Self compassion and stress : 3 mindset shifts for your clients
Hi there! I’m Shikah, I have helped thousands of coaches save time, save money and also make money by offering done-for-you coaching tools using my counselling experience.
For today, let’s talk about 3 mindset shifts your clients can do to face stress with self-compassion and prevent burnout. You can share these tips with your audience in emails, reels or other social media platforms.
The first mindset shift to help your clients handle stress with self compassion is to install the belief that people around us, our colleagues, our family members, friends and the world in general are kinder to us than we think.
Our stress sometimes comes from the mindset that other people will be ‘let down’, disappointed, angry or have some sort of negative emotion when we do not ‘do a good job’. Your clients may have a less-than-positive viewpoint of the people around them.
Having a mindset shift that the world in general is understanding and forgiving can ease stress and pressure. This mindset also allows them to be self forgiving when they make mistakes. And this mindset is helpful when they are facing mountains of work and they feel overwhelmed.
Instead of pushing through the stress and overwhelm and burning themselves out to produce perfect work, they can choose to do work that is ‘good enough’. If they are comfortable doing so, your clients can also express how overwhelmed they are and hope for their colleagues’ or other people’s understanding.
Being open with their vulnerabilities can invite other people to be understanding and avoid miscommunication. But of course, this approach highly depends on their work culture and office culture. some offices may not welcome such expressions of vulnerability. If so, your clients can choose to express their overwhelm to people they trust.
Moving on to the next mindset we can practice to face stress with self compassion, your clients can redefine what success means to them.
When I mention the word ‘success’, there’s a high chance that pictures of money, awards and fame come to your mind. However, we have to be realistic that only a small percentage of people out there can have everything at one go.
I remember one successful much older business owner telling me this when I was 21 years old. He said that “you can have everything you want, but usually not all at the same time.” If your clients have placed very high expectations on themselves and burning out, you can invite them to redefine success.
In fact you can define success in any way you want.
If they are stressed out because they are not meeting their income goals, you can invite them to expand their definition of success.
Some suggestions of success include having ‘good health’, ‘ healthy relationships’, enjoying freedom of time, having a balanced life and also mental peace. There are people who have money and recognition but do not have all that.
Encourage your clients to write down the things and people they have in their lives which are blessings that they take for granted. When they feel stressed out about not achieving their goals on time, they can remind themselves that they have other successes in their lives which they overlook.
At this point, you may have extra questions about how to coach your clients to set aligned and achievable goals which dont stress them out. Dont worry, i have created a free coaching tool to help your clients set goals which feel good and which align with their values. Fill in your details below to get it sent to your inbox.
The next mindset shift to face stress with self-compassion is to have a healthy relationship with mistakes and failure. If your clients are perfectionists, they are going to cringe at this suggestion. Invite your clients to be open to trying new strategies and failing fast.
The good thing about failure and mistakes is that they are very good teachers. Trying new ways of doing things or new ways of handling situations is refreshing and can encourage a growth mindset. They can choose to adopt a curious mindset when they try something new.
For example, if they are stressed out that they can’t finish work before a deadline, they can experiment with submitting work which is not perfect and see what happens. This curious mindset allows them to be a bit more playful with work and takes some of the stress off.
If they ‘fail’ or get an outcome they do not want, they can take that experience as a learning moment instead of letting that failure define their career or define their reputation. Having a playful and curious approach to life in general can reduce your clients’ stress.
While most coaches can share these mindset tips with their audience, I find that they get better results when you offer them a download or a workshop to help them out. If you are someone who wants to level up, download the free lead magnet BELOW and share it with your audience.
Thanks for being here and see you.
Shikah
Listen on Spotify here:
One way to overcome perfectionism in yourself and your coaching clients
Hello there! Today, we will be discussing micro experiments that we can do to lower our perfectionism when running a business.
As business owners, we want to give our clients and audience the best transformation possible, the best workshops and products possible. And this desire to do well can translate into perfectionism.
I am a victim of this myself. When I create my done-for-you workshops, I tend to pay too much attention to the images I use in the slides, the fonts and the colour schemes.
I do this because I want the workshops to be transformational mentally and emotionally.
However, I am aware that this slows down my process. I take a longer time to finish my coaching content, I take too long to launch products and in the end, these small details do not matter as much as I think.
So, I fall victim to perfectionism because I am a stickler for quality. You may be the same too. You are so committed and dedicated to offering the best to your clients that you take too long to finish projects, you overthink a simple Instagram caption, you take too long to make decisions and all this cost you your energy and your time.
So what can you do if you are a perfectionist in your work and it is giving you stress and is holding you back from levelling up in your business?
Well, you can do micro experiments to handle this.
These micro experiments will test your comfort levels and make you feel a little uncomfortable in exchange for less stress.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you are someone who obsesses with finding the right pictures to use when you are creating your workshops. And I get it. The right pictures will evoke emotions such as inspiration, hope and joy. So using the right images matter at times. But if being overly detailed is causing you stress and exhaustion, it’s ok to loosen your perfectionism a little.
What can you do with this situation?
Well, you can perform a micro experiment where you choose not to obsess over the pictures you use in your slides.
For the next workshop or workbook that you are creating, select pictures which convey the right vibe without overthinking it. It sounds so common-sensical, but trust me, to a perfectionist, this small experiment is a big change.
After doing this, you can take note of how you feel.
What are the results? Do you feel less stressed about your work? Do you feel more free? Do you feel more energised? Or on the opposite side of the coin, do you feel panicked at letting go of control? Do you feel like you ‘slacked off’ or did not put 100% effort?
