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. Hey, coaches, I am so excited to talk with you today about Life Mastery and what that means. So this is something that I'll be talking about regularly in the podcast as I rotate through Skill Mastery, Business Mastery, Life Mastery. And I'm excited to talk about this because it's something in the business world when we're building businesses that oftentimes we don't think a lot about. We’re so focused on the business or the funnel or the next webinar that we're doing. And we kind of forget that we're building a business to build a life, we have certain things we want in our life, we want a certain quality of life, and time and again, what I find is that if we do not start with the life that we want and having a clear vision of that as we build our business, that we will always struggle. This is something in the collective that we do. First and foremost is we slow down, and we say okay, what's the life that you want. And we talk with our coaches about their values, we talk about the things they want all of this, it's so important. And it's like, sometimes we say, sometimes you have to slow down in order to go fast. Everyone comes in and they want to just like do that next thing, take massive action in their business. But let's first breathe, and take a look at what you're ideally trying to create. So today, I'm going to talk with you about three things I want you to consider when it comes to your life, your personal life satisfaction and what Life Mastery really means. So when you look up the word mastery, we find that it is a comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or in an accomplishment. And I like to think about this as a comprehensive knowledge of life, more specifically, a comprehensive knowledge of the life that you want, and comprehensive skills in your life. And when I say comprehensive, I mean a completeness, so more and more complete knowledge of what you want in your life and how to create it and a more and more complete Skill Mastery in the skills that will create that life. The biggest thing that I want to emphasize on this podcast today is that mastery, whether it's Skill Mastery, Business Mastery, Life Mastery, is not something that will just be accomplished one day. It is truly the continuation of growth and the progress of continuing to get better and better and get closer and closer to what you really want. So one aspect of Life Mastery is really knowing yourself. And I would say this is probably the biggest aspect, knowing who you are, knowing what you want. And as I mentioned, whenever I work with coaches, no matter what, I always want to identify first what they really want and what their values are, so that they can first be clear on where they're headed. This is really all about a greater understanding of you. Just like it's challenging to have a healthy, thriving relationship with someone if you don't really know yourself, it can be challenging to have a healthy, thriving business that is in line with what you want when you don't know yourself. So the three things that I really want you to consider are, how well do you know yourself? I'm going to talk more about that. How well do you care for yourself? And how well or how often do you focus on your future self? These are the three things we're going to be addressing. And my hope is that as you explore this for you personally, you'll also learn about how you can help your clients at a higher level. Whenever your client is trying to create something in their life and they want your help, this is going to require a relationship with themselves. This podcast is all about helping you of course up-level your life and business and at the same time, give you so many tools to help your clients. So as you're listening, think about this in terms of your life and your life as a business owner and also how this knowledge, this idea can enhance how you help your own clients. So question one, how well do you know yourself? Think for a minute about how you would describe yourself to someone? Do you describe yourself in relation to other people? For example, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a sister. Do you describe yourself in relation to what you do? I'm a doctor, I'm a financial advisor, I'm a stay at home mom. Do you describe yourself in relation to what you love? I'm a foodie. I'm a runner. I used to always think of myself as a mom first. And I still do to be honest. But I want to tell you about how this has changed for me and think about this in relation to you. If you identify in relation to other people, your relationship with people or in relation to what you do. So for me, again, I am a mom at heart, but now when I think about this, and how this relates to my identity, I see it as more than being about having kids and the role I play for them, which is really about them. But I see it as how it embodies characteristics of me, that caring nature in me. I love to facilitate growth, I love connection. Those are things about me that come into play in that role. So do you see the difference between identifying as this is what I do for other people, this is who I am in relation to someone else versus this is part of who I am. And the best part about that is how all of my gifts and unique abilities come into play. As I've gotten to know myself better, I found that the part of me that identifies as a mom now has a much more rich definition for me. And it's more about who I am internally, and what matters to me than just about what I do for my kids. I could say the same about what I do as a business owner. I'm a business owner, and I love early morning workouts. It's the parts of me that develop and shine in those endeavors that are really me, it's not about the business, it's not about the workout, it's really about how I shine through. So what about you? How do you identify? How well do you know yourself? And how do you get to know yourself more? I'm just going to give you one starting point here one tip. And that is start to notice the things you like and what you enjoy and do more of them. Simple as that. This might seem small, but it is everything, let me tell you. My daughter loves to style hair. In fact, she started a hair styling business, she's 10, and she loves it. And she's cut a couple of people's hair. And she styles hair. And she is absolutely crazy about it. And she thinks she's kind of awesome at it. And I would agree. So it's really not about hair at all, but as she goes after this passion and styles people's hair and connects with her creativity and her drive and her passion, she is getting to know herself, she is developing herself. In the pursuit of doing what she loves, she develops herself and knows exactly what she loves. So this is a simple exercise, get to know yourself a little. Think about what you love, do more of it. All right. Next, how well do you care for yourself physically, mentally, emotionally? And this encompasses a lot of things. What do you put in your body? What do you put in your mind? What do you tell yourself about yourself on a regular basis? Now, really often, when we look at these kind of questions and we look at the answers, we go immediately to beating ourselves up. I should be eating better. If I really loved myself, should I put so much chocolate in my body? So if this is you, you have my permission to release that right now. Instead, I want you to really step into a place of curiosity about how do you care for yourself? Do you offer yourself a space of non judgment even to answer that question? Because I believe that as we look at it with curiosity, about the ways that we do care for ourselves and the ways that we're not really sure if we are and why that is, I think you're going to get a lot more information