Coaching can be lonely for many solopreneur, work from home coaches. You live at home and you work at home, without much interaction with others, outside of your families. THIS does not sound like fun at all!
When you are a coach and work from home, the loneliness can take its toll. Joining loneliness in your cauldron of swirling emotions can be depression, fatigue, indecision, fear, lack of inspiration, self-doubt, and the list goes on.
So what’s a lonely coach to do?
There are many solutions to help alleviate the work from home blues. Some are join an online community group (CCNI has you covered with this one!), join a service group (like Kiwanis), venture out into public speaking (maybe join Toast Masters), find a coach who you can enter an agreement with for barter coaching (you coach each other), or make it a priority each week to get out of the office 2-3 times to follow outside interests that you have.
Another solution is exercise. Exercise has been proven to improve mood and sleep habits and reduces stress, depression, and anxiety. Exercise will help you to learn better and remember more . . . and, who doesn’t want that!
You will note that no solution mentioned above is in any way related to social media. While social media has its place, combating loneliness is not something it does well.
Science has shown that we are living in a very lonely time and that social media is not helping but, in fact, in many situations, hurting us. For those of you who love your connection sites, like I said above, social media has its place, but reducing loneliness is not its forte.
So, do you find it isolating to work from home? Do you practice any of the solutions above to alleviate your loneliness? Do you have any other solutions that work for you that you can share with fellow lonely coaches? Let us know on Facebook so we can all kick loneliness to the curb!
Melodee Claassen, CCGC
