Last week I was in London for three days attending the AJC Coaching Career School.
This is a six-month long school, run by Ankush Jain, for coaches who want to build a more impactful coaching practice.
For me, one of the most important things about being in business is that it feels fresh, inspiring, and as exciting as it did in the beginning. The school is one of the ways that helps me do this.
Yet I often meet people who tell me they have lost this feeling. Instead, they feel like they are just going through the motions and living in groundhog day.
So, how do you get your mojo back? Or if you really love what you do, how can you take yourself up to the next level?
Waking up to your value
One of the ideas we explored over the weekend was waking up to our value. You really begin to see the difference you can make in the world by allowing your true self to shine through.
It is so easy to play small and this is something I have done so much of in my life.
Why do we do this?
It is often false modesty, or not wanting to stand out, or a fear of taking risks.
Yet we can always become more awake to our value. We can see the bigger picture, and this will inform everything we do and how we do it.
As I was reflecting on this a story I had read came to mind.
In 1962 President Kennedy was on a visit to the Nasa Space Centre. He saw a janitor with a broom, and he walked over to him and said:
“Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?”
The janitor’s clear and certain response was, “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”
I think our sense of purpose matters.
Knowing your value makes you more valuable
My friend and collaborator Jacquie Moses is a coach. But she is also much more than this. She sees herself as a ‘Divine global leader’ and if you were to spend time with Jacquie you could not fail to be inspired by her presence and way of being. The impact she has on the people she works with ripples out far wider than the people she directly works with.
Dominic Baldwin, founder of Xentum Financial Planning, has a profound impact in the lives of people. He knows he does more than financial planning. He impacts the life of a client in such a way that this ripples out to their wider family, friends, colleagues, and community. If you have not listened to the conversation I had with Dominic (or even if you have) you can download it via this link.
People value time with Jacquie and Dominic because of who they are being. They are bold and willing to take a stand for what they do and how they do it.
How do you see your value more deeply and more clearly?
The conventional approach to business improvement is behavioural. What is on offer are theories, techniques, strategies, tactics, what to do, and what to say.
Waking up to your value is not this.
Instead, it is about beginning to see through our conditioning and ingrained habits such as:
*Being hard on yourself.
*Diminishing your value.
*Needing to be liked.
*Needing to please everyone.
*Low professional self-esteem.
*Attachment to outcomes.
Catch yourself when you fall into any of these or similar habits and really begin to see what it is costing you. I can see it cost me opportunities, money, and a sense of fulfilment at the very least.
The most powerful thing about waking up to your value is that by doing so you wake other people up.
You help your clients feel more alive, purposeful, and present in their lives. And isn’t this what everyone is really looking for?.
PS. A powerful way to see through your thinking and to your true essence is to come on a 3-day immersion retreat. I do only a few of these each year. Click here to find out more and contact me to discover if this would be a good investment for you.
