This is a guest post written by Dan Scalco. Want to contribute? Check out the 2017 publishing calendar.

As a coach, your clients look to you to model and provide the centeredness, focus and clarity they crave.

If you’re constantly running around like a chicken with your head cut off, then it’s going to become increasingly difficult to follow through on these expectations. What’s more, at a certain point your clients will be able to sense that you’re not practicing what you preach—and that can diminish your legitimacy in their eyes.

Hence, if you’re a coach of any kind, self-care is not a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity for combatting stress, preventing burnout and enabling you to remain calm, focused and centered—all of which is essential for doing your job well.

While self-care manifests differently for everyone, here are four practices that every coach should incorporate into their routine.

Be mindful

You’re probably already familiar with the benefits of mindfulness, which include stress and anxiety reduction, greater clarity and self-awareness, a heightened sense of equanimity, healthier relationships and boundaries, enhanced resilience, improved cognitive function and more. It’s quite possible you even recommend mindfulness practices such as yoga and meditation to your clients. But are you taking the time to practice them yourself?

It’s easy for these practices to slip off the schedule when you’re juggling appointments, phone calls and other work obligations. But it’s essential that you commit to practicing mindfulness on a daily basis in order to maintain the clarity, focus and calm that is essential for coaching well.

Eat well

We all know it’s important to eat a healthy diet, but when we’re feeling overwhelmed our food choices are often the first to slip. We may stop preparing meals at home, reach for processed foods and/or eschew fruits and vegetables for greasier, less-nutritious fare. This is understandable. But, nevertheless, it can have negative consequences on both our physical health and mental wellbeing. In fact, an unhealthy diet can affect everything, from diminishing our immunity to dampening our mood and reducing our productivity.

That’s why it’s so important to invest in eating nutritiously. Whether that means cooking up a big batch of food on Sunday to enjoy leftovers all week long or drinking your greens on the days when whipping up a big salad just isn’t possible, commit to making healthy eating a priority in ways that work for you.

Take time off

If you’re a coach, then odds are you make your own hours. While this can be great on the days when you need to duck out for a doctor’s appointment or your child’s soccer practice, it can also facilitate overwork and it can be difficult to give yourself permission to take a real vacation.

But take a vacation you must. Research consistently finds that taking time off is critical for maintaining your physical health, your emotional wellbeing and your productivity. This is especially true for coaches: As someone who spends your workdays investing your emotional energy in other people’s needs, it’s essential that you turn that energy toward yourself on a regular basis in order to replenish your well.

Cultivate a strong support system

As noted above, coaching inherently involves giving something to other people, whether that’s your time, emotional energy or intellectual insights. In order to prevent your work from becoming a drain on your emotional system, it’s important to invest in relationships in which you receive just as much as you give.

Since this can’t happen with your clients, you’ll need to cultivate a strong support system in your personal life. To that end, make sure you’re regularly spending quality time with your loved ones. (When you do so, put the screens down and focus on being present with each other.) If you’re short on friends, consider making them by joining community groups where you can meet like-minded people. You might also consider seeking out a mentor, therapist or coach of your own to provide you with the same support you show your clients.

In addition to these big-picture practices, it’s also essential to remember that self-care is a moment-to-moment practice. Take the time to check in with yourself throughout the day—every day—in order to make sure you’re meeting your needs. Listen to your body if you need to get up and stretch, take a walk outside, unplug from screens for an hour or simply breathe for a few moments. Tending to yourself in smaller moments will set a foundation of self-care that will make it that much easier to adopt these bigger habits.

About Dan Scalco

Dan Scalco is the founder and marketing director at Digitalux, a digital marketing agency located in Hoboken, New Jersey. Throughout his career, he has helped hundreds of businesses save time, increase leads and maximize sales. Connect with Dan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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