Is Life Coaching For Me?
It very well may be. In previous generations, the existence of the extended family provided support, encouragement and direction with career decisions, life skills, personal fulfillment, and unexpected challenges. Today’s world is vastly different. It is complex, confusing and complicated, with society being more mobile, support structures are less available. All the while, people are expected to assume more roles in life than in the past.
People are able to identify aspects of their lives that need to be changed, but often cannot successfully make these improvements or modifications on their own.
Life coaching is for you if you find yourself wanting to learn improved communication skills, reduce stress and disorganization, improve life-balance, or gain new skills or knowledge that will help in meeting personal or professional goals.
Many people I have worked with in the past have tried repeatedly to make the desired changes on their own, but reverted back to their old, more familiar ways of doing things in a short period of time. My work as a qualified Life Coach is to keep you focused on your goals and accountable for your actions or in-actions. If your attempts to achieve new goals continue to fail, much like last year’s abandoned New Year’s Resolutions, and if you want to close the gap between where you are now and where you strive to be, then yes, it is time to invest in yourself by working with me as your Life Coach.
Why Life Coaching Works
Making desired changes by oneself is difficult. The motivation for change often does not last long enough for you to follow through – it can be interrupted by fear, distraction, or barriers of which we are not aware. People have the tendency to avoid the uncertainty of change and to keep the status quo. While there may be a certain level of comfort in living with this restrictive behavior, limited or no opportunity for growth occurs in the long term. If you don’t address your dissatisfactions, the cost to your marriage, relationships, career and self-esteem can be significant.
Life Coaches are hired for different and diverse reasons. Virtually every aspect of personal development that an individual may wish to address can be worked on. Some clients want a sounding board, while others seek help in redirecting their careers. Others want to improve relationships with family, or learn parenting skills.
Regardless of the area in your life in which you wish to improve, once you decide to make the desired changes, I will help you determine what skills or actions you will need to achieve your goals. This is accomplished through exploration, reflection, and with you, the client, finding the answers.
You will find success with me as your Life and Business Coach because when you come upon the all-too-familiar barriers that stand in the way of personal growth, I will supportively help raise your awareness of yourself and how your thoughts, beliefs or actions influence your decisions. Coaching is about getting the very best out of someone and enabling them to make decisions that will improve their life. The coaching sessions with me are confidential, goal oriented, and relatively short term in duration.
What Is Life Coaching?
Simply put, Life and Business Coaching is a process that helps bring out the best in individuals and families. Coaching consists of a relationship between a trained professional and client. It helps the client identify what he or she wants to learn, change or solve – be it with oneself or others – and how to achieve these changes.
Through listening, observing, and developing an effective plan, a professional Life Coach helps one maintain the impetus to work through barriers when striving for improved results in your personal or business life. The Life and Business Coach, using the client’s creativity and skills, helps the client achieve his or her goals by keeping the agenda in focus.
Many people, from college students, to Olympic athletes, to CEO's, have found the tools for creating more success and happiness in their lives through Life and Business Coaching.
What Life Coaching Is Not
Psychotherapy – Life and Business Coaching is not synonymous with psychotherapy. While both coaching and psychotherapy can change perspectives or attitudes resulting from negative past experiences, coaching is not for people who are experiencing an unstable emotional crises. Psychotherapy focuses on healing painful experiences from the past, providing diagnoses on mental disorders, analysis, and interpretation. Life Coaches support already healthy people who wish to develop aspects of their lives. Life and Business Coaching focuses on learning from the past, and using one’s values and goals to obtain balance and achievement for the present and future.
Consultant – Typically found in the business setting, a specific purpose is usually sought. Consultants differ from Life and Business Coaches in that they give advice so that an individual may make the best decisions. Improvement in one’s performance, rather than developing new skills, is the goal of the consultant.
Friend – Friends offer a personal and subjective rather than professional relationship. Friends give you advice, whereas Life and Business Coaches help you find the answers within yourself, so that you can realize your goals and dreams.
Mentor – A mentor is usually a trusted teacher or guide who has a level of expertise related to that which another person is attempting to learn. With mentoring, the focus is on support provided over a long period of time.
While coaching contains some aspects of mentoring, a coach may not have any direct knowledge or experience in the specific field. As your Life and Business Coach, I am oriented towards actively directing you to specific goals, am continually assessing the progress made, and will be giving feedback regarding the skills and behaviors you need in order to achieve these identified changes.
Personal Growth
We all say we want personal growth. But how do we achieve it? What does it look like?
Personal growth is the process of being true to yourself. This entails accepting who you are, including strengths and weaknesses, and accepting all these aspects of yourself. This process requires honesty from you. No longer can you hide behind rationalizations, or blame others for behaviors or actions that are attributable to you.
By owning responsibility for these actions, as opposed to placing blame on others, you empower yourself. You see, if you blame others, then you are the victim, which is a powerless position. You remain stuck and at the mercy of others. However, if you are in control of your behaviors, then you have influence over the quality of your life, including marriage, career, health, and finances.
Personal growth means to live authentically and to be true to yourself. We spend our childhood being told to not take risks. Be cautious. Play it safe. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Then we grow up and select careers that keep us safe from being poor, relationships that keep us safe from being alone, hobbies that are safe but without passion, and we find ourselves living a life that is unhappy, unfulfilled, and filled with regret.
Do you have this recurrent, nagging feeling that there could be more to your life? In Life Coaching sessions, we work together to identify what is truly important to you. We identify what the barriers have been in your life to prevent you from acquiring the goals you desire. After we establish agreed upon goals, I then help establish a new way for you to get there. We examine your attempts in the past, which have not worked. Perhaps this was due to self defeating beliefs or behaviors. Or perhaps it was because you did not have the proper environment.
We will identify ways you can develop a network of healthy, nurturing, and caring people. At the same time, I will challenge you to detach yourself from unhealthy or toxic relationships, which prevent you from personal growth. You will learn more about yourself through readings that I provide. You will learn to take growth steps through desensitizing activities I develop for you. I will be there to support and encourage you when you experience resistance to making these changes.
By going through these steps, you will be growing emotionally, intellectually, and developing new skills. These will enable you to discover aspects of your personality that have been dormant. You can develop a new zest for living and embrace new opportunities with excitement. In short, you will be living your life with more integrity because you are being honest and true to yourself. The decisions you make will no longer be habitual, but rather, will be conscious choices, aware of the consequences and owning full responsibility for your life’s direction.