What’s the Hardest Part of a Coaching Call?!?

Cataloging wins.

At the beginning of a coaching call, whether it’s a 1:1 or a group session, we always start by calling out the wins. It’s something that my business coach does consistently, and she instilled in me the value of this in our lives.

And it still feels SOOOOO HARD!

And it’s hard for those that I coach too. So much so that everyone will start off with “well, I knew you were going to ask, so I thought of _______ and _____.”

There’s a part of me that sees the irony in this; that we want to “do well” in our coaching session as we unlearn perfectionism and people-pleasing, but we are still “studying” for it.

But the truth is that if you spend time before we meet thinking about something that went well, something that you did differently, or thought about differently, or a boundary or a difficult conversation, or taking an afternoon to completely rest on purpose, then truly you have won.

Because now, you are in the habit of reflecting on the good stuff that you have done, the good stuff that you do everyday, and the progress you are making.

That’s living in the gain. And if you have read, listened too, or ever heard of the wonderful book The Gap vs The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy, you’ll know that most of us don’t live in the gain, measuring our progress, celebrating successes, etc. Most of us live in the gap; measuring how far away we are from our goal, noticing where we didn’t hit the mark.

What’s the difference?

A lot actually. Positive psychology teaches us that when we mark progress and tie new habits to healthy rewards, pair it with current habits or things that we enjoy doing, we do better and make more progress.

But is that how you learned medicine? Nope. It’s probably not how you learned anything!

The point is, let’s give ourselves permission to stop living in the gap, stop beating ourselves up for how far we are from what we want, and flip the narrative. If we instead, celebrate the wins, notice the moments at the time, or reflect on them later, we will not only do better but we will also feel better. 

It’s not selfish, or bragging or wrong to recognize what’s going well. You do this for your patients, your kids (they were NOT good at walking when they first started to try, right?), your pets, your friends.

Now do it for you.

Imagine I’m sitting with you, welcoming you to our time today. And now I ask you, “So tell me your wins!”

What will YOU share?

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I practice this on myself all the time. And yes, I say practice because I forget sometimes. Or I’m not paying attention, or I feel grumpy, etc. That’s life. But the more I do this, the better I feel.