What is Life Coaching?

"Coaching is about future possibilities, not past mistakes" - Sir John Whitmore

Imagine; a relationship where the focus is totally on you, your needs and dreams. Imagine being listened to at a level that takes into consideration, what you say and what you don’t say, picking up on the nuances in your voice and emotions, with someone who is genuinely curious about you and totally on your side.

Imagine having someone who won’t judge you and is even more committed to your goals than you are, someone who will hold you accountable and will be totally truthful with you.

That’s coaching.

Try this...
Think of a situation that is creating stress or unease in your life at the moment and ask yourself:

• How come this situation is persisting?
• What are my assumptions about this?
• How are my assumptions contributing to the problem?
• How else could I think about it?

Or

• What are my hopes and dreams?
• What’s important to me?
• Where and what do I want to be doing in, say 5 years time?
• How does my pre-conditioning affect the way I live my life?
• What do I truly want to change?
• What do I truly want to keep in my life?

Coaching is not about forcing or fixing and its certainly not about me telling you what to do, the chances are there are enough people trying to do that already: It’s about encouraging you to use your own initiative, it’s about self discovery and self worth and ultimately taking on ownership and responsibility for your life, all I do is shine a light on what you already know, enabling you to discover and define your values, achieve your goals and make the most of your potential, encouraging you to be a little braver, a little bolder and love yourself a little more.

But it doesn’t come without hard work, honesty and even a bit of soul searching; it needs you to be fully involved and committed to moving forward.

I believe that effective coaching has to take into account the whole person, their lives, values and environment. It’s only by knowing and understanding that which is fundamentally important to you, ‘what makes you tick so to speak’, that you avoid missing your bigger picture. So I may, at times, ask you to look a little deeper, discovering new or forgotten aspects of you, you may rekindle some old dreams or discover totally new ones.

Coaching is designed for people who have dealt with or come to terms with any major issues of the past, that’s not to say that you may not need to briefly re-examine them, A good analogy can be made here with driving a car: we frequently glance in the rear mirror, to see what is going on behind us, and how it’s affecting us in our current situation, but to successfully move forward we need to look forward. So, we will work together on the journey ahead, rather than focusing on the past. Coaching asks that you set your desired goals before exploring your current situation: this is an important aspect of coaching, setting it apart from other disciplines; encouraging you to look beyond any immediate problems, barriers or limiting beliefs and not be negatively influenced by them.

Coaching aims to help you achieve clarity and confidence, to live a fulfilling and harmonious life; it is said that, ‘we are what we think we are’, and that we are a culmination of our lives so far, our experiences and life style, our childhood, our successes and failures, all contributing to make us the wonderfully unique individuals we are. So to make successful changes in life all these factors need to be taken into consideration, but not dwelt on.

What will I do as your Coach?

There are a number of coaching methods and philosophies in this discipline; my favored is the non-directional approach.

Part of the ethos of coaching is that we are all totally unique, and our needs are met in different ways. One of coaching’s powers comes from the fundamental belief that you know your life, your needs and desires better than anyone. This approach offers you the power to take control, learn and grow from within, encourage you to take responsibility for your life, build your self-esteem and positive self-image.

Coaching brings structure, it motivates, supports and encourages you, best of all, it brings a higher self awareness and worth: as your Coach I promise that I will have your very best interests in mind; I will see the situation through your eyes, I will ask that you are true to yourself and I will support you to do just that whilst holding you accountable to your Values and Goals.