You deserve the support you need and, most importantly, to get the help, you need to work on your mental health. Never hesitate to ask questions. Never get embarrassed to ask for help when you need it. Requesting assistance is not a show of weakness. It represents strength. It demonstrates your courage to own your ignorance and your willingness to learn.
In every person’s life, we see a fear of seeking help. It’s reasonable to be afraid. When you’re trying anything new, you can feel anxious or guilty because most people compare those emotions with incompetence. We are here to help. Remember that!
Mental Health Awareness helps educate the public about mental health and works to lessen the stigma and discrimination frequently experienced by those with mental illnesses. Many people battle mental illness but are unaware of it. This indicates that despite the availability of efficient treatments and medications, these people either do not obtain care or do not receive it on time.
Mental Health Awareness serves as a timely reminder that mental health is essential and that people struggling with mental health difficulties ought to be treated with care, compassion, understanding, and access to avenues leading to treatment, recovery, and fulfillment.
For the treatment of mental illness and the improvement of behavioral health, mental health education is crucial. It is a meaningful conversation that must take place to adopt a more proactive approach to mental health.
For those of us who are new to coaching, this blog article is all about connecting with your customer. Sometimes it’s easy to build a relationship, sometimes it’s hard— but it is a crucial part of your work. You must be able to connect with the people who hire you. Let’s look at some steps that will help you build up your clients. It’s not as hard as you may think.
Warn Them, Inform Them… Let Them Know What to Expect
When you meet with a client for the first time, it would be advisable to explain to them what they’re expected to be able to do. Give them some notice. You can turn an advance warning into a relationship-building opportunity. Ask them about things they’ve wanted to do, what they’ve been trying to achieve, and actually show interest in your clients.
Take Responsibility
You’ve made an error? Turned up late to a meeting? Accepting full responsibility, while recognizing the consequences of the error, shows that you’re prepared to take it like a grown-up. People respect that.
Tone Down Your Voice When Giving Bad News
Literally. Lower the tone of your voice and your rate of speaking. Generally, when people get excited or emotional about ideas they tend to raise their voice pitch and pace. When you’re giving bad news or feedback that could be construed negatively or critically, you want to give the impression that you are thinking clearly, logically and reasonably – not emotionally – and certainly not irrationally.
ALWAYS Begin with the Good News
When you have both good news and bad, start with the good. When people hear bad news, they have an internal stress reaction that causes them to tune-out other information. Try to ensure that the client fully comprehends and appreciates the entire message by making sure you give the good news first. Always give them something to feel good about.
Express Those Negatives as Positives
Rather than saying, “We can’t meet until Tuesday,” instead try, “We can meet up as soon as Tuesday.” It’s the same information, but wording it positively enhances your message. It makes the client feel important.
Try to Remind Them of the Bigger Picture
Sometimes clients don’t realize that the ‘bad news’ is in their own best interest. Try to always frame things inside the bigger picture. Yes, this is negative today—but how does it change the plan positively? Don’t let them go away feeling as though they failed.
Follow-up! Always Follow-up!
With some clients, a well-timed phone call after bad news goes a long way in proving to the client that you’ve gone the extra mile. “I just wanted to check with you to see how things are going with that discussion we had…” That raises the perceived value of your service without spending more money. Try it. People like to feel important.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
Seeing several clients each day can sometimes spin your head and make you lose focus. This week, I’d like to talk about a checklist I keep with me each time I talk to coaching clients. This list helps me to keep focused and allows me to understand what I need to do to help my clients. I think this list could be useful for you, too. Print it off—and use it daily. It will really help you get down to the nitty-gritty of what is important.
Build a Relationship of Mutual Trust
The foundation of any coaching relationship is rooted in your day-to-day relationship with your client. Without some degree of trust, conducting an effective coaching meeting is impossible. Try to make sure the relationship is one of working together, rather than working apart.
Open the Meeting and Take Control
In opening a coaching meeting, it’s important for you to clarify, in a nonevaluative, non-accusatory way, the specific reason the meeting was arranged. The key to this step is to restate — in a friendly, non-judgmental manner — the meeting purpose that was first set when the appointment was scheduled.
Find Common Ground and Agreement
Probably the most critical step in the coaching meeting process is getting your client to agree verbally that a performance issue exists. Overlooking or avoiding the performance issue because you assume the person understands its significance is a typical mistake of coaches. To persuade a client that a performance issue exists, a coach must be able to define the nature of the issue and get the client to recognize the consequences of not changing his or her behavior. To do this, you must specify the behavior and clarify the consequences.
Explore All the Alternatives
Try to explore ways the issue can be improved or corrected by encouraging the client to identify alternative solutions. Avoid jumping in with your own alternatives, unless the client is unable to think of any. Push for specific alternatives and not generalizations. Your goal in this step is not to choose an alternative, which is the next step, but to maximize the number of choices for the client to consider and to discuss their advantages and disadvantages.
Look for Commitment and Action
The next step is to help the client choose an alternative. Don’t make the choice for the client. To accomplish this step, the coach must be sure to get a verbal commitment from the client regarding what action will be taken and when it will be taken. Be sure to support the client’s choice and always offer praise.
Make Sure You Handle Those Ever-Present Excuses
Client excuses may occur at any point during the coaching meeting. To handle excuses, rephrase the point by taking a comment or statement that was perceived by the client to be blaming or accusatory and recast it as an encouragement for the client to examine his or her behavior. Respond empathically to show support for the clients’ situation and communicate an understanding of both the content and feeling of the client’s comment.
Provide Crucial Feedback
Effective coaches understand the value and importance of giving continual performance feedback to their people, both positive and corrective.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
This week, we are going to look at coaching and beginning a career in coaching. You’re now in a position to be a coach, and you’re ready to begin… but where do you start? How do you get those crucial first clients? How do you know how much to charge? What do you do? What have others done? This article is all about the first crucial steps towards success as a coach. Let’s take a look…
A Clear Path to Success
One of the most useful pieces of advice is to have a plan and see how you will fulfil your goals. In the meantime, have smaller, doable goals, so you know you’re on track. Each time you achieve one of the smaller goals, you will find yourself closer to success with the bigger goals. You should always be looking at the bigger picture—where are you and where do you want to be?
Keep It Simple
Nobody in the world can do it all. That being said, you should plan on putting in lots of hours and energy into your business, at least for the first year or two until you have a good clientele base with a waiting list, and you have a reliable marketing engine. Later, however, you will want to learn the power of saying “no.” Nobody needs to work 100 hours a week.
Family Support
Your loved ones can also assist you in your endeavors and make it easier. Rather than feel bad that you’re not doing as much for everyone else, use your coaching skills to fully communicate what you’re really up to. When you share your inspiration and how much this means to you, the people who care most about you will whole-heartedly join your team, and they may even help you find clients.
Look After the Money
When you know you have enough money coming in already, you can afford to trust the process of attracting clients. Starting a business is not like starting a new job. You won’t get a reliable paycheck every two weeks. But your time investment up front will pay off handsomely if you go the distance. Reduce debts by negotiating for lower interest rates. Stop paying for things you aren’t using. Be careful with your money, and you’ll go far.
Promote, Promote, Shout
In your first year of coaching, even if your coaching skills aren’t fully honed yet, share your excitement and inspiration about coaching with pretty much everybody. Don’t be attached to getting them to understand coaching the way you do. They probably won’t. But do share your energy.
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
There are many reasons to seek out a life coach—but before you do, you should know a few facts about life coaching. Many people see it as an opportunity to go through therapy without going to see a therapist; others see it as the answer to all their problems—but there are certain realties you have to realize. Let’s take a look at them…
Focus – Life Coaching Allows You to Focus on Yourself
Many people often leave themselves behind. Life coaching actually puts you first, for perhaps the first time. Life coaching takes the necessary time with you to discover your true values, goals, and talents, and will help you create a plan to fulfilling them. After all, YOU are important! Repeat that to yourself now—YOU ARE IMPORTANT!
Order – Life Coaching Gives You the Opportunity to Get Your Life in Order
In life coaching, you immediately take action. You stop being a person living on the sidelines, letting your life pass you by. A good life coach helps you understand yourself better and helps you to live a life aligned with your morals, values, and core beliefs. It is NOT long-term psychotherapy. With support and encouragement, YOU are urged to sit in the driver’s seat in your own life. With your coach as your strongest advocate, YOU decide when you have met your goals. Try it!
Professional – Life Coaching Is Unbiased
When you have a life coach, you get to talk through your struggles with someone who is not going to interrupt you or push you towards what they think you should do. A great life coach would never make judgments or criticize your choices, but instead offers suggestions and give you the space and time to think through your challenges and options. Of course, everything you say to your coach will be kept in total confidence. It’s all about you.
Therapy – Life Coaching Is Not Therapy
Life coaching is never about treating mental illness and working through deeply rooted psychological issues. You should seek professional help in those situations. Therapy is great for people with psychological problems that require intervention with a mental health specialist. Life coaching is an empowering process for normal, healthy people to get help making their lives better, happier, and more fulfilled.
Fun – Yes, Life Coaching Can Be Fun
Expect to laugh a lot during your coaching sessions! Sometimes making change can be more than a little scary, but coaching is actually fun and empowering. It feels great to get things out in the open – so you can get clarity and take action.
Accountability- Life Coaches Hold You Responsible for Yourself
If you’re feeling negative and lacking in motivation, your coach will help you challenge limiting assumptions and beliefs you may have about yourself and the situations you find yourself in. He or she will help you work through the issues that are preventing you from moving forward and, above all, keep you focused on your goals!
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
After writing a book, many people want to know how one goes about publishing a book. A well-known author once said recently that “it’s no great feat to get one’s book published—it’s no great mountain to climb.” He is right, but his opinion is subjective. To you, reading this blog, it is a huge mountain to climb to get your book published. There are many paths you can take up that mountain, but it is still a huge feat.
