Over the years, I’ve found that the two biggest things that keep coaches from being able to get clients are — not having a system for signing clients up (which is why I created my flagship client-getting program, Free Sessions That Sell) and … low confidence.
Confidence (or lack of confidence) can be such a huge barrier to helping the people you want to help and making the money you want to make.
But…
How would it be if you felt total confidence — if you had rock-solid, sky-high, self-assured confidence?
Take a moment and really sit and marinate in that for a moment.
Now, confidence will do two important things:
First, it will make you a better coach.
When you feel confident in your coaching, you just simply coach better. You’re not always doubting and worrying about whether or not the question you asked was powerful or good enough. You’re just present, you’re fully there for your clients and you’re coaching. So, it makes you coach better.
Also, when you are a confident coach, you expect great things to happen for your clients. Your expectations will rub off on them and they’ll be much more likely to get results.
What we expect is what we tend to create.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Dare to see your clients bigger than they can see themselves.” When you can hold a bigger vision for them and hold a container (through positive expectation) that their goals, hopes, and dreams are more than possible, they’ll feel more at ease, and more confident to take actions through your guidance.
Second, confidence will help you attract and sign up more clients.
When you feel more certain that you can be the beacon of their vision, deliver the goods, and that they’re going to say yes to hiring you for their own benefit, you just sign up more clients.
Now, what will happen if you don’t have a lot of confidence, or you have a lot of doubts and fears?
It’ll taint your coaching ability and effectiveness.
Without confidence, you can feel like an imposter. You may have thoughts such as, “Who am I to coach?” and “Why would anyone pay me to coach them?”
I know, because I’ve felt and asked myself these very questions so many times in my life.
Can you relate?
I remember in my early days, a lot of my doubts and fears as a coach used to sabotage me. I used to sign people up on month-to-month coaching agreements, which is something that I don’t teach people to do these days. I was always worried every session, or if it was the fourth session of that particular billing month, I would think, “Oh man, I’ve got to coach my heart out and do some amazing super magical stuff or something so that people will keep working with me.”
That definitely affected the coaching, because I wasn’t willing to push clients a little bit more or confront them on some of their behaviors or for not doing the work. It wasn’t to be tough on a client but to challenge them in positive ways. Those kinds of things crept into the coaching, and it’s really not good for the coaching.
When you don’t feel confident, it’s easy to be stuck in your head and your clients can sense and feel like you’re “checked out” and not fully there with them and for them. It becomes about you when it should be about them.
If you don’t have enough confidence, you’re going to sign up and have fewer clients or maybe none at all.
So, confidence is something that’s really important to work on and get handled.
I’d like to invite you to take a few minutes to jot down or say out loud (if you’re in an area where you can freely project your voice) any thoughts, any fears and doubts you have that have gotten in the way of you being an awesome coach.
Yes, go ahead and do it now and come back to this when you’re done. If you have your phone handy, use the timer and time yourself for 5 minutes.
So, how was it? How do you feel?
(By the way, feelings are very important and I’ll get more into that in a bit.)
What is confidence anyway and how can you get some more of it?
Confidence is a feeling of certainty that you’re going to do well and that things will go well.
The three biggest areas you can have confidence in as a coach are:
- Yourself
- Your coaching
- The Universe (or God) to provide for you and to give you the strength you need to make a difference with your clients
Again, confidence is really a feeling of certainty that you will do well and that things will go well.
Sometimes it’s not so easy to feel that sense of certainty. It’s not easy to connect with confidence 24/7.
It’s because of those fears, doubts, and blocks we’ve been carrying in our bodies and minds. This gives you an idea of what it can feel like when you have a confidence block: When you think of someone who “gets on your nerves” — how does that feel? That feeling — that energy of something or someone being on our nerves … it’s really all that stuff that we’ve been carrying for who knows how long. That stuff is years of energy blocks held inside. And, that stuff has gotten in the way and continues to be in the way of feeling totally confident and certain.
I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve used the words feel and feeling multiple times now.
When we can really feel our blocks, we can also feel what it’s like when those blocks are no longer there.
Here’s the thing. We’ve got to feel it, like hang out with the stuff that’s been on our nerves so that energy can finally release its grip and let go.
Through the years, I’ve come to realize that many of our fears are fears of feelings, not fears of situations.
We can be afraid of a physical feeling like — I don't want to fall off of something high, or we don't want to get burned in a fire or whatever. But most of our fears are really fears of feelings, of emotional feelings, rather than physical fears or physical sensations that we're afraid of.
It’s much easier to feel positive emotions but negative emotions … man oh man. Most people tend to find something to distract themselves so they don’t have to feel what’s really there. That’s what I mean when I say that many of our fears are fears of feelings — to truly get in touch with what’s really there.
What most people don't realize is that most of us are afraid to get what we want. Most of the things we want, we're afraid to get. We might want to be in a great relationship, but maybe we're afraid to have our heart broken. We want to be rich, but we don't want anyone to judge us and think that we're selfish, or greedy, or manipulative, or mean, or that we had to trample on people to make money.
Those very same thoughts and feelings make up the stuff that’s sitting on our nerves, in our minds and our bodies.
Sometimes just an awareness of these blocks or anxieties is enough to release them.
Sometimes, it needs a bit more attention. You may have a releasing and healing process or tool that you use. One that has helped me tremendously and one that I teach most often is also my favorite process — The Peace Process.
I invite you to go here and check it out and experience it yourself firsthand. It’s a powerful tool that trains us to feel, get cozy and hang out with the stuff that’s sitting on our nerves and in our minds with compassion, comfort, and ease (eventually).
I’m not saying it’s easy. Ease isn’t easy. Ease is something we develop and over time, ease gets easier.
The more you’re able to feel the blocks that have been in the way of you feeling confident, you’ll start to notice more confidence, certainty, clarity, and spaciousness.
And, you know what?
You’ll discover that confidence has been there all along. It’s just been clouded.
You know, they say you don’t need to work out your abdominal muscles to build 6-pack abs because when you work on releasing the excess fat, the 6-pack abs are already there. They’ve always been there.
Your fully confident self is waiting for you to get in touch and connect. It all starts with a feeling.
With all the love in my heart,
Christian
