{"data":{"id":"5d3fc478-6012-4d05-8770-513299549bc4","updated_at":"2024-04-04T21:25:50Z","template_id":"73046548-86ec-431a-aca0-75b53bc936f3","localized":{"blocks":[{"id":"a0ee9229-b665-43d7-8182-70c518ba9778","kind":"richtext","content_html":"

I Hired A Coach

Recently I received an email from a reader who pointed out that I was offside my listed weight goal in “Retirement Heaven or Hell.” After reading that comment I immediately started to type a response blaming something for my miss but stopped mid-sentence to rethink things.

He’s right a miss is a miss and the important question is what am I going to do about it?

Getting my health back is important to me. Without my health all my great plans for retirement will be nothing but a pipe dream and that is why I decided to hire a triathlon coach.

In my younger days I would have never spent money on such a thing as a triathlon coach. I always felt I could go it alone and learn everything I needed to by reading books and searching out things via google so why spend the money?

But thankfully today I’m older and wiser and I’m not reluctant to spend money on a coach when the payoff is so high in terms of me getting healthy again. This is something too big and too important to me to attempt alone and risk possible failure.

A coach will help you set boundaries

I have a bad habit of letting my work get out of control and consume other important areas of my life. Having a coach will make sure this doesn’t happen.

Another benefit of having a coach is that I don’t have to sweat the details – that’s my coach’s job. I just need to show up on a daily basis and do the workouts.

But finding the right coach for me was hard because I don’t like being told what to do, and for it to work I needed to respect the person doing the telling. I needed someone who I could look up to, someone who had completed a number of Ironman themselves and preferably someone who had completed the same Ironman that I had signed up for and I found that person in Coach Fiona.

She is someone I can get along with and talk to and lean on, someone I’m not ashamed to share my questions, worries, doubts and fears with. Having a coach in my corner will keep me motivated and on track I have a big “why” for doing what I’m doing but I’m also human and pretty good at coming up with excuses to justify why I need to bail on a scheduled workout.

Having Coach Fiona monitoring my workouts and weight loss keeps me accountable and I know she will not hesitate to call me out if I’m not doing the work I committed to.

Let’s just say she’s tough in a good way and she’s someone I wouldn’t want to disappoint. Take it from me. Those little voices in your head lose their power when you have a coach plus it’s easier to be motivated when you’re not alone.

If it works for Ironman there is no reason why it won’t work for retirement

When I think back on my own retirement transition and remember how I failed and ended up in Retirement Hell I just shake my head. I could have avoided so much stress and saved a lot of time if I had hired a retirement coach, but I didn’t know there was such an animal at the time.

What I know for sure is that the payoff from hiring a retirement coach is huge because that investment will positively impact the quality of the rest of your life.

Why do it the hard way and waste the first few, and most valuable, years of retirement trying to figure things out on your own like I did?

Please learn from my mistakes.

There is no shame in hiring a coach because it is one of the smartest things you can do. A coach will offer a helping hand, get you through the rough patches and help you see things that you can’t.

It’s a big plus to be able to turn to someone for perspective and advice, someone who has experienced first hand what you are going through, someone who can help point you in the right direction.

Why suffer from doubt, fear, boredom and depression and have trouble making decisions and always doubting what you are capable of when you can fix things quickly. Coaching speeds up the recovery process and get you back on track quickly.

But be careful who you hire

You need to be careful and do your homework when hiring a retirement coach because anyone, literally, anyone can call themselves a retirement coach.

Unlike triathlon coaches you can’t check out their past experience in terms of races done and just because two individuals have the title ”retirement coach” doesn’t mean that they are of the same quality.

The best way to find a “good” retirement coach in my opinion is by word of mouth. Talk to people who have referred people to coaches in the past like your financial advisor.

My advisor recommended someone now what?

Most coaches offer a free hour consult and you want to use that time to get a feel for their beliefs and coaching style. The coaching relationship is super important and you want to make sure that you’re working with someone that jives with you, who you respect and can communicate openly with, someone who understands your motivation, your goals, and the vision you have of what you want to accomplish.

As a retirement coach I have turned away more than a few people because I knew it wasn’t a good fit for either of us. The client needs to have confidence that the coach can help them, and the coach needs to have confidence that the client trusts them.

It’s a powerful partnership when it’s a good fit.

To summarize, whether you are going to attempt an Ironman or transition to retirement you can accomplish things much faster and increase the odds for a successful outcome by utilizing the services of a coach. Get yourself some good coaching and save yourself a lot of time and aggravation.

You can thank me later!

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Mike Drak is a Senior Contributor at Booming Encore and the Author of the best-selling book Victory Lap Retirement, Retirement Heaven or Hell and Longevity Lifestyle by Design. Along with being an Author, Mike is also an award winning blogger, retirement coach and public speaker and has made appearances on BNN, CBC Radio and iHeart radio. He is a thirty-eight year veteran of the financial services industry and lives with his wife Melina in Toronto, Canada.

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