Intro: Welcome to The Masterful Coach podcast, with Molly Claire, where coaches learn skill mastery, business mastery, and life mastery at a whole new level. If you’re ready to create a meaningful coaching business that makes a difference, you’re in the right place. And now your host, master coach instructor, Molly Claire. Molly Claire: Hey, Coach, I’ve got a short, sweet episode for you today, to help you take a minute to think about how you are going to experience summer in your life and in your business. I wanted to dedicate an episode to this topic, because when I hear from my clients, the conflict between life and business, summertime is definitely in competition for the holiday time. But those two times are really the most common times when this comes up for you and for many of my clients. And I know many of you feel conflicted between time spent on your business and time spent with kids who are out of school or home from college. Or you really want to enjoy some extra space and time in the summer. But you have this voice in your head that says, “Hmm, I should be doing more in my business.” And in this episode, I want to share with you some basic principles that I have applied time and again, as I have worked to maintain the right balance for me, between my personal life and my business, making sure I’m available and flexible and free to have the connection time with my family, and also building this meaningful business that I have. I’m going to share these principles with you. And my hope is that you will be able to have a fresh start as you approach summer, that you will feel truly that you are in the driver’s seat of creating the experience that you want over these next few months. So, at our house, my daughter is finishing up her last week of elementary school, which I cannot believe. One of my boys is coming home from college next week. We’ve always got a lot of comings and goings around here with our blended family. And as we enter the summer, I’ve been thinking about how different my life is now, compared to when I was first starting my business when my kids were younger, and they were all home from school and were very much used to me being very available during the summer. And over the years, I had to practice these principles I’m sharing with you. And I would practice and I would try this and I would try that. And over time, as I stayed committed to finding the right balance for me and my life and my family, all of that effort created some very natural patterns. And I remember one day, it was in the middle of summer, and I remember realizing, “Wow, I’m doing this, I figured it out.” And I share that with you because finding the perfect balance for you in your life and your family is not going to come overnight, and you’re going to put plans in place, and then they won’t work out, and you’ll still feel some guilt and you’ll still feel some conflict. And all of this will happen. But I promise as you stay committed to bringing in these principles and these practices over time, you will become more intentional of creating your experience of life that you want, and finding the perfect balance for you. So, we’re going to talk about five principles. Number one, you get to decide your priorities in your life and in your business. One of the biggest sources of conflict that I hear from my clients is believing they should be spending more time with their kids, they should be spending more time with their business. They should be running their business like this colleague of theirs, they should be doing their life like this stay-at-home mom. I hear so many shoulds. And so I want to remind you right now, to just allow this idea to settle into your mind that you get to decide what your priorities are in your life and in your business. You get to decide when some pieces of your life get a little more time and attention from you. And you get to decide when some pieces of your business it’s a little more time and attention from you. You get to decide, and I promise the more you open up to what you really want and understanding and giving yourself permission to value what you value. You’re going to be more effective in both your life and your business, even with the ebbs and flows. Principle two - To clear decisions, eliminate confusion, conflict, guilt, and frustration. There is a tremendous amount of value in writing down all of the things that are on your shoulds list, all of the things that are on your wants list in business and personal life, and getting really clear on which of those things will actually go on your calendar. When you can decide how much time, energy and which activities will be focused on family, on kids, maybe on outings with friends, when those friends have been begging you to go on a girl’s trip, whatever it is, getting clear on that and deciding and calendaring it is tremendously helpful. Also getting clear on what exactly you’re going to do in your business, or how much time you’re going to spend in your business. And I want to acknowledge that for some of you, you will spend more time in your business over the summer than other times, for some of you, you will spend less time in your business and more time on other things in your personal life. This goes back to you getting to decide. But either way, the more you can be clear on what things will make it onto your calendar, and take it that step further as making peace around those decisions, that is when it can clear out all the noise and all of that negative exhausting energy of confusion, conflict, guilt, and frustration. Principle three - Consider what you want to create. And with this, I’m talking about specifically what you want to create in your experience of your life, your experience of your personal life, and your experience of your business, too. As you think about this question, what do I want to create for myself this summer? You will probably notice emotions coming up. Some of you will notice thoughts coming in. Some of you will notice emotions. Give yourself the gift of asking this. And then, once you know what you want to create, that’s when you can lean into making it happen. As you consider what you want to create personally, notice what will get in the way of that and create a plan. So, if you know that something that’s going to get in the way, is some guilt or noise in your head, make a plan for it. If you know what’s going to get in the way is someone asking things of you that you really don’t want to have on your schedule, make a plan for it. The more you can ground yourself in what you want to create and notice the potential obstacles and have a plan for them, the more likely you are to stay in line with what you want. Principle four - Decide what you’ll accomplish and not accomplish. So, this is really in reference to your business. So, for some of you, you will decide a certain amount of time that you’re going to be working and that definitely aligns with what I offered you with making clear decisions. I want you to take it a step further and decide, are there things I’m actually going to accomplish in my business in this 90-day period? Or are there things I’m not going to accomplish? And notice as well with that, what would get in the way and set a plan. So, the foundation of this, of course is giving you permission to decide how much or how little you’ll do. Be very clear about what you’ll accomplish, and have a plan for anything that will get in the way. All right, Coach, the last thing I want to offer you - Check in with yourself for success. Anytime you create a plan for your life for your business, inevitably, we’re always going to get just a little off track here or there. Or we’ll come up against new obstacles that we didn’t anticipate. There is tremendous value in being specific about when you’re going to check in with yourself. When I work with my clients as we’re goal setting and achieving and working through what they’re going to accomplish in 90 days, one of the things we do is we check in and say, “Okay, when are the check in points where we see am I on track? Am I aligning with my personal life?” And I want you to do the same for you. Hopefully, you can take a little bit of time to decide for yourself, when and how you’re going to spend your time, what you want to create, what you want to accomplish, and you will set a time for yourself. I recommend every two weeks to just take a look. What did I say at the beginning of summer that I wanted to do? How am I doing? Am I creating the experience that I want? Am I clear on my priorities and my plan? How can I honor this for myself? I promise that as you give yourself permission, you create clarity for you on how you’re going to approach this period of time. And as you establish when you’re going to check in on how you’re doing with staying in alignment, that will be the key. Do this again and again and again, and it will become something that is just built into you. And let me tell you, that is a pretty amazing thing. Thanks for being here with me coaches. I’ll talk to you next week. Outro: Thanks for listening to The Masterful Coach podcast. You can check out www.thecoachingcollective.com, for info about the ultimate program for coaches building a business. To find out more about Molly, you can visit www.mollyclaire.com.