The Power of Footings

Coaching Tip # 65

It is incumbent upon each one of us to understand ourselves as best we can.

My goal in this coaching tip is to help you gain a deeper clarity on what physical, mental, nutritional and work footings you need to support your current circumstances. When you are in line with these footing you naturally will perform at a higher level.

Conversely, when these footings are weak or disappear, performance will suffer.

Why wouldn’t we want to operate at our highest level? While there are many possible answers to this question, I wish to point out two common ones.

1.  It is hard work to be accountable

2. A ready-made solution to ‘fix you’ is only a click away

For someone to stay true to what they know works best for them, it requires both a level of self-awareness and a system of monitored self-regulation. But before you can self-regulate, you need to experiment and discover your optimum operating self. This takes time. Most people give up this self-discovery process in favor of the quick fix.

As an example, what happens when you get a headache? Most of us take a couple of pills and depending on the level of severity, keep on trudging.  In some cases, there might be a need to pause, shut down for a bit and wait for the pills to kick in and the symptoms to pass.

But do you truly understand what was the root cause of your headache? Was it a lack of hydration, too much stress, interrupted sleep, too much screen time, or too much red wine? If you paused and thought about, you could probably determine the cause. But for most people, the pain of a headache, even when it causes us not to be at our best, is not enough to shift a behavior.

I believe it is crucial to discover the footings of our best self. Once you understand these footings, you can become a sophisticated architect of your best self. To help this discovery, I am challenging you to consider the following 24 questions.

Physical Footings

1. What is the appropriate amount of exercise for you?

2. How much sleep do you actually need to operate at your best?

3. What is your best time to get up in the morning?

4. What is your best time to go to bed each night?

5. Do you know what your resting pulse is as well as your target heart rate when exercising?

6. When you do not feel like exercising what is one thing that you can do?

Mental Footings

1. Do you thrive in a stressful environment?

2. What is your go-to strategy for handling stress or anxiety?

3. Is keeping to a schedule beneficial to your mental well-being?

4. How do you reward or acknowledge yourself?

5. What is your go-to negative comment? How can you interrupt that comment?

6. How do you like to be recognized?

 Nutritional Footings

1. What are 3 healthy snacks that you should always keep in your house?

2. How many times a day should you eat?

3. Is there a type of food or drink that you should avoid?

4. How many glasses of water do you need a day?

5. What foods are required to keep your bowels happy?

6. What type of supplements can support your daily diet?

Work Footings

1. What time of day do you concentrate best at? Can you block your calendar off for part of that time?

2. What is your go-to micro break (less than 5 minutes) when you start to feel overwhelmed?

3. What time of day is your most creative?

4. Do you work best when surrounded by other people or do you need to create space from others?

5. How can you cut a meeting off without coming across as rude?

6. If you could design your work hours, what would they be?

This is not a game of perfection but rather a simple awareness to put effort toward each day. If having tools to operate at optimum level is not enough for you, remember the answers to these questions can, on bad days, provide solutions to turn it around. And that is powerful.