It is my hope that you will associate these micro experiments with feelings of more freedom, less stress and more flexibility.
You may have clients who struggle with perfectionism.
Let’s say you have a client who is a perfectionist when it comes to her appearance. She does not step out of the house- even running errands - without a full face of makeup.
She is insecure about her looks and this routine of looking ‘perfect’ before she steps out of the house is causing her stress.
You can suggest to her to do a micro experiment which allows her to be 80% made up instead of 100% made up.
So if she puts a full face of makeup on before going to a nearby mall, you can suggest that she puts just 3 essential makeup items on the next time she is going to the mall. Your clients or audience have to feel comfortable with these micro expriments. I won’t recommend you suggesting them to go from 100% down to 10%. Baby steps is what I would recommend.
After the micro experiment, you can ask your clients how they feel after it.
Does it bring them any benefits?
What are the benefits they experienced?
What are the fears that they had when going through the experiment?
Is this something they are willing to try again?
These are questions your clients can brainstorm when performing these micro experiments.
If you want to one step forward and coach your clients on baby steps to overcome perfectionism, you can use the exercises in my done-for-you overcome perfectionism workbook.
My favourite exercise in there is to encourage them to let go of their ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking pattern.
Perfectionists usually have this thinking pattern. They believe that they should either give their 100% in a project or not do it at all. This is a very high-pressure habit or principle to live by. And it is humanly impossible for us to give our 100% in every single thing that we do. We will be fatigued, burn out, stressed out.
There is an exercise in the Overcome Perfectionism workbook that can help with that.
If this has helped you, please leave a comment because I appreciate your comments very much.
See you!
Shikah
Listen to this instead:
Three questions to prime your clients for a productive yet fulfilling day
If you are nosy (like me), you probably like watching YouTube vlogs about other people’smorning routines. 😂
They are comforting to watch, but if you (or your clients) have fast-paced lives, it’s not realistic to carve out 2 hours everyday to slowly make coffee, journal, do yoga and workout before work in the mornings.
So how can your clients prime themselves for a productive, fulfilling day which feels like a success without all the elaborate rituals?
They can start by asking themselves these 3 basic questions which ground them and remind them of what are the ‘needle moving’ things which matter in their lives.
I covered the 3 questions in this podcast episode.
The questions are basic. They are down-to-earth. They are probably not earth-shattering either. 😂
🌷However, the power lies in the answers that your clients give.
Encourage them to go deeper with their answers by asking them to reflect :
why something works,
why they feel a certain way,
why they are grateful for certain people in their lives
My favourite question is Question 3 because it keeps me focused on my mini-goals for that day so that I don’t feel as thought my day is ‘wasted’.
You may want to go one step further and offer your clients a step-by-step workshop on how to create a morning routine which makes them feel like a success.
That’s where this done-for-you morning routine workshop will get the job done for you.
✅Slides? Done.
✅Accompanying workbook? Done.
✅Script? Done.
Ready to launch + sell a 60-minute workshop and help your clients create a successful morning routine? This done-for-you workshop is ready to brand and launch.
You don’t have to create the workshop from scratch - save your time for other things which matter ;)
Meanwhile, if you have a morning ritual which works for you, let me know in Comments :)
Take care,
Shikah
As always, thank you for being in my world.🌷
Done-for-you Master your Morning Routine masterclass, workbook and script
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Launch your own masterclass via Zoom or in-person and sell the video replays over and over again. Save weeks and months of research, design work, writing work and money by getting this ready-to-launch masterclass and start offering it to your clients ASAP.
See the 87 brandable Canva slides here:
See the 28-page accompanying workbook here:
See the full workshop script here:
The done-for-you sales page for this Master your Morning Routine masterclass is sold separately. See the sales page here:
A simple coaching exercise for anxiety
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It all started with listening to a manifestation guru’s podcast. (I love these, but I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes 😄)
She mentioned that one everyday method to stave off anxiety is to deliberately avoid watching - or scrolling - the news.
This is a tad controversial, of course.
The news , she explained, focuses too much on what is wrong with this world.
Most of the things we see or listen to in the news is something which ignites fear, anxiety and suspicion in us.
There are also many beautiful and kind actions going on around us all the time, but the news is not the place for that ;).
Hence, if you are a sensitive person, you may feel less anxiety and worry if you reduce your consumption of mainstream news.
This reminds me of a drawing anxiety exercise which I have in my done-for-you Overcome Anxiety workbook.
Why drawing? You may ask. Well, drawing is a more relaxing way to do coaching exercises.
Plus, it’s fun and brings out the child in us.
I wrote this workbook a few years back, and you can use the exercises in this anxiety workbook as coaching exercises for your group coaching, 1-1 sessions or even sell it on your website.
Anxiety drawing exercise for clarity
Step 1 : Draw 3 tasks, people or situations which give you anxiety on a daily basis.
Step 2 : Next, you can arrange the 3 situations + tasks in order of which makes you anxious the most.
Most anxious :
Moderately anxious :
Least anxious :
Step 3 : What has worked in the past to reduce your anxiety for these 3 situations? Draw them out.
This exercise gives instant clarity to the root cause of your client’s everyday anxiety.
And reminds them to take action on what has worked in the past to reduce it.
This ready-done anxiety workbook has been quietly popular with coaches, I noticed.
You can use it during your group coaching sessions or even as a lead magnet to grow your email list.
Will you be trying this anxiety drawing exercise on yourself today?
Let me know if you are ;)
Shikah