Running your own business is stressful. Who agrees? Constant unknowns, complicated decisions, and the stress of everyday life can lead to uncertainty and fear. By organizing your thoughts you can gain clarity and confidence in your decision making as well as relieve your stress and anxiety. What is the best way to organize your thoughts? Create a coaching business mind map!
If you’re not familiar with mind maps, check out this past blog I did that goes into detail about what a coaching business mind map is and how it works. Today, we’re going to learn how to actually create one so you can get clarity on your thoughts!
After we work through the steps to creating your own, we’ll cover some tips on how you can get better at mapping your thoughts. Hopefully after learning all of this, you can experience all the benefits that a mind map has to offer. Let’s dig in!
Before you get started...
Make sure to read through this whole blog before you get started! There’s going to be loads of helpful tips and tricks in here that will make mind mapping easier for you. Once you understand the process better, then you can move on to actually creating yours. It’s important to remember that there isn’t an “end goal” in this process. Eventually you will find a place where your mind map feels done. Don’t be fooled! This is an ongoing process and while it will give you immediate clarity, it requires you to revisit the subject often so you can stay up to date on your thoughts and feelings.
Also, if you need an example of what a mind map can look like, I have a few examples of actual ones I have made right here. Feel free to use them as a guide for ideas or what to do next while you develop your own.
Create A Coaching Business Mind Map
Step 1: Choose your theme
If you’re looking to gain clarity and confidence in your coaching business then it’s likely you’re struggling with something currently. Whether it’s marketing, branding, your offers, your website… SOMETHING isn’t working how you expect it to. Maybe your offer doesn’t feel aligned with your values? Perhaps you feel like there’s a mismatch between what you want your branding to be and how it’s actually interpreted? Figure out the core theme of whatever is stressing you out.
Once you’ve picked a theme, place it in the middle of your page or document. This is where you will branch out all of your ideas from.
Step 2: The brain dump
Next, spend some time writing down literally EVERYTHING that comes to mind when you’re thinking about your core theme. They call this a brain dump for a reason! At this stage don’t worry about organizing your thoughts, you just want to meditate on the core theme of your map and write up anything that comes to mind. Keep writing until you feel like you got it all out.
When you look over this list it may already start to ease some of your stress. Sometimes just writing out our ideas is enough to help give us a fresh perspective on them. Finally, read your brain dump out loud. I like to do this because it helps me speak my thoughts into existence. Some of them are negative self beliefs and speaking them helps me challenge them. Some of them are positive things that I want to feel good about! Speaking everything out loud helps your mind really dig deep into the patterns that emerged in your brain dump.
Step 3: Take A Break
Congratulations! You’ve worked hard. Digging deep into your brain and being vulnerable with yourself takes hard work and courage so good job! You’ve earned a break. Walk away from your mind map to let your brain cool down.
I recommend waiting at least 24 hours here but you can do whatever feels right to you. The idea is to just let your brain relax a bit so that when you do come back, you have a fresh view of everything you wrote before. This will help you categorize things more objectively and be detached from the emotions that brain dumping can work up. This is also a good reminder that you don’t have to solve all your problems right this instant. Process and take care of yourself that when it’s time to solve your problems you have the mental capacity to do so.
Step 4: Qualitative Analysis
Here is where the magic happens! Now that you’ve taken a break and have a fresh set of eyes, read back through your writing and try to find themes or connections between all the different things you wrote out. Begin to find the core ideas that you can use to branch out from your original theme. Place each of the things you wrote into its corresponding group of similar thoughts.
Now that you’re starting to actually build the map by finding the way all of your ideas connect, you can begin to add in details. Color coding helps you see distinct thoughts and how they all connect together. Using images can also help convey the way your ideas connect and relate. The ultimate goal here is to get the map organized in a way that makes sense for you.
After a while you will get your map organized to the point that it begins to feel right for you. You will have your core theme with branching paths that lead out to all of your ideas. Now you can see the associations you made in your brain when you began digging into the core theme. Each of these areas you’ve identified is important for you to address in your decision making regarding your core theme.
Step 5: Wash, Rinse, Repeat
Coaching business mind maps, mind maps in general even, are an ongoing process. You’re NEVER done. Make sure to schedule a regular time to re-read your map and make adjustments as you see necessary.
You can also do this for many different core themes. One theme might be your coaching business overview, another might be more specific to marketing or branding, and yet another might be for self-care and boundary setting. The important part is that building a mind map will help you lay out all your thoughts, find patterns, give you confidence to make decisions that are aligned with your values.
Dispel the myths
In order to get the most out of your mind mapping exercise, there’s 2 myths I’d like to break down so you don’t get caught in their trap…
Myth 1: You can't make mistakes (or, you have to get it right the first time).
Like I said earlier, this is an ongoing process. You couldn’t possibly get it “right” because there is no “right”! Challenge yourself to truly let you go of whatever things you think you “need” to do for this activity. When I say brain dump, I mean let it flow! This isn’t an activity to find the right answer, it’s to understand yourself better. The confidence comes from being clear on how you process information and what your values are.
Myth 2: You have to know your theme BEFORE you get started.
This just isn’t true! As a person who regularly deals with anxiety I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stressed out without ANY idea of why I’m stressed. Knowing your theme will certainly help to guide your map, but sometimes your theme will change as you go. Sometimes, you won’t even know what your theme is until you have already started. This is okay and is all part of the ongoing process of mind mapping.
Learn more about coaching business mind maps
If you’re interested in talking with me about developing your coaching business mind map, book a free call with me today! You can also message me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or at my email Coaching@JenesisRose.com.
