Why is self-care so important for coaches? I've got five powerful tips to keep you sharp.
Coaches, therapists and other helping professionals need to be at the top of their game in order to
best benefit their clients. I'm Dr Paul Jenkins, I'm a professional psychologist. I've been in practice
now for about three decades and for the last half of my career I've been coaching and mentoring and
certifying positivity practitioners and life coaches. Here are five tips that will help you
to stay sharp. Number one, maintain the machine. I mean, the machine of your body and your brain. Your
brain is the most important part of your body. In fact, it's the control center that takes care of
everything else. What you think, what you feel, how you show up and even things that you never think
about like digestion and respiration and heart rate and glandular activity. Your brains in charge
of all of that and some people lose track of the fact that your brain is actually part of your body.
In fact, it's the biggest energy hog of any part of your body. It consumes more energy and more
nutrients and more resources than anything else. Because of that, maintaining the machine has to do
with eating a proper diet, getting regular exercise, having enough sleep. Now, you can see how these
things would definitely benefit your body. Remember your brain is part of your body and this is an
important part of your self-care, take care of the machine. Tip number two, free time. This is something
that entrepreneurs don't do very well. Years ago I was enrolled in Dan Sullivan's strategic coach
program. He made a big point about protecting your free time first and free time is defined
as time that is completely detached from your work activities and the focus of free time is your key
relationships and rejuvenation. I love that Dan pointed out that the word rejuvenation has the
same root as the word juvenile and it literally means to make young again. What if you could take
on all of your tasks as a business owner, as a helping professional, as a coach or a therapist?
What if you could take on everything that you need to do being young again? That's what our
free time does for us and here's one of the traps that we run into as entrepreneurs. Many of us have
been trained taught and educated in what I call the time and effort economy. In other words, you
put in your time and your effort and you get paid for that. You punch the clock. You do the work. You
punch out you work for the weekend. Entrepreneurs are not in that economy. Entrepreneurs are in
what I call the results economy and that means you only get paid if you generate results. The
crap is then we get consumed with our work and we typically don't take a lot of free time. This
is why free time is such an important part of self-care. Look, the psychological research around
this is really consistent in saying that after free time we tend to have more energy. We tend
to have more focus. We tend to be more productive in the work that we're doing. In the old time and
effort economy you work first and then you get the weekend or you get the vacation or you get
the time off or you get to retire. In a results economy, you take your free time first and this is
backwards to a lot of people but It prepares your mind and your body including your brain to do a
more efficient job at everything else that you're asking it to do. Now, in addition to rejuvenation
free time is also about our key relationships primarily those who are closest to us, your
spouse, your children, your grandchildren. Connect with the people who make life the most meaningful
for you in the first place. That's what your free time is all about. I remember when I was in that
strategic coach program that Dan Sullivan pointed out that we sometimes cheat on our free time. You
know like you're going off to the beach with the family but you put your laptop in the trunk just
in case there's some downtime and you could get to a few of those emails for your work. Uh,
out of bounds, unfair, time out, go back to disconnecting from your work. That's an important
element of free time. I promise, you'll be more productive once you return to it if you follow
that rule. Tip number three, fuel your mind. This has to do with what you're putting in. What are
you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? What kind of media do you consume? When
you pick up your phone where do you go and there's a lot of ways to waste time or to just mindlessly
scroll through social media posts or you can get really intentional about listening to that podcast
or popping in that audiobook or picking up an old school actual paper and print book. What podcast do
you subscribe to? What are the courses that you're taking? What are you doing to improve the quality
of your thinking? That's what this tip is all about. I love books. I've been podcasting since 2007.
That's before podcasting was even a thing and I've interviewed some amazing authors and thought
leaders and people who have great ideas inspiring people doing inspiring things. The books that I
read are intended to fuel my mind and I can make a little distinction here too because in your free
time you might choose to read a book simply for entertainment and rejuvenation. The books that I'm
talking about now are for the purpose of fueling your mind. In fact, I've put together a little list
for you. I'll give it to you for free just go to the URL on the screen drpauljenkins.com/bestbooks.
This is my top 10 list and it changes from time to time depending on what I'm reading and what I'm
interested in at the time. Go grab the list I'll put it right in your inbox drpauljenkins.com/best
books, fuel your mind. Now, let's go to tip number four, build the team. What team? Your team. Who do
you have in your life? Who's got your back? Who you can go to? Where you can debrief or get some
coaching or even just associate with people who understand what it is that you're here to do on
this planet. I intentionally engage at a very high level in mastermind groups and associations. I hire
coaches, this is my team. You don't have to do this alone and a lot of times coaches or other helping
professionals are very solitary in their work. I know I used to be there back when I had a clinical
psychology practice. Since moving to positive psychology I've seen the importance of associating
with people who understand what I'm all about. Who is your team? Take a moment to think about not only
who's on your team but what you could do to build and strengthen and grow that team to a point where
you feel the support that you deserve. Now, I've got one more tip for you and this goes back to
a book that I read years Ago by a colleague Mark Gungor he wrote a book called "Laugh Your Way to a
Better Marriage", and that gives you a little sense of the energy of the book that he shared. He's also
got a video that kind of went viral years ago about men's brains and women's brains. I heard
this from Mark and it's so simple I wanted to pass it along to you. This is the final tip for today, be
nice. Now he shared that in the context of what is required to have a better marriage. Seems obvious,
doesn't it? But a lot of people don't go there. We get so caught up in criticizing each other and
ourselves. So, I want to apply this in the context of self-care for therapists, coaches, other helping
professionals, be nice to yourself. Self-care is not just about going and doing things for yourself. In
fact, I think it's more important to focus on what it is that we're saying to ourselves inside of our
own mind and sometimes we'll go out there and we'll be so kind and compassionate and loving
to everyone except for one where we are cruel and harsh and demanding right here at home, where it
means the most. Where it's the most important. You be kind to yourself. Be quick to forgive yourself
for all of those mistakes that you're likely to make. In fact, if you're not making mistakes
you're not trying hard enough, okay. Let's be kind and forgiving to ourselves. That puts us
in a much more powerful position to then step up and share that same energy, that loving-kindness
with everyone around us and I think we need some more of that in the world. Enough with all of the
hate and the bitterness and the anger and the just nasty interactions that are happening.
Let's be nice. I love Mark's suggestion. As you're listening here you might see ways
that you can improve on your own self-care. If you are a coach or a counselor or a therapist
or a helping professional and you're ready to take it to the next level
I can help you with that. I've got a free gift for you right here at the end of the video for
an assessment. Now this will only take a few minutes of your time go to drpauljenkins.com/
practitioner.quiz. What I'm doing with that quiz is giving you seven areas of clarity to just kind of
take the temperature where am I in these seven areas. You're gonna see what I mean is as soon
as you go over there. When you've completed the quiz click submit and I will give you the results
immediately along with some other resources that you might find helpful if you're ready to go to
that next level. once again, drpauljenkins.com/ practitionerquiz, hope to see you there.