you are spending on that task is time away from working on paid work or developing the business. And where coaching can help is that as it’s client led, it’s about you coming up with a process that works specifically for your situation and not simply a cookie cutter approach. A good system will work in a way that’s best for you.
7. To lead a more balanced life
Elon Musk, the eponymous boss of Tesla and SpaceX is known for his workaholism, recently proclaiming he is working 120 hour weeks. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know this is not a good situation.
When researching this issue the Guardian found that 64% of people say they find it hard to disconnect from work after leaving for the day and 77% agree to the notion that we don’t have a good work/life balance in the UK. It’s a huge problem in our modern society where technology fuels the ‘always on’ culture.
Many people I speak to basically say they have no choice but to work long hours. They might have a family, have high mortgage or rent costs or be getting a business off the ground.
A coach can tease out your priorities–what’s most important to you? Your work? Family? Faith? Friends? Your lifestyle? Planning for the future? What’s driving you to work all the additional hours you do? Is it down to the perception of the work environment–can’t be seen to be leaving early? Tough boss that no-one stands up to? Always got another email to respond to.
What would happen if you did things differently...if you did leave on time for once...if you did say you weren’t contactable at weekends as you were spending it with your family? If you did take all your allowable holiday for once? What if you moved to a less expensive area so your outgoings were lower? What if…?
Facing up to the reality of what’s important to you can be difficult on your own. But you don’t have to do it on your own.
8. Help you get back to work
If you’ve been out of work for any length of time, you can quickly lose confidence in how talented you actually are. With low confidence it means when you do get opportunities you don’t put your best self forwards. It’s like you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
If this keeps going on for any length of time, your self-talk can turn negative to ‘I’ll never get a job’, ‘I’m just not good enough’, ‘there’s so many better candidates than me’. Then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. You don’t give your best so you’re less likely to get the job/opportunity so your words back up what you feel about yourself.
It doesn’t have to be that way. One of the reasons I love what I do is down to the joy of meeting people. I am fascinated by people. We are all so unique. Everyone of us has our own dreams and desires, talents and skills and stories to tell from the experience in life God has given us. So I’m a firm believer in encouraging that out of people. We all have our own path, but sometimes we just need a bit of clarity and confidence to see it ourselves. If that’s you, talk to me.
9. Achieve goals quicker than you could on your own
Often we don’t achieve our goals as we don’t have clarity on them or fully believe in them. We don’t have accountability to help motivate us to achieve them and we can be so overwhelmed by the perceived enormity of the challenge that we can simply put it off so often until it becomes a distant dream.
A coach will help you get that clarity by actively listening to you and reflecting back what you are saying so you become more self-aware and can see the things that are holding you back.
They will help you break down that overwhelming goal into small manageable tasks that are much more achievable, then every session, and possibly in between sessions, they can check in with you as to how you are doing with what you’ve said you can achieve.
This means instead of going round and round in circles not getting anywhere fast, you can clearly see the progress week by week and take encouragement from the fact you are moving forwards towards your goal.
”Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts.” said King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 4:9).
10. Increase your confidence
It’s all too easy to suffer from a lack of confidence. It can be a specific situation that has happened to us which dents our confidence such being made redundant, or the breakdown of a relationship or it can be spending too much time on social media having negative experiences. This is a proven way to dent confidence! (I choose personally to avoid social media, but that discussion is for another post.)
A coach can help guide you back to times when your confidence was high and look to why that was. That means focusing on the reality of your experience, knowledge and talent rather than the negative perceptions we can often have. This can get you back on track and ready to get out there and face up to achieving your goals.
Conclusion
Not everyone is ready, willing and able to make changes in their life to fulfil their potential. Changes can mean facing up to reality, making sacrifices and putting in a lot of hard work. If you are not prepared for that, coaching isn’t for you at this time.
However, if you are, there are many ways a coach can help additional to these 10. If you haven’t already, sign up for the FREE tips in the boxes below and I’ll share with you these and other ways to fulfil your God-given potential.
