Why Working Harder Than Your Clients Is a Kink in Your Hose Not a Coaching Strategy
This is the third post in the hose series.
Kink One was gripping the outcome so tightly nothing can flow through.
Kink Two was speaking a language your ideal client cannot yet hear.
This week is Kink Three.
You are carrying the emotional weight of whether it works.
What this kink looks like
A client does not show up for a session. She immediately wonders what she did wrong.
A client is not getting results. She adds extra sessions, extra support, extra check-ins without anyone asking.
A launch converts at fifty percent. She spends the next week analyzing how she could have done more to reach the other fifty.
From the outside this looks like dedication.
From the inside it feels like a weight she cannot put down.
And the cost is quietly accumulating in her business.
Every ounce of energy spent carrying whether it works for someone else is energy that cannot go into her own content, her own visibility, her own offers, her own income.
She is running two businesses simultaneously. Hers and everyone else's. And only getting paid for one.
Where this comes from
For most of the women I work with this kink has a long history.
They learned early that their care and effort could prevent bad outcomes. That if they gave enough, showed up enough, worked hard enough, things would not fall apart. That their responsibility extended beyond their own actions into other people's results.
That lesson served them well in many contexts. It made them capable, thorough, reliable, and excellent at what they do.
And it is now running their business in ways they did not choose and often cannot see from the inside.
The distinction that clears it
Here is what genuinely belongs to her.
Showing up fully. Coaching well. Delivering on what she promised. Creating conditions where transformation is possible.
Here is what belongs to someone else.
The client's willingness to do the work. The client's readiness to change. The client's effort between sessions. The client's result.
Those things require the client's full participation. And no amount of extra sessions or extra support or extra effort on her part can substitute for the client's own choosing.
When she releases what was never hers to carry, something often unexpected happens.
The clients do more.
Because when she stops carrying what belongs to them they have to pick it up. And that is where the real transformation lives. In the client's own agency. In their own choosing. In their own discovery that they are more capable than they thought.
Her over-responsibility was not just costing her energy.
It was quietly taking something from her clients too.
What becomes available
When Kink Three clears, she has something she has not had in a long time.
Capacity for her own forward motion.
For her own content. Her own visibility. Her own offers. Her own income.
The energy she was spending carrying what belonged to someone else comes back to her and goes into building the thing she actually came here to build.
This is some of the most meaningful work that happens in 1:1 coaching sessions. Because it ripples outward. The same pattern of over-responsibility that runs in client work almost always runs at home and in relationships too. Clearing it in one place starts clearing it everywhere.
"What's Really Driving Your Overworking." Three minutes. Link below.
