Follow Your Plan

[This User’s Guide to Coaching series explains everything you need to know to successfully engage and work with a coach—a life coach, a creativity coach, an executive coach, any sort of coach. It accompanies Dr. Maisel’s latest book, The Coach’s Way, described as “the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities.” Grab your copy now!]

As soon as your first coaching session ends, the clock starts ticking on your plan. Yes, maybe you won’t start working your plan until the next day or until some later day, maybe because there are some preliminaries to get done or maybe because it is late in the day. But your plan has now officially begun as a commitment, an intention, and as something percolating in your brain. Give it space there and raise it to level of priority. Start saying to yourself, “I have a plan,” and mean it.

Let’s say that your plan involves writing every day, first thing each day, on the novel that you’ve put aside for a few years. Are there some necessary preliminaries, without which you can pretty much rest assured that you won’t get to your plan or keep to your plan? Do you need to locate and organize all those old computer files, organize your desk, let your family know that you are unavailable for that half hour each morning, etc.? The plan you created with your coach may not have included every possible detail: now the details matters. Make sure to engage in whatever preliminaries are necessary, in order to give yourself a decent shot at following your plan.

You will need to be psychological and self-motivational. There are reasons why you put aside writing your novel for years. Those reasons haven’t vanished. Maybe you never understood your novel very well—and maybe that is still a problem. Recognize that and announce that you are going to get to know your novel by sitting there and trying to write it. Maybe you’ve been conflicted about revealing yourself in your novel—and maybe that is still a problem. Have a serious chat with yourself about whether or not you are willing to reveal yourself and come, maybe for the first time, to a real decision. If this novel reveals too much, it may have to be abandoned; and if you decide that it doesn’t, then put that ghost to rest.

Do not let a misstep in following your plan become a pratfall. If you don’t get to the writing that first day, do two things: forgive yourself and recommit. Try not to badmouth yourself if you fail to follow your plan and, at the same time, do not let that slip be the open door to throwing up your hands and giving up. Yes, our cravings may force us to eat potato chips in the middle of the night, but let’s not let that slip be the excuse we use to dump our diet. You will almost certainly follow your plan only imperfectly: chalk that up to being human. Do not let those imperfections become the way you abandon your goals, dreams, and intentions.

Your plan is both written in stone and written in the wind. You want to take it seriously and you want to try to follow it. At the same time, it must account for changed circumstances, your updated understanding of what’s possible, and everything else in life that makes planning so difficult and slippery. Try to honestly and honorably work your plan; and if that is proving difficult, then, without embarrassment and without hesitation, check in with your coach and have a conversation about the difficulties you’re experiencing.

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“The Coach’s Way is possibly the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities. This new book is designed to give coaches the confidence and structure in their practice that will generate real results for their clients. Any- one who makes a living in the coaching arena will benefit from Dr. Maisel’s tremendous experience and training as a therapist, coach, and human. I’m so glad to have this book as a guide for my own coaching work and will recommend it to many others in the helping professions.”— Jacob Nordby, author of The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life

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