Coaching is a collaborative process that supports positive, looked-for changes in your life, over a fairly short period of time, through deep, powerful and significant coaching conversations.
As a coach I honor each client as the expert in their personal and professional life. I believe that every person has the answers they are seeking within them or they can work them out for themselves, with a little assistance. Following this principle, my obligation as a coach is to:
- Discover, clarify and align with what you want to achieve;
- Encourage your own self-discovery and expansion of self-awareness;
- Elicit self-generated insights, solutions and strategies;
- Hold you responsible and accountable for your intentions, choices and actions.
The form of coaching I specialize in is personal development and growth, focused on developing better ways for people to create lasting happiness, meaning and fulfillment in their lives.
What Coaching Really Is
At its core, coaching is about helping people discover who they really are, what they really want in life and how they can go about achieving it in the most authentic and personal way. To be authentic is to be ‘yourself’– not anyone else’s version of who you should be – not even your own made up version of the person you think you need to be. You will become ever more aware of your unique, natural strengths, your personal values and ways of being in which you feel confident, at ease, excited, content and gratified. You will also become aware of the opposite – ways of being and thinking that almost always lead you to feeling ‘less than perfect’, unhappy, anxious, angry or frustrated.
Over time coaching will help you will experience major shifts in perspective or mindset – you may know these as ‘breakthroughs’ or ‘eureka moments’. Each breakthrough can remove or replace a way of thinking or being that was limiting your potential for happiness (limiting thoughts, beliefs and behavior patterns).
Breakthroughs have the potential to unlock and reveal new choices and possibilities you never considered before. Over time you will learn to make more effective decisions in your life (both big and small) by trusting yourself and taking the actions or steps that bring you closer to your desires and doing them in ways that bring the most fulfillment in the present.
Areas of Life We Can Focus On
My ultimate goal for my clients is helping them in achieving and sustaining balance and continual progress, growth and fulfillment.
Every area of our lives affects each other, and finding fulfillment in one area can positively influence other areas and bring about or initiate change in other areas in a natural, easier way.
I believe that you are the expert in your life, and I am the expert in the process of helping you achieve whatever you desire. A coach doesn’t need to be an expert in your field of business to help you with your business – I don’t need to have the same experiences as you to be able to help you – that would be more of a mentor or a consultant.
Instead of becoming dependent on someone outside yourself for answers, you grow more confident and certain that you have the answers you need inside you and that you can create new ways of achieving what you want.
People often come to coaching because they’re not satisfied with a particular area of their lives and wish to turn that around. Coaching isn’t about motivational pep talks or ‘positive thinking’, however. It’s about going deep within and finding one’s unique source of power, the power of your authentic self, and then learning how to harness that energy to move towards living a richer and more fulfilling life.
Why Coaching Works
At the core of coaching, is a strongly held belief that people can change. They change when they:
a) believe they can,
b) are ready and want to feel better about something,
c) realize there is a much bigger payoff to change than the price or pain of change,
d) take consistent action in alignment with what they want,
e) reflect and learn from their experiences,
f) acknowledge and celebrate their strengths and successes,
g) diminish the impact of negative thoughts & feelings,
h) continually make new choices in alignment with their desires, values and priorities.
Coaching Builds Self Trust, Your Belief in Yourself
It isn’t enough just to have a breakthrough in awareness, though sometimes a key shift is enough to motivate someone to action – or help them feel better about a particular issue. There is something very powerful that gets in the way of each person’s movement towards fulfillment.
Some call it the Inner Critic or the Saboteur, some even call it the Gremlin or their personal demon; it’s the mostly-negative chatter in everyone’s head that brings up convincing reasons why you shouldn’t think about goals and dreams, let alone take action towards them. It’s the voice inside you that says you can’t do this or shouldn’t do that.
That Inner Critic chips away at your self-confidence – it wants to keep you safe where you are and doesn’t really want you to take chances. It intensifies self doubt as it asks questions like ‘what if it’s worse’, ‘what if you’ll get embarrassed or hurt’, ‘what if you fail miserably and lose everything’? Every person’s inner critic has different messages and different ways of powerfully holding you back. Chances are you’ve got one and it’s holding you back from living the life you are meant to live.
Coaching helps you turn your inner critic into an inner ally by supporting you as you discover and tap into your natural strengths and move towards the things that make you happy in life. You’ll learn to notice its voice and its messages. When you are ready, you will choose to honor a higher (or deeper) part of you, your authentic self, and remember that you can do it and it will make you happier to do it.
Coaching Increases Personal Accountability & Self Leadership
Another piece of the coaching puzzle that helps in the process of change is accountability. Coaching helps you increase and strengthen your level of personal accountability and self leadership so you motivate and drive yourself towards your goals. At first you become accountable to the coaching process because a coach holds you accountable for the actions or steps you say you’re going to take.
Sometimes people find it easier to commit and be accountable to another person (e.g. a personal trainer) before they become fully self accountable and self driven. As a coach I will never judge you or berate you but simply remind you of what you said you wanted and to help you remember and embrace all the strengths, qualities and values you set out to honor by taking action.
With repeated forward movement and positive changes, you raise your level of personal accountability, self confidence and self esteem.
Coaching offers A Safe Place For Self Discovery & Exploration
Coaching wouldn’t work, and you wouldn’t be able to have such powerful and deep conversations if there wasn’t the essential component of trust between client and coach. We will go to the core and talk about real human emotions, both positive and negative, a place some people find hard to go to at first. When you trust your coach, when you believe that they can help you, and you feel safe with them, amazing things begin to happen in your life.
Coaching conversations are completely confidential and give you a safe place to share what’s on your mind and in your heart. Something most people rarely get to experience in their lives – someone who’s actively listening to them without judgment and who only has their best interest at heart.
