Wellness Coaching and the

Mystical Sinkhole of Support

#2 in the How to Find the Right Coaching School Series

By Jana Beeman, CHHP

In my last ARTICLE  https://goo.gl/Lt40dj I talked a bit about being up to my ankles in alligators and how wellness coaching saved my life. True story. And yes, the alligators were allegorical, but it was still a painful situation!

Moving forward, I also found that, especially being in a new state far away from all my friends, and having two broken-down ankles, I needed community.

The strange thing about my first wellness school is that I had to create my own community. So, I did – I started a study group with others who were feeling a bit alone.

The initial idea was to have people I could talk through the modules with, discuss all the great wellness things we were learning, and to be that place for each other where we COULD talk about nutrition and all the cool new ideas we were trying out without our loved ones telling us to shut up or calling us the Food Police. (And yes, as a matter of fact, I AM the Food Police!)

I started my study group with one other student, and then extended it to a few more. The interesting thing that happened was that as we moved forward through our modules, everyone was getting really confused by the business part, and since I’ve been in business forever, they’d ask me a lot of questions.

The funniest thing was, I actually had a lot of answers. Cool.

As time went on, more and more people heard about my study group, and it really became a business coaching group, and it grew (without any input from me) to 107 members! Yes, I still have the membership list, and I’m not exaggerating. It got so big I had to get a conference line, and I held two meetings a week so everyone could find a time that worked for them.

The one thing that became really clear in this process is that the school we were attending was ineffective in the business side of their training when it came to laying it out in an organized way people could understand. Everyone was freaked out, overwhelmed, scared and ready to run for the hills. I discovered one thing I’m really good at is streamlining the overwhelming into the manageable, and talking people down off the ledge. I learned a lot about myself during this process, including how much I really love business, and love to teach and train around business. Maybe that was the push that moved me into business coaching, which is what I do now, but I still have a small part of my coaching practice reserved for wellness, because that is also something I love, and it’s meant so much to my own life.

Fast forward to graduation, and, all of a sudden, all of us students are cut loose into the world with practically no support or guidance. I of course kept my study group going for a while longer so we could support each other, but the experience of graduating was cold and anticlimactic. Imagine an astronaut outside the space capsule doing some repairs when the cable attaching him to the craft comes undone. Imagine him floating away into space while the other astronauts in the capsule waved goodbye. That’s what graduation felt like.

A lot more funny things happened on my way to becoming the business and wellness speaker, trainer and coach I am now, but those will have to wait for my next article 🙂

Here’s the thing: I found the wrong school first. I won’t play down the value of the wellness education – mostly nutrition – it was great and it changed my life. But trying to create a business from what they taught ended up costing me almost $10,000 in additional training, plus 1-1 coaching, to help me get where I wanted to be. Part of that was also finding the wrong support and making more missteps, but I am apparently really great at making the wrong choices first, so I can learn, grow and help others not make the same mistakes I did. Great.

A couple years ago, I found a great wellness school that doesn’t have the deficiencies of that first school, and which really gives the student amazing success and support. If you’d like to learn more, you can go here: https://goo.gl/PsLPiY to check them out. If you’re looking and would like to talk about it, I’d be happy to find some time to hop on the phone – just message me or email.

In the meantime, here are a few things to help you find the right school for you:

• Be clear on what you want to gain through your training before starting your search
• Understand the basics about the trainings you’re looking at before deciding –
  • How many hours of training? (If you want success, shoot for 300+ hours)
  • What do they cover? Do you get:
    • Nutrition (if you want that part)
    • Wellness / overall lifestyle
    • Real and solid coaching structure and system
    • Business success tools – website, client materials, marketing materials
    • Training from industry experts
  • Several avenues of personal support
  • Ways to get your questions answered
  • Are they self-paced where you determine your timing or are they ‘dripped’ where new content is released on a schedule you have no control over
  • Are they accredited

I have a few more gems of wisdom that I learned in my wellness coaching journey, and I’ll be sharing them in upcoming articles. Again, this is all about helping others not make the mistakes I made, so they can get helping people more quickly. If you know anyone thinking about a career in wellness or life coaching or anyone thinking of adding it to what they currently do, please share this article with them, as it is my passion to help people shortcut the ridiculously long and complex path I took to my own success, so they can be changing the world faster and easier.

Even if you aren’t into the full wellness direction but really want to be more of a life coach, you might consider wellness coaching. I’ve been around coaches for about a decade now, and the good wellness coaches are even more talented at life coaching than most of the life coaches I’ve met – simply because there is no possible way to separate ‘life’ from ‘lifestyle’ – which is part of the wellness path, and an unhealthy body cannot have a healthy life.

Want to know more about me so you can understand what I’m sharing here a bit better? Search for me on The Inspiration Show, Manifest Everything Now, or on SelfGrowth.com, or email me and I’d be happy to share some links. My passion is simplifying the path for others, so if I can help in any way, just let me know.

Wishing you wellness…

Jana