As a coach, you must already be familiar with affirmations.
Repeat something enough times and your brain will make it true for you.
If you don’t feel confident as a coach, say out loud “I’m an amazing coach!” and it will become your reality.
Has that been true for you?
Sadly, affirmations don’t work for everyone all the time.
I intend to use this space to discuss a few practical ways of building grounded confidence.
The Journey of Mastery
When we start learning something new… we don’t know what we don’t know.
We start as unconsciously incompetent.
Competence (noun): the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
As we continue learning skills with focus and dedication, we become consciously incompetent.
We get to know a lot of gaps in our skills and the scope for improvement.
As we continue working and learning the skills, we become consciously competent — completely aware of all the competence and skills we have learned so far.
The ultimate mastery — is when someone doesn’t have to make conscious efforts to perform their skills.
We all may know at least 1 teacher who’s so very good at teaching, that it almost looks effortless to them.
“Mastery” or “Unconscious competence” is the ultimate level of confidence in your skills.
That’s what we need to thrive for. Period.
“Deliberate Practice” is a well-known secret
If you don’t feel confident as a coach, do some deliberate practice.
I.e take up some pro-bono clients.
Yes, even if you’ve been coaching for a few years. That’s alright too.
Deliberate practice is a well-known secret.
“Momentum” is a not-so-famous secret for success.
Pick a few clients and start practicing your coaching skills. Keep repeating. Build some momentum.
Pro-bono clients? For free?
Well, yes! If you already have a well-connected audience and you want to not do free stuff, try with discounted prices maybe.
Learn to switch focus
So many times we feel underconfident because we carry fears and doubts.
Learn to switch focus from your problems to your client.
That’s it.
When you’re in a session with a client, learn how to forget about your world for an hour.
Live in your client’s world for that 1 hour.
That’s the only way to serve: focus more on your clients. Period.
Serve only 1 person
Please don’t focus on serving 100 million people in this world, especially if you aren’t feeling confident enough to serve a dozen right now.
Focus on 1 person. Not 10 clients.
Focus only on 1 person who is talking to you right now.
Get deeply engaged in their world and dreams and obstacles and life purpose.
Yes, serve 1 person. Only.
Document your wins
Whenever your mind creates illusions with doubts like — “Do I even know how to coach?”
Show it some proof.
Collect client stories, transformations, and testimonials.
Create a Google Drive folder for “Client Smiles” and put up all the screenshots there.
Revisit those proofs whenever you need to.
Maybe print them out and put them on your office desk.
Whatever you’d prefer.
Show your brain the proof of your quality.
All this being said, what has worked the best for you?
Share in the comments with us. I’m looking forward to it 🙂
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