Everyone loves a definition so let’s start with one!
“Life coaching is about assisting you in closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. It’s about working with someone who wants to achieve more in their life!! A professional life coach will assist you to discover what is important to you, what is missing from your life or your business & what outcomes you are looking for. They will then ask questions, listen, reflect back what they hear, & challenge your thinking in such a way that you can think about new ways to create the transformation that you are seeking.”
A Life Coach will challenge your thought patterns, your behaviour, your values and your beliefs - this is what opens up your world and your options.
Our society is fast-paced and it is easy to lose sight of what you really want in life. That is why more and more people are turning to life coaching to help clarify their professional and personal values, purpose and goals.
Take a look at this 8 minute video by Tony Robbins:
People of all ages and walks of life find coaching beneficial. Professionals, business owners, parents, youth, men, women, entrepreneurs and people who desire change work with life coaches. Coaching enables people to gain balance, fulfilment and happiness in their lives. Regardless of their profession or personal circumstances all my clients are successful, resourceful and intelligent individuals that are aiming to get more out of life.
A good analogy is that of a personal fitness trainer – the personal trainer will ask you questions such as ‘what is important to you?’ e.g.
Lose weight?
Build muscle?
Improve stamina?
Strengthen core?
They will then guide you in taking specific actions towards your desired outcome and will keep you focussed.
A life coach does this in other areas of your life and just like having a personal trainer, the coach will find out what is important to you and will then help you get there much faster and with less effort.
By being a motivator, a sounding board, a friend, a mentor, a taskmaster, a teacher and even a spiritual guide, it is the life coach’s responsibility to:
discover why some things are not working the way you want them to
clearly identify what you actually want to be doing with your life and what you are passionate about
design inspiring and believable goals for you
find and change the beliefs that are no longer serving you well
find out what motivates you
help you stay focused, positive and on track - fighting all those distractions
hold you responsible and accountable
Life coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs and personality types. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has. You are always in control of the coaching process - I'm here to help but you are in charge.
Most importantly, it is the job of a life coach to challenge you - to challenge your beliefs, your behaviours, your thought patterns, your self imposed routines .. it is here that real change begins!!
A life coach is a client’s ultimate ally. They are singularly focused on working with their client to establish better goals, inspire them to achieve more, empower them with the practical and philosophical tools to do so, loosen up the clients world and motivate them to sustain focus and steer them towards success.
NLP (neuro linguistic programming) is sometimes used in coaching and the best life coaches will use it to help you to change your internal wiring or programming – this can smash beliefs and can make goal achievement easy and enjoyable – please see a definition below.
Barriers
Some people impose all sorts of personal barriers upon themselves for example, a client may have a subconscious belief that ‘you can’t have everything in life’ – this belief in itself will prevent a client from being successful! It is the job of the life coach to break down these barriers and to ask exactly the right questionsthat will allow a client to see the solutions for themselves.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is an incredibly powerful tool that life coaches use to enable people to think, communicate and manage themselves, and others, more effectively.
NLP explores the relationships between how we think (neuro), how we communicate (linguistic) and our patterns of behaviour and emotion (programmes).
By learning from these relationships throughworking with a life coach, people can effectively transform the way they traditionally think and act, adopting new, far more successful models of human excellence. (This activity is called modelling and is a key feature that distinguishes NLP from psychology).
In effect, NLP is a powerful change management tool that transforms the way people think and act to have the greatest impact both professionally and personally. That’s why NLP is one of the most powerful skills used in business management, psychology, sales, sports coaching and all forms of personal development.
Workshops & Networking