This week we are going to look at some pointers about cover design. Covers are a selling tool like no other. They are usually the first thing people see, and they are usually the thing that makes someone buy or not buy. Covers capture interest—so it’s important for you to have the right one.
The wrong cover can be devastating to your sales. A poor cover can turn off readers and can even cause your book to be returned by customers. Bad covers can also lead to poor reviews. But what do I mean by a bad cover? Let’s look at the four biggest problems we see on covers. You can see covers that have these problems all over Amazon.
• Spelling errors on the cover
• Poor punctuation
• Pixelated images
• Poor name and title placement
But these are not the only things you have to think about when putting your cover together. You also have to become an ad-man and create a cover that looks good as a thumbnail. I bet you didn’t think about that! Yes, your cover has to stand out as a thumbnail on Amazon. So keep that in mind and test your covers. Shrink your cover in size and spend some time looking at it. Can you still make out the image on the front? Does it still look as attractive? Would you buy that book?
Give it a try—and see for yourself!
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
“Do more, see more, feel more, achieve more… make Wednesday YOUR day for achievement!”
Have you ever wondered about the people who seem to zoom through their day and achieve everything they started out wanting to achieve? Have you ever wondered how they do it? I’m sure each of us knows someone who can get much more done in a day than we believe possible. The super filer, the busy typist, the amazing salesman. What gives those people such drive?
It really comes down to the need to meet goals. Some people have an inbuilt need to achieve everything straight away. But there are ways for you to also help yourself make more from your days. This week, we will be talking about increasing productivity during our days, so our evenings can be less stressful.
Make Notes
The most successful people in the world always carry a notepad in their pockets to make notes. Many of us use our computers or phones and make notes on the diaries we have there. But this doesn’t seem to cut it for many people—it’s better to write it down and refer to something that is real—a piece of paper.
Time Management
Those who are super achievers know that time is a finite thing. On a daily basis, we only have so much time to do things. That’s why it’s important for us to make the most from our time. Try timing your activities, multi-tasking or combining tasks. This will help you cut down on the time you are spending on an activity and will cut the number of things you have to do.
Relax…
Even during the most stressful day, successful people find the time to wind down. Even in the office, you can spare a few moments every day to take your mind off work, meditate for a few minutes or read the news. Relaxation is part of what makes us successful. We have to know when to turn on the standby button.
Colleagues Can Be Fun
Try to be as social as possible. The more social you are at work, the more you feel like part of the team. Try interacting with as many people as you possibly can—and make friends. Working with friends is much better than working with people you hardly know.
Wake Up, Gotta Get Out of Bed
What can really set back our days is being late for work. Once you are late for work, you can expect your day to become sluggish. Try heading to bed earlier, waking up earlier, watching the news, having a relaxing breakfast and then heading to work. There’s no reason to rush anything in your life—take it at its own pace!
YOUR VISION TORCH Series Achieve Your Dreams, Ignite Your Vision, & Re-engineer Your Life Purpose
The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered. This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we are going to look at a fairly common fear that stops people from reaching their full potential—a fear called Acrophobia, which is a fear of heights that can stop many people from actually taking the first step toward their dreams.
Acrophobia may manifest itself in many ways, but is the extreme or irrational fear of heights. It’s not the same as vertigo, which is an inner ear problem that makes you think that you’re moving even when you’re not.
Recognizing Your Phobia
If you’re in a high place, do you feel like you will fall or jump off the edge? Do you suffer from panic attacks, dizzy spells and feeling faint? This condition can be triggered by a variety of every day activities such as travelling on a lift or escalator, parking in a multi-story car park or climbing a ladder. The thoughts and physical sensations are harmless but can be so distressing that it seriously limits the sufferer’s enjoyment of life, and can stop you from fulfilling your potential. Imagine if you had to make a business deal in a skyscraper—but couldn’t face going to the fifth floor? How about needing to meet that all important person for lunch—but not being able to reach the top of the building, where the restaurant is situated? If you suffer from acrophobia you may never be able to achieve the things you truly want to achieve.
Overcoming Your Phobia
Throw Yourself In
One of the most common ways of overcoming this phobia is just to “flood” it, in other words, just throw yourself right in and use your willpower to climb those stairs and stare out of the windows of a skyscraper. This could also mean skydiving, bungee jumping, or other extreme ways of getting to grips with your fear of heights. However, recent surveys have said that only a small percentage of people have overcome their phobia this way.
Small Steps
Another way to get to grips with your phobia would be to take small steps, until you feel comfortable to take some more. For example, you could try placing a ladder outside your home and climbing one step at a time. This would allow you to overcome your phobia at your own pace.
Thinking Is Doing
Sometimes the best way of combating a condition like acrophobia is just to change the way you think. Ask yourself why this condition scares you so much—what is it that bothers you so much about heights? Why are you scared to go on that elevator? Sometimes, it’s all down to defeating the demons in our minds.
Time
The most important thing is to realize that you have all the time in the world to overcome your phobia. There is no rush—take your own time and realize that only you can do it. Know that it could take a long time to get over your phobia—but it will be worth it in the end.
