Why the Business Side of Coaching Feels So Hard
There is a sentence I hear from coaches and healers and space holders more often than almost any other, and I say it myself most weeks, usually with my hands up in the air and my body flung dramatically onto the couch.
Why can't I just get my act together?
Why can't I just write the email?
Why can't I just make money?
Why can't I just grow my clientele?
Why can't I just be on more podcasts?
Why can't I just have a sold out program?
Why can't I just coach?
You have said at least one of those this week, and so have I.
And I have started to notice the little word sitting in the middle of every one of them, because that word is doing something. The "just" is a justification. It lets us complain about the hard thing without ever breaking it down and looking at what is actually hard about it, and as long as the sentence stays up on the surface and never really gets unpacked, it doesn't serve us as humans, as business owners, or as space holders.
So let us open it.
What is actually hard, when you look
When I get honest about a task I have been avoiding, it is almost never the task. It is usually one of these four.
I have overcomplicated it, taken something that was three steps and grown it into fourteen, so that now it needs a whole afternoon and a clear head and neither one is coming.
I am trying to perfect it, which means it can never be finished, only postponed.
I am comparing myself to someone else, so I am not doing the task at all, I am doing her version of it, and hers was built for her nervous system and her season.
It goes against who I am, because somewhere along the way I stepped into showing up as a woman I watched out in the field instead of as my most aligned self, and my body knows it even when my calendar does not.
And sometimes it is none of those, and I am simply unfed, undernourished, and therefore, tired AF. Whenever I catch myself saying "why can't I just da da da," including "why can't I just coach," here is what I usually find underneath.
One, I am longing to be seen, and for someone to reflect my own medicine back to me.
Two, I am longing for encouragement, for someone to say you are doing a good job and look at what you have already done today and that is enough.
Three, I desire connection, that moment of actually doing the thing I love with another person in the room.
And four, I am needing to give myself permission to pause, to rest, to go do something else entirely, and not one of those four gets handed to me by a shorter list.
The obstacle course is not going anywhere
As I was pondering this one, I kept seeing an obstacle course in my mind's eye.
You are tired of getting clients. You are tired of chasing. You have been in this healing and spiritual work for decades and it can feel like there is an obstacle course standing between you and the lake, and the lake is the only place you actually meant to be or desire to be. You take the mile long hike, and you jump the fence, and you weave through the bushes, and you crawl through the tunnel, and you hop over one more thing, and you shimmy through the last gap, and then you get to launch yourself into the water, and then you wake up and it is all set up again, every single freaking day.
The obstacle course is not leaving, so why not make it a fun one.
Throw color powder over the hike. Hang bells and streamers on the fence. Let balloons loose over the bushes. Light the tunnel with candles and put a strobe in there. Put a cheering section at the last hurdle and a DJ at the gap. Wear a costume while you do it. And let there be confetti, lots of confetti (but no glitter because glitter is annoying) and a full on lake party at the end, because you have earned the water every single time you have reached it.
Because you might be asking, but Sora, why can't we just cut around the whole thing and head straight for the lake, and take the easy route? Well, the easy route still needs to be mowed, and it might have snakes in it, and it takes time to cultivate, so maybe don't always look for the easy way out. It can also be the slower way through, since the path around is the longer one, and honestly I am all for that, a mindful and intentional walk toward your business.
Not today, though
Today I am not going to ask you to run it.
Walk off to the side of it instead, into the field beside the course, and sit down in the grass or walk yourself in one slow circle, and take a question with you. The question isn't there to be answered in a tidy bow, because we are speaking in terms of knots. Let it be a ripe blueberry that you pick and chew and let percolate, and let it accompany you.
Reflection questions to take with you into liminal energy space
Which "why can't I just" have you said most this month, and what happens to that sentence when you take the word just out of it?
What is actually hard about that one thing, and is it that you have made it bigger than it is, or that you are trying to perfect it, or that you are measuring it against her, or that it is asking you to be someone you are not?
Whose version of that task are you doing, and where did you first see it done that way?
How does it feel to coach, and why do you love to hold space, and what do you actually get out of doing the thing you love?
And why did you build a business around it, meaning, instead of holding space for the people you love or volunteering your gift, what made you feel called to run a business and to have a financial exchange for this?
And this last one is the one I would walk with the longest. What would make your obstacle course fun? Where is your color powder, who is in your cheering section, and what is waiting for you at the lake?
This is not the only way through your knot. It is one way, and it is the one I keep coming back to, because the word "just" is almost always covering something small and specific and workable, and it stays hidden for exactly as long as we refuse to look at it.
If the knot you are carrying is a different one, why you keep undercharging for your work is the first one I wrote, and how to nurture client relationships without burning out is a move you can use this week.
And if you are not sure which part of your business the tension is actually living in, the Magic and Medicine quiz takes a minute and it is the doorway into all of this.
