I bet you give great advice – but do you follow it?
There’s a good chance you’re
actually the person others come to when they need guidance.
You’re brilliant at helping other people do the right thing for them.
When they need to be kind to themselves. When they
need a break. When they need to pack up and go home because it’s after 7pm and they’ve been at their desks for more than 12 hours.
The problem is you don’t follow your own advice.
You tell them to go home and THEN stay in the office. You keep working EVEN THOUGH you know you need a break. And RATHER THAN being kind to yourself, you pile on pressure with unnecessarily challenging expectations.
It’s funny because when I start working with new High Performance Coaching clients this usually describes them perfectly.
They’ll say things like, “If I just listened to my own advice I’d be fine, I know what I should be doing.”
It’s not always that easy though. Especially when you expend so much energy focusing on others. There’s not always much left for yourself.
Plus the fact that you probably feel you need to continue to live up to your reputation. Others see you as leading the way, first in and last out. And you see yourself that way too, that’s who you are.
But can you also see how that then undermines all the good advice you give others?
You tell them not to become consumed by work, but yet you are. You tell them to switch off but then they see you sending emails late at night or early in the morning.
What’s exciting though is how you can use your influence to help both yourself and them.
When you start to back up your words with actions it’s powerful. Don’t just tell others what to do, SHOW THEM. And in
doing so, you give them permission to do the same.
When you start making your own health and wellbeing more of a priority it creates ripples. If you were to give some simple but impactful advice to yourself, what would it be?
