How to Craft Your SMART Doula New Year Resolution
If you want to begin the new year with a clear, positive, and achievable New Year Resolution, now is the time to start working on it. Whether you focus on personal, relational, or professional goals, crafting your clear and actionable New Year’s Resolution is a process that takes time. And when you master the art of clarifying your goals and visions, you can better serve your birth and postpartum clients by facilitating clarity about their desired experiences and helping them to commit to SMART goals.
Creating Clarity
Every December, I teach a series of sessions showing my students how to clarify their client’s desired experiences and coach them toward SMART goals. It’s the perfect time of the year to teach this coaching mastery. As my students craft their New Year resolution, it allows them to appreciate the value of clarity about one’s desired experiences as the foundation of positive birth and postpartum experiences.
For a moment, think about your brain as a navigation system. What would happen if you insert a vague destination in your navigation system? Would it take you to the place you want to go? Transformational Birth Support Coaches are like tour guides. We begin working with our clients at point A, and our role is to lead them toward point B safely, confidently, and in the most positive way available for them, considering their unique circumstances. Therefore, we want to know how does point B look and feel? Why do they want to go there? Why did they decide to visit point B? This metaphor helps you see the importance of clarity.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound. The acronym helps you work toward clear and tangible goals.
Working toward SMART Goals
It seems that doula clients openly share their desired experiences with us. However, the more you are curious about their wants and goals, the better your clients can craft their vision. Make it tangible, achievable, and actionable. Do you see the resemblance between crafting your New Year’s Resolution and leading your clients to achieve their desired experiences?
When you start crafting your New Year’s Resolution this year, I encourage you to use the SMART acronym when you think about your goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound. The acronym helps you work toward clear and tangible goals.
For example: If you want more clients, ask yourself If you want more clients, ask yourself what type of clients do you want? Who are the clients you enjoy supporting? Who will motivate you to get more clients? Try to be very specific about the clients you want to attract. In the same way, when you coach your clients, you inquire about their desired experiences and try to work toward clarity. You inquire with authentic curiosity to learn about your clients. Doing so makes your clients feel that what they know about their wants, values, and core beliefs is valuable for their positive experience.
When you learn how to coach birth and postpartum clients in this way, you join the results revolution, and you get to deliver the experiences your clients hired you for.
To evaluate your success, ask yourself: How many more clients do I want? How many per week? Year? Measurable goals help you measure your success. So when they work with birth or postpartum clients, my students make their desired experiences measurable.
How do you make this goal actionable or achievable? First, create a list of actions that help you get the desired clients. Your New Year’s Resolution is not a wishlist you give Santa, right? It’s yours to own and achieve. Committing to an action plan is much easier than fulfilling an abstract wish without an action plan. Once you have a list of actions, make them SMART! Specify the action – what does each task entail? Make the actions measurable and time-bound.
In the same way, when working with birth and postpartum clients, my students wrap up every prenatal or postpartum session with a call to action that will bring their clients closer to achieving their goals. This process of designing and assigning actions is super empowering for clients, and it builds confidence. When you learn how to coach birth and postpartum clients in this way, you join the results revolution, and you get to deliver the experiences your clients hired you for. For example, Transformational Birth Coaches learn to utilize the process of writing a birth plan to facilitate this clarity about clients’ desired experiences and motivation.
Check out my Doual’s New Year Resolution One-Day Workshop, scheduled for January 12
Goals and visions are realistic if even one person on Earth has accomplished them. Search for role models who were successful in achieving your goals. Learn how they did it, and hire them as mentors if possible.
Last but not least, make your New Year Resolution goals time-bound – When would you like to achieve them? Create a timeline of your actions and then follow this timeline along 2023 to measure your success, and when needed- pivot!
Is it time for you to pivot? Are you tired of hours of hands-on support and looking for strategies to elicit your clients’ accountability for their positive process? Or maybe you want to learn new strategies to empower your clients to stand in their power. Ready to learn new strategies to provide virtual birth and postpartum support? Maybe my membership program to become a Transformational Birth and PP coach is your professional New Year Resolution. I would LOVE to show you the game-changing strategies I develop for birth and postpartum support.
My best wishes for a wonderful New Year!
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
- Matrescence: Identity-Shifting Transformation - March 12, 2024
- Empowering Black Birthgivers! - February 12, 2024
- Let’s Get Clients in 2024! - January 23, 2024
