This morning I should have been working on my coaching business. I am an alumni of Marie Forleo’s B-School and this year’s run of B-School started this week. I need still to do the ‘Ideal Client Avatar’ exercise where you figure out who your ideal client is so that you can give your clients exactly what they need in the content that you put out. I also have loads of studying to do with my Martha Beck coach training. We are learning about square two of the change cycle which is when people begin to dream and scheme about how they would like their life to be. We have learnt about dream analysis, an amazing meditation called the ‘Seven League Boots’ and about helping clients to come up with what their ideal day would be like. Dreaming and scheming about the future is what I like to do best. I like to hold up a telescope and gaze off far into possibility. This gaze helps me to stay motivated to put the work in that is required to build a business and to become a Martha Beck Certified Coach.
This morning I did none of that work? Why?
I had been reading a book called ‘Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters!’ by Rachel Macy Stafford. The book inspired me not to stay in bed but instead to join my daughter and my husband at my daughter’s swimming lesson and afterwards to the bike shop. At the swimming lesson I really took the time to see the joy in my daughter’s face as she kicked and splashed in the pool and did the ‘monkey walk’ around the edge of the pool. She was completely happy, full of joy that shone radiantly. If I had stayed at home I would have missed out on those moments.
With tumbled hair she clambered into the car and we made our way to the bike shop. We were buying her first proper bike. She wanted help to ride it up and down the shop and asked if she could ride it all the way home. We had to explain that as it was a fifteen minute car ride it was a bit too far by bike. On the way out of the shop a German man asked us in English ‘Her first bike?’
‘Yes,’ we said. He replied ‘Special.’
A stranger could see that this moment was special and it’s a moment I would have missed out on if I had decided that the call of things to do to achieve great things as a coach overrode the joy of loving my family. As Martha Beck coaches in training we are learning to ‘Live it to give it.’ For me this includes taking time to watch my daughter rather than a computer screen.