Episode 27: What is coaching?
Why do we have the same problems but have different outcomes? Why are some people burned out and some people achieving at their highest potential? Coaching involves understanding our thoughts and how they affect our emotions and actions and ultimately the result we get in our lives. Why would a surgeon need a coach? Like an elite athlete, we need someone who can analyze our strengths and weaknesses, come up with exercises and strategies to let us achieve at our highest level.
Self-coaching: this is where you find a lot of the information yourself. This is a very safe starting point, you could do this in your own home, you can start cleaning out your mental closet without feeling like you must show it to anyone. People who are not quite ready to air out the dirty mental laundry start here. There are numerous books and podcasts that are extremely helpful. My favorite podcast The Life Coach School with Brooke Castillo because she explains these principles of the thought model in a way that is easy to understand. She also has excellent strategies for specific situations. Corinne Crabtree and Katrina Ubell are great for dealing with buffering. Brendan Burchard, Tony Robbins, Byron Katie all have excellent books. Ongoing self-coaching is very important. For a medical comparison, this is like medical school. Once you start looking into it, it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. There’s tons of information. Unless you have the ability to constrain, find a resource that breaks it down into small areas, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed
Group coaching: You can continue to look at your mental closet of stuff, and start to explore strategies of getting better with the help of a coach. With group coaching, you realize that other people have similar problems as you and have similar mechanisms for compensating. You could learn a lot from these group sessions at a safe distance. This is more like residency. You may participate, but everybody else is too so you don’t feel alone. Sunny Smith’s Empowering Women Physicians is one example, and I offer group coaching, too. The next group coaching is Everything is a Negotiation starting late June.
One on one coaching. This is where do you work directly with someone. You can air out all your mental clutter in a safe place. The coach does not judge and will offer guidance based on your thoughts and your principles and your desires. They offer tools and strategies. They get to know your strengths and areas where you can improve. Much like the elite athlete, this is the most uncomfortable. You must be vulnerable. This is very hard when you’re starting out. It takes a process of recognizing that being vulnerable is not weakness. Being vulnerable and exposing pain is the key to unlocking your highest potential. It is the ability to be satisfied with life because you start to learn that when things go wrong, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You start to develop strategies that allow you to deal with a difficult aspect of life that everyone has in a safe place.
