A live coaching session from the Optimize Coach program featuring Brian Johnson and guest Valorie Burton discussing coaches’ pressure to appear perfect. Burton argues perfection is neither necessary nor truthful; personal imperfections can be leveraged as growth opportunities and make coaches more effective and empathetic.
The content you're about to hear was captured during a live coaching session in the optimize coach program. Multiple times every month. Coaches Connect live with Brian, Michael, Alexandra and members of our world class luminary guest faculty for wisdom, guidance and encouragement. For more head to optimize Me coach.
I'd love to hear advice for coaches, aspiring coaches who might be feeling like, I've got to always be ahead of the game or I've got to have all the perfect answers or I can't let myself be seen in imperfections or whatever it is.
Okay, so we go back to one of those powerful questions I just gave you. So if you're saying those things to yourself, I want you to ask yourself, is this true? Is it true I have to be perfect? Is it true that I have to have it all together? I have to have all the answers all the time? Nope, it's not true. This is something I had to learn. I was in 2009 going through a divorce, and I remember thinking, okay, well, now I don't have the right to write books anymore. I can't go speak because my life doesn't look perfect. This was the refrain that was in my head, like, I'm gonna have to change everything. So not only am I starting my personal life over, but I've got to figure out how I'm going to justify this in my career. And then it was like, well, is that true? Well, no, it's not true. And secondly, maybe if you are willing to process this, heal through this, and then be transparent, you might be able to help someone else. And so what I realized is that that period of my life was an opportunity for growth and that I could apply everything I had learned in studying positive psychology and being a coach and apply it to my own life. And what it ended up doing is making me much better at what I do. So if you think of your life as a laboratory, it's a living laboratory that you're applying everything you know and let go of the idea that you have to be perfect at it, because none of us is perfect. None of us ever will be perfect, no matter how hard we try. So what we need to give ourselves is grace and then say, all right, what is this teaching me? You know, when I continue to struggle with procrastination, I'm much better than I was. Right. Because I use the tools that I teach. And so does that mean I do it perfectly? No, I just make fun of myself when I'm on a book deadline and I'm like, okay, book number 30 13, and I'm still stressing myself out with deadlines. It's okay. It's just we all have our thing that we might struggle with, and I think if we can give ourselves grace, we can breathe and then we can learn the lessons of it. And oftentimes I found that people will keep coming to you for coaching that are often dealing with the things that you've dealt with. So it actually is an opportunity for you to be able eventually to help other people with very similar challenges.
We hope you enjoyed that. Part of a live coaching session from the Optimize Coach program. For more info, head to Optimize Me Coach.
