7 mindfulness mistakes to avoid when you’re a Coach.
Do you ever wonder why your mindfulness practice isn’t ‘working’? You’re still stressing over your audience growth. You still feel icky when you send out your sales post or still overthinking your coaching offer. Maybe you meditate every day, just like they say you ‘should’, but you’re not getting all zenned out as you desperately wish you would and all the while, this is knocking your confidence. You could be making some simple mindfulness mistakes that could easily be sorted.
If this is you, check below to see if you are making any of these common mindfulness mistakes.
Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska
1. You don’t meditate regularly.
Now let’s be honest here, how often do you actually meditate? I mean sitting down (lying and standing also included) and taking time to be still, connect to your breath or body for any period of time?
To train the mind to more easily recognise when you drift off into habitual patterns of thinking and reactivity and not fall down the rabbit hole for the hundredth time that day, research shows that it takes regular and consistent mindfulness practice.
If you want some support in creating this regular practice, read this blog on Mindfulness for coaches: your weekly plan
2. You tend to take lots of mindful pauses rather than taking time to do longer meditations.
Now, don’t get me wrong, mindful pauses can be great. I love them, I do lots of them myself, and I am a big advocate because they can be really powerful in recognising what is happening for you in that very moment. They help you to see clearly, supporting you in making intentional and helpful actions. In fact, this simple STOP practice is one of my favourites.
But I believe this is a mistake if it’s the ONLY type of mindfulness you do. Just doing lots of pauses doesn’t give you the opportunity to train the mind in awareness and attention. It’s a bit like the difference between going for a quick walk to the shops and running around the park. Trotting to the shops is healthy and supportive, but it’s not going to give you the fitness to run a race or even run for the bus. Mental fitness also requires mental exercise.
3. You only practice when you’re stressed out.
Waiting to practice when you’re already in an anxious state, without having the backup of regular practice, can sometimes be counterproductive and a common mindfulness mistake.
Have you ever been working yourself up to run a workshop or take a sales call and thought, “I need to relax! I need to relax! I need to relax!” only to find that it makes you feel worse? You focus on your racing heart, and tight chest and your mind finds it too much to cope with.
Practising when you’re not stressed, can firstly build the awareness to recognise the signs of stress early on so that you don’t get into a crazy state of feeling out of control. It also gives you the opportunity to work with discomfort when you’re in a safe and grounded space.
Not only that, focusing on your stress signals after you have already been triggered can cause further stress reactivity. In these moments, it’s probably better to move your attention away from the sensations of stress and towards sensations of grounding and calm e.g. feet, seat, hands, sounds.
4. You try to clear your mind of thoughts.
Let me start by saying this is one of the biggest mistakes many of my clients seem to make. They try to clear their mind of thoughts because they think that a ‘good’ meditation means that they don’t have any. Our thoughts are not our enemy.
Mindfulness does not mean we don’t have thoughts. The only time we might have no thoughts is when we’re dead (harsh but true).
When we practice mindfulness, we are building our awareness of them, acknowledging them and moving our attention back to the object of focus.
The mind wandering off into the past or the future is not a mistake; it’s all part of the practice. Waking up to the mind lost in thought is our moment of mindfulness.
5. You have too much energy, you can’t sit still, so you don’t bother.
It’s a myth to think that mindfulness is all about being still. You can practice yoga or meditate whilst walking or even running. When you understand that mindfulness is simply about the intention to be present in THIS moment, then you can bring these skills into any type of movement.
You can do this by choosing an object for your attention, e.g. your feet on the floor, your swinging arms, or the sounds of nature. Keeping your focus here, noticing when the mind has wandered and bringing your attention back. Over and over again.
This is also a great one if you’re on your way to meet a client and you’re feeling a little nervous. It can release the stress from the body and mind.
6. You try too hard.
Meditation takes effort. Firstly, you have to make the time and space to do it. But it also takes some effort to stay focused and concentrated when you’re in meditation. This does not mean trying hard to control your mind or to feel a certain way. So many of my clients think they’re doing it wrong if they don’t always finish feeling zen or if their minds wander for most of the practice.
It’s helpful to drop any expectations of what will and won’t happen and be open to whatever arises and try playing with the balance of effort to keep your mind on your breath but not so much it causes you to control or strain.
7. You think mindfulness is just about meditating.
Mindfulness more than just training the mind to stay focused in the present moment, and I think it’s a mistake to think that you can just meditate and all of a sudden you reap all the benefits of mindfulness without the trained skill of a teacher.
My Mindful Coach programme very carefully takes clients on a journey to first stabilise the mind, then gain insights into patterns of thinking and behaving which can get in the way of their coaching work. We then work with these powerful reactions to learn more helpful ways of working. This means gaining the ability to choose which thoughts are helpful and which ones are not.
Self-critical thinking is not helpful. Neither is overthinking or overplanning because they can have a knock-on effect of stress, procrastination and loss of confidence. All of which, means being less effective for their own clients. Learning mindfulness with a teacher means finding new ways of living and working in presence, peace and clarity.
If you found this post helpful, why not sign up for my weekly newsletter for tips on helping you to build your confidence and impact as a coach with mindfulness skills?
