Secrets to Succes: Have you got a life coach?
Posted by admin | Under secrets to success Tuesday Nov 3, 2009So, the new buzz word around town is life coaching, and you are meeting more and more of these“Life Coaches” everywhere you go? So, what on earth do they actually do and what are their secrets of success?
I am sure you are familiar with a sports coach – they work on getting you to perform at your maximum potential in your competitive sport. Well – guess what? A mind is also something that can be coached – it too is a muscle and can be challenged and stretched and can eventually operate at its full potential. So yes, the secret of success for Life Coaching is: it works with the mind – and as we all know, the mind is a very powerful component of our everyday lives. The mind controls everything we do, right from getting out of bed, concentrating at work, planning for specific goals and so much more! But as you may well be aware – sometimes your mind is not always in sync with what you are trying to achieve in life, sometimes our minds are our own worst enemies. That little voice in the back of your head often gets the better of you and self-sabotages you from achieving your success strategies. It happens to everyone; even the most successful people sometimes have to work hard to get their mind in alignment with where they are trying to head.
Having acknowledged the power of the mind, it is noted that we as human beings could do with a little mind exercise. And here I am not talking about positive thinking. Positive thinking only works when you feel like being positive and you are in the right-frame-of-mind. So what about when you don’t feel like being positive? Faking it can also only take you so far. So how do you achieve secrets of success when you don’t even believe you are good enough to take the plunge, or you are succumbed by your own fear? What ultimately is the secret of success?
Well, here is where a Life Coach steps in. A Life Coach will team up with you to work on ways to overcome your mental blocks or negative conditioning that you may or may not be conscious of. The coach will make you aware of your own self limitations, they will use powerful questioning techniques that will give you a new perspective on things as you see them and, they will teach you “tools” and success strategies to utilise in your daily life that will accelerate the success of you achieving your goals.
Even more importantly, a Life Coach will give you the insight that you can do things even if your mind is trying to do the opposite. For example: you can do a board room presentation even if the little voice in your head tells you that you are a terrible public speaker. In other words, the secrets of success that coaches work with is challenging your mind and getting you to create new ways of thinking. But the light bulb moment for me with all my clients has been when they actually realise that the human being is capable of being in action independent of what the mind is telling them. So the ball can get rolling towards achieving your goals even if you don’t think you can do it, or you don’t feel like doing it – you can just do it anyway! What essentially happens here is that a person can undertake to do what it is they need to do in order to achieve the result without having to undergo a mind-battle in the process. When a person starts to operate from their word (i.e. saying they are going to do something and doing it no matter if they think or feel like it) then suddenly the mind starts stretching its perspective and joins you on your journey to success. The mind follows your lead, instead of you following your mind’s lead unconsciously. That’s one of the secrets of success you could experience if you got yourself a life coach!
What happens in a coaching session?
A typical coaching session involves a check-in with the coach, and here you first get focused and present (so that you are not somewhere else in your head for the next hour), then you do an evaluation of the previous week: here you will look and see how you have progressed in terms of your goals and commitments. In the next step of the session the coach may share some success strategies or “tools” for the day. Then you go into coaching around a goal you have set for the session, which usually takes about 40 minutes. Finally you end off with setting your assignments and goals for the week ahead. A client will commit to an average of 6 – 12 sessions with the coach and in that time the coach will follow up with emails or sms support, as well as being available, to a certain degree, for telephone support.
What makes coaching such a success strategy?
A coach is trained in a way that he/she is 100% present and committed to supporting the client to achieve their goal. A good coach is also trained in listening techniques which surpass normal listening where they really go for seeing what the client is trying to say and not saying, or what it is the client is not seeing for themselves. The coach can then challenge the client in a supportive environment and ask questions that can lead the client to come up with the answers he/she already has but was never consciously aware of. A coach never gives advice – that would go against the philosophy that second hand knowledge does not create ownership for the client and it is not empowering. Coaching never goes into the past – it is all about where you are now and what you want to achieve. From there the client can be coached on setting an action plan, and can be given the coaching “tools” to use to implement in the plan. In a nut shell – the success strategies of coaching lies in the process of empowering the client with self-actualisation technology which then closes the gap between the knowing of what could be done and the actual doing – i.e. getting into action!
Anyone and everyone can benefit from seeing a Life Coach. If you are successful already and you want to take it to the next level – then see a coach. If you don’t know what you want in life, or if you are too scared to go for it – see a coach. If you want to discover the secrets of success – see a coach! A Life Coach can coach you on all sorts of issues from: having to make a decision, being able to set boundaries in your life, becoming more self-confident, weight-loss, doubling the turnover in your business, starting your own business effectively, discovering your life purpose, and developing secrets of success!
So yes, Life Coaching may be the latest fad to hit the streets, but also keep in mind that Coaching is one of America’s and the UK’s top growing industries at the moment. With so much pressure in our lives today and so much to handle – teenage suicides and depression becoming more and more vivid – it is time to make “prevention is better than cure” a reality in our society. I believe that coaching offers strategies for success in today’s society and that it paves the way forward for sustained mental health in our world today. So next time you bump into a Life Coach – consider the possibility of using a coach to support you in actually turning your dreams into tangible results!