I woke up this morning and it just felt odd.
There’s usually a day or a two a week that we struggle to get out of bed – I honestly don’t know where that came from. It never used to be that way. Morning workouts were so easy, but it’s a new life.
This morning was easier.
There have been more days this year that I have felt fire in me, that getting going was exciting. While there is still anxiety that comes in waves, I find the ability to let go a bit easier.
I’ve found my investment to be different.
I’ve found my paper journal to be more comforting and I’m letting myself rely on that more.
In spite of the waves and voices in my head, I’ve felt more fire to try and give myself the opportunity to fail. But we know my thoughts on failure – it’s about perception.
I don’t really fail if I learn and keep going. But it’s ok if you call it failure.
Anyway, I digress.
I work seven days a week. I may not talk to a client directly, but what a lot of coaches and trainers don’t talk about is everything outside of that direct connection that has to happen so that the connections go smoothly or smoother.
The text messages, the emails, the research and reading, the unexpected phone calls, writing programming, connecting with other professionals, referrals, continuing ed, networking, screening.
It’s not just about writing a program and selling it – though, it seems like that.
I may not check-in with a client everyday, but I do work everyday. And I talk to many of them everyday.
Even though I tell clients to relax and take a break, sometimes it can be hard to listen to that same advice and take time off because in a way this is different.
This isn’t about prioritizing or poor scheduling or taking on more than can be handled. This is about business and sometimes it’s hard to separate personal you from professional you.
Wellness Refocused Coaching is just over two and half years old. That’s really young. When I think about how coaching has changed, my jaw drops.
The first 18 months I was splitting my time between school, a part-time job and coaching. I adjusted my client load according to my schedule so this was completely manageable. When I graduated, I was balancing coaching with a different part-time job in public health, which eventually led to just coaching and working on other aspects of my business, which is what I’ve been doing for the past nine months.
Throughout the changes, there were some weird conversations about my job. It felt weird saying I had a business or I was a health coach. Sometimes I still feel a bit odd, but mostly now when people ask what I do, I don’t need to go through a long list of titles or explanations – I can say pretty confidently, I’m a health coach, I own my own business.
As any business own will tell you – whether it’s in person or online, retail or service – like me, it’s busy, and can stay busy for a while. But being busy and productive do pay off – sometimes in spurt, sometimes all at once.
I woke up this morning feeling like I had actually slept and was ahead of the game.
This spring was awesome. I found direction and connections. Moving forward felt easy – terrifying, but I didn’t feel stuck or like I was going in circles. I felt I had some growth personally and professionally – and really these are intertwined.
This summer has given me more than I thought I needed.
I don’t know if it was not setting the alarm for four days in a row that made it feel like vacation or the fact that I put my phone on the counter for seven hours and didn’t check anything on one of those days. It could’ve been that JP and I ate a whole pie (minus a slice, someone else ate that) together over four days and it tasted like summer. Maybe it was the run I went for because running sounded like fun. But I felt like I had opened my eyes for the first time in a while. It could be some of the reading I’m doing or the writing. It could be that Mercury came into retrograde during that time and things can get odd.
Honestly, it was probably just bits of everything, but it was refreshing.
It can take a lot for me to relax and pause. I feel like I always need to be on the go. My definition of relaxing is also very different than what other people think of too like yard work, hosted people for the holiday, I still had some calls with clients throughout the weekend, I still worked on programming and projects, but there was time and we didn’t need to use our alarm.
We also bought furniture – we’ve been looking since January and actually bought what we loved in January. We also bought a new bed. We went to dinner and a movie and split a soda – I can’t tell you the last movie we saw together, but it’s possible it’s been at least two years.
I do a lot of things on a daily basis that I do want to do, but doing them for the business and doing them for myself – totally different. I felt I had crossed things off my list that I wanted to do, not just had to do, and I think that’s what has been the difference.
We woke up on Saturday and felt like there was so much weekend left because there was. We had already done so much with Thursday and Friday that the weekend was actually a chance to not let anything pull at us.
Even the mighty need a break.
So maybe what I’m saying is that instead of getting a few days in the middle of the summer, I need to take my own advice and make this kind of rest a priority. don’t know if it fully requires detaching and shutting things down, but it does require letting personal me take the driver seat sometimes.
Balance isn’t 50/50 – I talk about that in relation to diet and exercise a lot, but for life in general, there will be times when some things are more of a priority and other times when you need to put in effort so other important things get a chace to shine.
Right now, I’m going to enjoy the high I have from the weekend and let myself catch my breath. There’s going to be some running coming up – life’s a marathon.
