Your life coach career is a terrific place to experience the pangs and pleasures of gluttony—the sixth in our series of the seven deadly sins in your coaching business. According to wikipedia, St Gregory the Great said that “one may succumb to the sin of gluttony” by several different means, including time (when), quality, stimulants, and quantity. So how do those translate into characteristics of your life coach career? Check it out and see if you are a glutton in either of the following two ways in your attitude and approach to your business.

Are You A Glutton For Punishment?

One of the most common problems for coaches is spending huge numbers of hours coaching with very little to show for it in terms of income. If you are just beginning, cut yourself some slack while you coach endlessly to hone your skills. But if you are an established coach and this describes you, you are a glutton for punishment! Sure it felt great to help people when you started coaching. The more people the better, right? Well yes. Except….. Sooner or later you realize that the pleasure you get from helping, and the stimulation, the high if you will, that you get from coaching people in transforming their lives, is no longer enough. You need to be transforming your own life as well, by making your life coach career successful. So stop indulging this form of gluttony, get off your butt and find out how to get those people enrolled at a high enough price point that you can make a decent living in your career of being a coach.

Does Gluttony Keep You Playing Small In Your Life Coach Career?

Another presentation of gluttony shows up in coaches who don’t have enough confidence to actually coach people. For them, it is about the never-ending search for more information and more knowledge, so they will finally feel they know enough to coach real clients. This, of course, is a trap, since you can never know it all. And for these coaches, it isn’t truly about not knowing enough, it’s about an internal dialogue which results in playing very small in their life coach career. You can’t play a big game if you are too afraid to get on the field. But you can trick yourself into thinking you are playing big in your career because you are always busy, always doing, always learning. If you fall into this category, take action to just start coaching. That’s the only way to have an actual life coach career.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works. If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach