How a Coaching Mindset Helped Me Write My First Book

For over a decade as a leadership coach, I have noticed common challenges that my clients face. On multiple occasions, I have been asked if I would write a book that demonstrates how a coach can help individuals who are feeling overwhelmed by the demands of others, have an inability to say no to requests for their time, and are struggling to balance the pressures of work with the responsibilities of a home and a family.

I considered writing a novel about a coach who coaches two clients through a series of coaching conversations, with each session addressing various challenges in their lives. The only problem was, I had never written a book before! I was unsure if I had the writing ability or mental focus to complete such an overwhelming project. In order to overcome the mental hurdles of writing a book, I decided to use a coaching mindset.

I’ve Never Written a Book Before!

Once I made the decision to start writing the book, I was confronted with a host of my own self-limiting beliefs. These included thoughts such as:

• You’re not really a writer, why would anyone want to buy your book?
• The book has to be perfect before anyone will read it
• What if my book is an epic failure?

As a coach, I was experienced with helping clients change their limiting beliefs into liberating truths. Now it was my turn to use that same approach with the myriad of limiting beliefs that surfaced whenever I sat down to write. One of the most powerful mindsets I had to reform was perfectionism.

“Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists often decide in advance that the end product is never going to be satisfactory, so they don’t even bother trying to be creative in the first place.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

To overcome perfectionism, I used the same approach that has helped me build a relationship of trust with clients. The most effective way I have found to help clients feel free to fully express what is on the inside without fear of being judged or having their ideas shot down or critiqued, is to make a conscious choice to suspend judgment throughout the coaching conversation. In the same way, I made a deliberate choice that I would have zero tolerance for self-judgment and criticism during the creative stage of writing.

This was not the time to edit my thoughts or judge whether my writing was readable; that would come later during the editing process. By suspending judgment and writing with the editing part of my brain switched off, I unlocked many new ideas and noticed that my writing became a free-flowing experience.

Be Open to Knowing and Take Risks

Writing a book was new for me, and I had much to learn. The mindset that helped me move forward as a writer was drawn from my experience with the ICF Core Competency of Coaching Presence, which, among other things:

• Is present and flexible during the coaching process, dancing in the moment
• Accesses own intuition and trusts one’s inner knowing—”goes with the gut”
• Is open to not knowing and takes risks

Prior to understanding and applying these elements of this Core Competency, my coaching was weak. In the early days of being a coach, since clients were paying me to help them change, I felt a pressure to perform and demonstrate that I knew what I was doing. This usually resulted in me trying to figure out where the conversation was going and covertly controlling the direction of the session. By letting go and being open to not knowing where the conversation would end up, I discovered that the results clients were getting dramatically improved. I slowly learned to trust the process of coaching and to be willing to, “dance in the moment.”

I was able to take these valuable lessons from coaching and integrate them into the daily habit of writing. Each morning, I would set a timer for 30 minutes and start writing, not knowing where it would lead. Instead of waiting for inspiration to appear, I simply created an environment and structure for it to emerge. I wrote until the timer sounded and discovered that it was only after I had started typing that inspiration would show up.

The end result of dancing in the moment as I wrote, was a 300-page book that sold over 500 copies in the first week of being launched on Amazon! This would not have happened if I had allowed my limiting beliefs to keep me from moving forward as a writer. Integrating a coaching mindset into the process of writing my first book was a fascinating journey of discovery, and I am now looking forward to getting started on a second book!