and forward momentum than you will by criticizing absolutely. So there are most likely amazing ways that you take care of yourself. And there are also other ways that you could say you probably don't. Look at both. Be curious also about what might be the next small thing you could do to take even better care of yourself. I think it's so much more useful instead of looking for the ways that you're falling short and trying to fix them. Instead, notice the ways you're doing it well and think about what are the ways that I could do even better. How could I support myself even more? And also too often we do go to extremes of turning over a new leaf and getting into this all or nothing situation. How many times have you set yourself up for this impossible plan to change all your self-care habits at once? It's too many times for me to count. I will tell you that now. But I find it so much more useful to do the following. I'm going to break this down into a few steps. Number one, how do I currently care for myself? Make a list, notice. Next question, what is one thing I really need that I can do for myself? And be aware of where your brain goes on this. Do you immediately go to all the standard answers of I should exercise more, I should put more vegetables in my body, whatever it is? I find oftentimes, it's much more useful to just ask my clients like, “What do you need in your life? What would give you more energy? What would make your life more fun?” And oftentimes, it's those things that are the most important. It's, I would connect with my friends, I would go out more, I would really incorporate this thing that I love. So when you're asking yourself, what is the one thing I really need that I can do for myself? It may come from finding out what will add more fun and energy to your life? Okay, so that's question two. Question three, what's the first step to doing that? What is just that next thing that I'm going to do? And, by the way, if this is a habit, so whatever that next thing is, if it's just a simple thing that you're going to do no problem, great. If it's a habit you want to create, then you want to take that question a step further and ask yourself first, how will I establish this habit? Then how will I build this habit? Because if you want to build the habit, but you haven't established yet, that is trying to go to running a marathon before you've put on your running shoes. And so if you decide on a habit, think first about one little thing that takes you anywhere from one to five minutes, to establish the habit, and plan to establish that habit every single day. Put on your running shoes, the same time of day, walk up and down the block. That is how you establish it, then you have a plan to build it. And the final question, ask yourself, how will I check in to make sure I continue to build on this? Checking in with yourself and continuing that progress is everything. So simple, so kind to do this for yourself, but so worth it. Let's move on to our last topic today. How well do you focus on your future self? Few people really think about their future self. Generally speaking, most people act from day to day, just moving towards some unknown future state. Some people may have an idea of a goal they want to accomplish, but very rarely do people actually think about the person they will be in the future. And very rarely do we commit at a deep level to achieving something. Mastering your life will require you to think about who that future person is. It will require you to connect with her, it will require you to bring her into existence as you become her. I remember when I first started my coaching business, going through my divorce and I was dead set that I was going to own a thriving business with plenty of time, freedom and flexibility to be with my kids. I knew the life I wanted and I knew I would become that person. It was etched in my brain as to what that looked like. And every day as I planned, as I took action, as I failed as I succeeded and as I took one step at a time, the end goal was where I was headed. As one specific example of future thinking, I remember the first summer that I had my business and I struggled so much to balance kids, home and business. Now the worst part of this, of course, was the mom guilt that I was creating. I was believing I needed to be doing more, and that my kids would surely feel abandoned and neglected if they didn't have the exact same attention that they'd always had having me available for entertainment every waking hour. I make light of this. But in all honesty, it was hard for me. And not only did I think that I should be giving my kids more time and more attention and more availability, but I really wanted to be totally available to them. And so this was something that was a really big inner struggle for me. But I committed, and as I worked to find balance and accomplish both satisfaction with my mom kid connection, and also satisfaction and business growth, I had to focus on that ultimate goal and make it happen. One lesson I learned along the way is that I would always think that if I had everything in place and I had a plan, that it would be smooth sailing the minute school got out, and that never happened. And as a result, what would happen is those first few days of summer, I was absolutely miserable because I was believing it shouldn't be happening this way, this should be better, this is going to be a disaster. So not only was I arguing with reality, and throwing out so many shoulds, but I was also catastrophizing and believing that it would never get better that it would always be this way. This is this role that happened for me in my brain. And so what I learned is that no matter how prepared I was, there was always a learning curve. And that the first few weeks, everyone was getting settled, everyone was figuring out the new dynamic. And when I allowed some space for this, and I just expected a little bit of chaos, it made everything so much better. And it was because I was so clear on this goal of what I wanted my time and that balance to look like that I was able to get better and better at it. I was able to go with the natural flow of the settling process for everyone. And I remember at times thinking, I will never figure this out. And then one day in the middle of summer, this was summer number three, I was running my business, running the kids, doing the thing, and I had this magical moment. And we all love these moments, don't we? I remember sitting there thinking, I've actually kind of got this figured out. I'm actually kind of doing a great job at this. And nothing felt like such a stretch or such a stress. I'd gotten better and better at letting go of doing it perfectly and while I didn't control my life and the kids and the situation, I had become a master at navigating it. That's the future focus I'm talking about in relation to Life Mastery. When we can be set on how we want things to look, we have that goal etched in our mind and we commit to it. That's how we make it happen. I hope this episode has got you thinking about your own Life Mastery, and at least asking some questions. Questions open the door to everything. And Life Mastery really isn't something that is accomplished, it's something that is practiced. It requires you to step into knowing yourself, caring for yourself, accessing your future self and doing it all from a mindset of continued growth and progress, rather than the idea of arriving and perfection. That's what I've got for you today. And I will see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Masterful Coach Podcast. You can check out www.thecoachingcollective.comm for info about the ultimate program for coaches building a business. To find out more about Molly, you can visit www.mollyclaire.com.