Ep #10: The New Year’s Ritual Every Coach Needs

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 10.

To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hi friends. How are you today? Did you have the best New Years and New Year’s Eve? I hope you did. I will tell you mine was pretty uneventful. We actually did not go anywhere. We just stayed home and we had a virtual game night with our friends during the day, which was so fun.

And then we just kind of did nothing. And actually, my husband was not feeling great so he went to bed and then my kids were being very feisty, so I sent them to bed. And I just stayed up by myself, which was actually kind of fun.

It’s not something I do often. Usually, my husband stays up really late, so I always go to bed first, or at the same time. But if anyone goes to bed first, I guess I should say, it’s usually me. So it was kind of nice to just have some time to myself and I actually did something that I’m going to share with you today.

And this episode is just going to be short and sweet with a New Year’s inspired theme. And then we will jump right back in next week talking about some more aspects of coaching and how you can include them in your coaching.

So what I decided to do when I was awake by myself on New Year’s Eve is I just decided to take the time to consider what I want my next year to look like. This is something I do every year and honestly, New Year’s Day just kind of snuck up on me. And so here I was, it was New Year’s Eve, and I hadn’t done it yet.

And I just decided this would be the perfect time. So I grabbed a journal and I just started writing. And I want to share with you an exercise that I do, in case it’s something you might love to incorporate in your routine or even with your clients, because of course, that’s what I’m all about, helping you be the best, most amazing coach for your clients. And this is something that you could use with them.

So the first part of it is probably something you have heard a thousand times before. It’s not going to be new. But then I’m going to tell you what I do with it. So every year – well, for the past, I don’t know, maybe five years, I have picked a word of the year.

So that’s the part that you guys have probably heard of. You’ve probably done it yourself or you know people that do. And I love it. I think it’s so fun. I love picking a word of the year. And when I really started putting a lot more thought into it over the last couple years, not only do I pick a word but then I kind of do an exercise with the word that I will share with you and hopefully this will be something new that you’ve never done before.

So I picked my word for 2021 and the word is pleasure. And I picked it for several reasons that I will share, but first I’m going to tell you the questions I ask myself when I am thinking about what do I want my word for next year or this coming year to be.

The questions are what do I want to focus on this year? What if my personal growth – what’s the thing I’m working towards? What do I want more of or what do I want to feel more of? Or maybe even what do I want less of? What do I want to experience less of than I did this past year or maybe feel less of than I did this past year?

So that’s kind of where I start and something that kept coming up for me this year was the word fun. And that is just kind of blah. It’s just kind of general and I wasn’t totally sure. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

So if you’ve already done this and you picked the word fun, trust me, I get it. 2021, I definitely want to have a lot more fun than I did last year because we just didn’t do a lot as far as some of the more traditional fun things that we would consider doing with our family or going on vacation, those types of things. They just didn’t happen this year for us.

But I chose the word pleasure because for me, just between everything that came along with 2021, really focusing on the growth of my business, we built a house, when I think about the year, I think I was just pretty serious most of the year, which isn’t really my personality 100%. I mean, I definitely have that side.

But I was just kind of very serious, head down, focused on so many different things. It felt like, I’m sure you’ve heard the analogy of – kind of felt like I had so many balls in the air. I was just juggling lots of different things, mixed with just the challenges that came along with the pandemic and my kids’ schools being closed and just literally not knowing day to day what the schedule was going to be or what the day may look like.

So it kind of, for me, the way that showed up was I just got pretty serious and I was – it was like, we’ve got this, we can do this, just put our head down and we’re going to get through it. And now that we’re coming up on 2021, and by the time you hear this it will be 2021, I just really know that I want to lean into having more fun, but really having more pleasure.

Because when I think of fun, my brain immediately goes to actions. Like, well, what am I going to do? How am I going to create fun? Where am I going to go? What am I going to plan?

And when I think about pleasure, I think it just feels different to me. It’s definitely something that it’s like, I can create that in my mind any time of any day. I think the same is true for fun. We don’t have to get into a whole conversation about the difference, but I don’t know, there’s just something about the word pleasure that just feels a little different to me. It just feels a little more delicious and I can just lean into it a little bit more than the more outward expression of having fun.

So that’s my word. And now I want to tell you what I do with it. So pick the word and then every year, I also pick the top three things I’m going to work on in my life and in my business. So they might not necessarily be huge goals. Sometimes they are. But it’s more like, what am I going to focus on this year?

And I pare it down to three things because otherwise, it could be well, this year I’m going to – I’m sure you’ve all done this at some point in the past. I know I used to. Where it was like, I’m going to focus on my health, and I’m going to work out more, and I’m going to have better relationships with my husband and with my family, and I’m going to learn to speak a new language, and next thing you know, there would be 20 things on the list.

Not that it’s bad to have 20 things. You can get a lot done in a year. But I just love to pick the top three things so I can always bring myself back to okay, yeah, there are all these things but here are the most important. I’m cracking up that I said I’m going to learn a new language because that’s actually never been on my list, so I have no idea where that came from or why I said that. It’s not even written on my paper here. It’s just what I said out loud, which is funny.

Let’s see, so when I pick the top three things I want to work on in my life and in my business, I write those all out. Three for each. So three for business, three for life, and then I take the word, my word of the year pleasure, and instead of making that word pleasure something I think about every once in a while or something I’m like, oh yeah, remember I picked a word this year, I actually use the word to work towards my goals.

So I’ll tell you specifically what my business goals are for this year and how I use the word pleasure, how I plan to use the word pleasure and to incorporate more pleasure to hit the goal. So in my business for 2021, my goals are very much focused on making my mastermind Coaching Masters the mastermind for any coach wanting to be the best coach in the industry, the best coach for your clients, and to really work on improving specific coaching skills.

So the top three things that I want to focus on are helping 100 coaches in Coaching Masters, not all at the same time but throughout the year, creating valuable content for these coaches and for you guys of course, and selling the mastermind all year and creating demand.

So I look at those things and they’re pretty straightforward, right? And I can make a whole plan of how I’m going to do them, and I can really start thinking about how am I thinking about these things now, how do I want to think about them. But then what I do is I just ask myself, how can I do these, how can I make these three goals happen, how can I make these my focus while creating more pleasure in my life and business?

So it’s very different than thinking about them like okay, put my head down, focus on the goal, just move forward, just keep going, just work harder. This is very different because now I’m saying okay, I’m going to do these three things, but I’m going to do them under the umbrella of pleasure.

So it’s like, pleasure is the umbrella, everything else falls under that. And if I don’t hit the goals, if I don’t work on the things while focusing on the pleasure, then I’m just not doing it right. So that will be a signal to hey, let’s regroup, come back to pleasure, how are we going to incorporate pleasure into this?

So when I think about those three things and how to incorporate pleasure, of course I have a lot more than this. I have pages full of how I can make that happen, but I also kind of just rephrase the goals in general so they became, one, having the most amazing time helping 100 coaches be the best at what they do, two, creating content that lights me up and allows me to overdeliver for all my clients, and three, finding pleasure in selling and creating demand.

And that third one, that’s really big for me. Historically, I have not thought of selling that really lights me up and I love coaching my clients, I love teaching them new things, I love teaching you guys new things, and I love overdelivering when it comes to coaching.

But then when I think about selling, it’s always kind of like, that’s the afterthought. And I really want that, that’s one of my biggest goals this year is how can I incorporate more pleasure into that process so that I feel amazing about selling, so that it changes the whole thing.

So I hope you can tell there’s a difference. It’s so subtle but it’s really important and it really helps me not just say okay, here’s my word for the year, yay. It really makes me take a look at and how am I going to incorporate it on a daily basis. Not just when I remember, not just when it’s July and I’m like, oh my gosh, half the year is over, totally forgot I was supposed to be focusing on pleasure.

This really helps me create a plan for how, it’s the how of how am I going to include this in my day-to-day, in my whole year. Then of course I also do the same thing for the three things I want to work on in my life, which are have more fun and adventure with my family. That one seems pretty straightforward on how to incorporate pleasure.

That one is kind of like, I want more pleasure, right? The second one is give myself more space to create. So for me, this just means more time and space that’s just to myself. Not necessarily working. Maybe it’s thinking about work, but if it’s thinking about work, it’s more like what are my clients thinking about? How can I help them? What are the big visions for my business, my company? Not working in the day-to-day.

Or maybe it just means journaling, which isn’t something I do a lot actually. Or maybe it’s painting or coloring or hiking or just things that I do for myself that aren’t organized around my business or around my family or my kids.

And the third one is creating systems and organization that work for the way we live. So as I’ve said, we just moved into a new house and there’s just kind of stuff everywhere. And I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by it at the moment.

And I realized the other day this doesn’t have to be such a huge undertaking. Maybe it could be fun figuring out how to create organization and how to create systems that are really simple and that just work for us, instead of thinking this is where the pleasure comes in. It’s like, how can I just make it simple and have fun doing it?

Maybe let the kids help, maybe ask my husband his opinion, instead of this has to be a whole month situation and I have to hire someone and I have to buy 47,000 new bins or whatever. Whatever it might look like. I don’t even know because I haven’t spent time doing it yet.

But I do sometimes love to indulge in perfectionist tendencies, so I can definitely see my brain wanting to go from where we are right now, starting at zero, all the way to 100 and perfect. The perfect system. And even just saying that out loud, I’m like, sounds terrible.

So as you can see, when I put these things also under the umbrella of pleasure, it just changes kind of everything. It changes the way I look at them and the way I think about doing the things.

So what about you? What is your process of ringing in the new year? I wish I just had a flash of being on Zoom, which I do Zoom calls with my mastermind, and I just want to unmute you guys and have you tell me. But I really want to know, what is your process? I know there are so many different processes, so many different ways to do it, and this is just kind of the one small thing that I do consistently every year.

And if you don’t have one, do you pick a word for the year? If you already do that, if it’s something you already do, I would just challenge you to take it one step deeper and do this process that I just outlined. And really ask yourself, how will the word, how will this theme or intention for your year, how will you actually incorporate it?

Instead of just having it as an inspiration cloud that just kind of floats around you, how will you actually incorporate it into your day-to-day? Because the day-to-day, that’s what adds up over time to create the end result.

And if you’ve never done this before, try it. It’s pretty fun. I think you might love it. So I hope you enjoyed this short treat for the new year. I will be back next week, just like I said, ready to dive back into some different strategies you can include in your coaching, and if you are ready to be one of the 100 coaches that goes through Coaching Masters in 2021, make sure you head to my website and join my email list so you don’t miss out on the next launch, which is coming up at the end of this month.

Can’t wait to be back next week. I will talk to you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.