How to Create a Self-Care Plan for your Coaching Clients (with Free Self-Care Assessment Template)
If your clients are like most people, they can intuitively sense when their self-care is out of balance, but may not know how to start their self-care habits in an effective manner.
This confusion, coupled with a busy or demanding lifestyle, can equate to them procrastinating any form of self-care until something more dire happens - such as burnout or becoming unwell.
Creating a personalised self-care plan tailored to their needs is the first step they can take to feel empowered, reduce stress and possibly prevent burnout.
If you want a step-by-step outline on how you can create a self-care plan for your coaching clients, you may want to continue reading.
Step 1 : A self-care assessment or self-care audit
This step is crucial because it highlights the specific self-care needs which may have been unintentionally neglected whilst your clients are busy pursuing their goals.
Creating an assessment of any kind can be a daunting task even for experienced coaches as it requires thorough thought and insight.
I have used my insight and experience derived as a former counsellor to help create a 25-question self-care assessment for you.
Use this self-care assessment template during coaching sessions or even as a free opt-in freebie for your coaching blog (to get more subscribers).
Step 2 : Create self-care goals for each self-care category (there are 5 main categories)
Goals should ideally be specific and realistic. After completing this free assessment, you can then nudge your clients to create 3 self-care goals for each of these categories :
physical self-care
emotional self-care
spiritual self-care
social self-care and
mental self-care
Step 3 : Create a personalised Self Care Menu
A self-care menu is a fun spin to simply creating a list of their favourite self-care activities.
Your clients’ Self-care Menu can be in the form of a mindmap, a table, a calendar or a simple bullet-point list if they prefer a minimalist style.
This Self-care Menu should ideally include at least 20 activities which offer mental peace, joy, relief or a feeling of expansiveness and gratitude to them.
This Menu should be personalised to their needs and if they need ideas, they can choose to reflect on activities they have done in the past which offer them feelings associated with self-care.
Examples include spending time with supportive people, introspective activities such as journaling, participating in active meditations or going for therapy.
Step 4 : Intentionally schedule activities from the Self Care Menu into a weekly planner
Some of us have the perception that self-care activities do not need to be scheduled. I beg to differ.
When your clients schedule self-care activities into their week, they have a higher chance of committing to them.
This is especially true if they have a demanding career or a fast-paced lifestyle. Their self-care needs may just fall to the wayside in favour of more ‘productive’ work-related activities or they may choose easy, passive activities such as bingeing on a TV series.
You may want to encourage them to schedule self-care activities which actually enrich their lives, bring them joy, energise them mentally and emotionally or activities which create pleasant memories.
Step 5: Helping your clients balance success with self-care
Which self-care needs are your clients likely to neglect when they are experiencing a busy or stressful period in their lives?
You may encourage them to list them down.
For example, they may neglect their sleep, exercise, meditation or hobbies when they are actively pursuing their goals.
You may ask them these questions or even create a worksheet with these questions:
“Which self-care needs do you usually neglect when you are busy?”
“What does it feel like to neglect these needs?”
“What may happen if you choose to continue ignoring this self-care need?”
“What is one small action step you can take to pay attention to this self-care need?”
Want to offer and sell a Self Care Masterclass to your coaching clients?
You can choose to conduct a 60-minute masterclass to teach your clients how to create their own self-care plan.
If you want to launch + sell your own 60-minute Create your own Self Care Plan masterclass, you can get this done-for-you masterclass.
I wrote this masterclass using my experience and insight as a former counsellor working in a government ministry.
With 80 fully written, fully-designed slides, a workbook and a fully-done script, you can launch your own masterclass practically overnight (or sooner ;)).
I hope this has been helpful for you in some way.
Take care,
Shikah