How you benefit from Health Coaching… A plan you can stick to
By
Everyone's health journey is different, but most start the same way. You realise you're not living the life you've always dreamt of, so you know something needs to change. You decide what you want out of life, develop a plan, and finally put the plan into action. Simple right? In reality, where most people go wrong is the planning step! We're often so rushed to start our health journey that we forget the crucial step of planning. As the saying goes…
“A goal without a plan is just a wish” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Why is Planning Important?
Planning is deciding where you want to go (your vision) and how you’ll get there. It can help you enhance your health and wellbeing, manage stress, and even improve your work performance.
Having a plan can help you to:
- Stay focused on your goals despite constant changes in your life
- Empower you to run your day instead of the day running you (we’ve all been there, right?)
- Execute a great idea with the desired results
- Achieve speed, confidence, direction, and flexibility to fulfil your dreams
- Create a better future for yourself and those around you - for example, if you plan to exercise regularly, you improve your health and ensure that you work towards your future confidently
- Stay accountable, which gives you ownership and clarity over your life
Where does a Health Coach fit into your Plan?
A health coach evaluates where you are now, where you want to go and helps you create a plan to get there. They look at the bigger picture - nutrition, physical activity, mental health, and lifestyle - to set goals and daily activities to achieve your dream life.
Health coaches also make setting goals easy by using the SMART acronym in the goal setting discussions.
Setting SMART Goals
Goals help give direction to your life. It invokes a more meaningful, tangible, and actionable path to what we desire in life. When we write our goals, they become more accurate.
A Harvard Business study discovered that those with goals are ten times more successful than those without goals. People with written goals were three times more successful than those who didn’t write out their goals.
Setting goals are crucial but learning how to set goals are probably more important. A SMART goal is a practical goal-setting framework. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Here is an example:
Have an idea of your main goals? Let’s jump into how you can use them weekly.
Creating a Weekly Plan
A weekly plan breaks down your big health vision and goals into weekly actions. Ask yourself: “What can I do this week to show up as a healthier version of myself”?
At the end of your session with your health coach, you can use 5-10 minutes to set your intentions for the upcoming week. Some questions that will be considered are:
- What are my goals for the week?
- What do I need to do to make sure this will happen?
- How committed am I to these actions?
- How will I reward myself this week?
After all, a good week is made of productive days.
Daily Intention Setting
Now that you’re creating a weekly plan, it’s time to break down your weekly plan into smaller, daily intentions and actions. The aim is to envision and show up each day as your best self. Setting daily intensions can look like this:
- If my vision is to live a calmer life, a daily intention can be to meditate each morning for 10 minutes
- Suppose my vision is to nourish myself with healthy food - in this case, a daily intention can be to cook at least one homemade meal and include 2-3 portions of vegetables
Don’t be discouraged when you slip up now and then; we all do. It’s what makes us human. Your power is in what you do next.
Contact your health coach to create a health plan that you can easily stick to.