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“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a new idea that you may have seen some of the elements of. The idea is “Your Exponential Practice”, and it’s aimed at Transformation Professionals – coaches, therapists, trainers, consultants, alternative health workers etc – who want to grow their practice in a way that fits with who they are. I’m going to be launching a new podcast on the subject (I’ll send you details later in the week) and am already building a community of passionate professionals www.JamieSmart.com/expo who are looking to grow exponentially. A few weeks ago, I told you about the Exponential Practice Scorecard. For the next 10 weeks, I’m going to be diving into the 10 professional practice multipliers from the scorecard, explaining them and looking at how you can leverage them to grow your practice, and here’s the thing: Whether you’re a transformation professional or not, you’re going to discover that these 10 multipliers apply to almost everyone (at least, with a little creativity). So let’s start with Multiplier Number 1 – Grounded Certainty.
Multiplier Number One: Grounded Certainty
The first three professional practice multipliers are focused around grounding your personal transformation. Here’s why this is important. I’ll often talk to coaches, therapists and other transformation professionals who claim they have a sales or a marketing problem, but when I scratch the surface, it almost always turns out to be a symptom of a grounding or impact problem.
Grounding is where we start. Think of grounding as the inner work. Your personal transformation is the root of the tree or the foundation of the building. Imagine you’re building a skyscraper, the higher you want the building to go, the deeper the foundation has to be. It’s the same with creating your exponential practice. The foundations for your practice are inside you. The first three multipliers are the base for everything else.
Professional practice multiplier number one is Grounded Certainty; this refers to the embodiment of the power of transformation. It’s the foundation piece upon which everything else is built. Think about it. What first sparked your interest in becoming a transformation professional? Maybe you had a coaching session or went to a nutritionist. Maybe you read a book or went on a weekend course. For many people, when they first become inspired to become a coach, therapist or consultant, they learn things and have insights that have a big impact in their own life. However, to begin with they are not confident in their ability to make a big difference to others in a professional capacity. They might even think the insights they had reflects some fundamental weakness in who they are, something they’re lacking.
To review the way that might manifest itself in your practice, we can start by looking at column one of the grounded certainty multiplier. You feel unworthy, lacking confidence in your abilities and in yourself. You suspect there is something wrong with you and wish you could fix it. Believe it or not, this isn’t unusual and it’s exactly what your clients are likely to be up against a lot of the time. Sometimes, people who have been successful in a job in some specific part of the business world struggle with their personal abilities or who they are.
What I want to tell you is you have a reason to be hopeful. Everyone who’s created a successful practice and is taking their impact to a very high level has been through some version of this on their journey and it’s just part of the process of transitioning into doing something that’s truly based on giving your gifts to the world.
In the second column, people have seen they can have an impact but they have a lot of self-doubts. They say things like, “If only I felt more confident,” or “if only I had more self-belief.” In column two, you can make a difference to people, but when people challenge you or your beliefs, you feel prickly and defensive. That feeling of defensiveness comes when you’re saying things that you’ve learned, but you don’t truly embody them. Maybe you’re parroting something that one of your teachers said or you’ve heard in a recording. You know it intellectually, but you don’t really know it at a deep level like you know your own name or you know how to ride a bicycle; ironically, other people pick up on that. When you don’t really know it, they know that too and those are the areas where they challenge you.
In the third column, your grounding has been developed over the course of plenty of action and experimentation. As a result, you feel confident in yourself, your abilities, and the methods you use. You have a good track record and people pick up on your confidence. Now, a lot of times when people are in the third column, they have many examples of success. They have some good instincts about how to help others and the tools that are working well. When I meet people at this level, they’re looking for the next level for themselves and for other people. They intuitively feel there is something more they could be giving, but they don’t know exactly what it is.
That brings us to the fourth column, the exponential column, where the term grounded certainty comes from. In the fourth column, you have a deep embodied understanding of people’s innate capacity for health, realization and transformation. Your certainty impacts others. Other people pick up on your certainty, creating a powerful basis for leadership. You may have experienced it yourself if you’ve ever met someone who has a gentle certainty you can almost feel is beyond confidence. It’s a complete lack of insecurity that comes when you’re feeling comfortable in your own skin. You can go into any situation and know what to do, even when you’re out of your depth. It’s that gentle grounded certainty knowing you have what you need and know how to take the next step, whatever situation you might be in.
You can aim to improve your score on practice multiplier number one – grounded certainty – by “putting your own oxygen mask on first”. This is about committing to your personal transformation. You’ve already started your personal transformation or you wouldn’t be reading this book. Keep going, take action and be courageous is the fastest way to move forward.
A lot of people say, “Yeah, I’ll take action when I feel more confident,” but taking action when you don’t feel confident is often the best way to increase your confidence and that takes courage. You have an innate ability to learn, transform and grow in the way you need to, when you need to.
The only thing that gets in the way of being courageous and taking action is what I call contaminated thinking and the fastest way to clear out contaminated thinking is by deepening your understanding of the principles behind clarity.
One way you can do this is by joining me on the Certified Clarity Coach Training Programme https://www.jamiesmart.com/clarity-coach-training-sh/ . The programme is by application only, is available via live-streaming around the world or in-person in London, and starts in 10 days’ time. If you want to be considered for one of the places, check out the details and find out how to apply now at https://www.jamiesmart.com/clarity-coach-training-sh/
To your increasing clarity,
Big love
Jamie