Are you telling yourself you don’t have enough time for coach training?
“I don’t have enough time.”
I often hear this belief from people who are hesitant to commit to coach training, graduate school, or some other development program.
When “there’s not enough hours in the day” becomes the reason to walk away from an opportunity, there's usually something else hiding under the surface. When we're afraid to change our status quo, we latch onto (and believe) these stories we tell ourselves.
For me, it comes down to this simple yet powerful question: “Am I interested, or am I committed?”
Someone who is interested in something will look at it, think about it, and talk about it occasionally. They'll frequently come up with many, often understandable, reasons why now is not the right time.
Someone who is committed, on the other hand, decides, “This is who I am and who I deserve to be, and I’m going to mold the rest of my life around my inevitable success.”
Time is our most valuable commodity. You have the opportunity to spend it any way you choose.
If we all become aware of how we're spending our time, and if we put as much thought into how we spend 60 minutes as we do into spending $60, more of us would be living on purpose. To quote the The Avett Brothers’ Head Full Of Doubt song: “Decide what to be and go be it!”
If the time investment is still holding you back , the logical side of your brain may be fearful that there’s truly not enough time to fit in coach training with your other commitments and you’re not the only one who feels that way.
The good news is you can choose the path to become a certified coach that’s best for YOU.
If you stop and consider it, you’ll likely find time is an important distinguishing factor in terms of selecting a program that supports you to the fullest. The actual duration of a program can be a helpful clue as to the quality and comprehensiveness of the training itself.
Remember: as a professional coach, your clients will be relying on your support. You want to be certain you’re not only properly prepared to stand in those important shoes, but you feel confident in your professional coaching skills and abilities, too.
Ultimately, you’re working with real people in real-life situations, and it’s vital to develop enough professional acumen to both apply effective coaching practices AND understand when specific client challenges require more specialized care from medical and/or psychological practitioners.
Think about the time and effort requirements for other types of professional training such as accounting, law, education, medicine, or technology. The more hours a student spends acquiring knowledge and gaining hands-on experience in a specific skill set, the more qualified and effective they become in their craft.
The same is true to become a certified coach.
It’s often more valuable to look beyond the question, “How long will it take?” and ask yourself, “How thorough is the training I’ll receive and how can I fit it into my life?”
Keep in mind there are opportunities for you to enroll in training while you work a full-time job and you can even attract paying clients before you complete your training. This is especially true if you’ve invested in a program that includes dedicated business development and marketing training to get you started on the career path that’s best for you.
Don’t let time-based fears hold you back.
With the all-too-familiar challenge of balancing family, full-time work, health, home maintenance, and life, “I don’t have enough time,” is a common (and incredibly understandable!) concern we hear from people who are hesitant to commit to professional coach training and certification.
It often becomes the reason to walk away from a life-changing opportunity.
Honestly, it’s rarely actually about time; there are often deeper limiting beliefs hiding under the surface.
When we're afraid to change our status quo, we latch onto the stories we tell ourselves. In terms of coach training, these stories often sound something like:
- “There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
- “I don’t need to spend months training when there’s no requirement to get certified.”
- “It’s not realistic to participate in a training program AND work to support my lifestyle.”
In reality, there’s often a way to reprioritize, putting the projects and endeavors we’re most passionate about at the forefront (or at least giving them ample space in the mix). The key here is to notice how you’re spending your time, and to decide if it aligns with the things you value and want the most.
By becoming more aware of how you’re spending that time, you empower yourself to live on purpose.
Of course, your real-life commitments aren’t going to magically go away.
That’s why the iPEC Coach Training Program is structured specifically for people who work full time.
Here's a peek at how it’s designed to fit into your typical week:
- There's roughly 5–8 hours of work per week, and from my personal experience, more weeks are certainly closer to 5–6 hours than 7–8.
- You and your peers decide on the day of the week and the time of day that works best for you to have your virtual peer coaching, peer client, and peer group conversations on a weekly basis. So if weekends, evenings, or lunchtime works best for you, then as long as it also fits into the schedule of whomever you’re working with, that’s when you can connect!
- Even the weekly webinars are flexible. Right now, you can attend at 2:30pm EST or at 8:30pm EST.
- As far as the live training aspect of the program goes, there are three in-person or virtual modules that happen 12 weeks apart, during the weekends, across the world.
So now’s the time to ask yourself: Are you interested or are you committed?
