On the way to more composure through mental coaching

By Simone Hegner, 24 April 2024

For nearly 2 years now I have had Jasmin walking alongside me as a mental coach through my varied life. As a keen runner, a committed professional in the energy sector and godmother three times over, there is quite a lot to juggle. Through the mental coaching I have learnt to know myself, and to value myself, so much better. But let me take it from the start…

Too much tension at races as the starting point

Even though I had already read and heard a lot about mental coaching, I used to think that for me, as an ambitious non-professional runner, mental coaching would be almost “too much”. Still, a part of me always thought it might help me in particular, since I knew the negative self-talk and the “piling pressure on myself” before and during races only too well. When I then met Jasmin in spring 2022 through Guy (he has supported me with the physical side of my running training since early 2022), I suddenly felt a real urge to tell her about my exhausting inner moments during races. Already in the first coaching session I noticed how understood I felt by her as an experienced athlete. That made it very easy for me to talk to her openly about my thoughts and feelings around competing. We soon developed concrete techniques that I could try out at the very next races. For instance, I learnt from Jasmin to focus on my 5 personal keywords. We worked out the 5 keywords together, and for me they are anchored in inner calm, being content with myself regardless of my performance, and trust in my abilities and my training.

Room for every version of Simone

“Making everything fit together”, my beloved sport, the work I also value, and my life with family and friends, was a theme right from the start of working with Jasmin. Sometimes at the end of a working week I felt like I had “functioned” through the last five days rather than lived them, just running through my training and my work to-dos. In the coaching we then worked out a method that let me quietly look back each evening on whether every Simone had been allowed to show up that day (the athlete, the professional, the social Simone as a godmother and friend, and so on). That means I can now notice much more consciously, and much earlier, when important parts of my life that give me a lot of energy are getting too little room, and I can steer against it sooner.

Knowing yourself well also helps through turbulence at work

In autumn 2023 I then got to experience how valuable “knowing and noticing myself better” is for difficult situations at work too. That autumn a lot was happening for me at work all at once: a big new project in the team, my valued boss temporarily “unreachable” because he had taken on a special ad interim role, and a colleague out after an accident on top of it. I was so glad, in that time, to have the space of mental coaching with Jasmin. And because Jasmin is not only a mental coach but also an ambitious athlete herself, I did not even have to explain first why the turbulence at work meant I could not simply give up targeted training and races. Instead I learnt to sense into myself properly and decide, depending on the situation, whether there were still resources on a full working day for a faster training session, or whether a gentle half-hour jog, or the balcony, was the healthier way to recover.

Still on the way

And today? I am certainly putting what I have learnt into practice diligently, and every now and then I still trip up again. And it gives me composure and inner calm to know that mental coaching gives me a safe space, one where I can talk things through with an experienced athlete, professional and family woman, and benefit from her wide-ranging skills as a mental coach. Because the next race that matters to me is certainly coming, and the next chaotic situation at work surely will too…