More about life coaching
More about life coaching?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Our Deepest Fear
by Marianne Williamson from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles)
Life coaching is a practice that assist clients to determine and achieve personal goals. A coach will use a variety of methods, tailored to the client needs, to move through the process of creating a richer life. Coaching is not targeted at psychological problems, but targeted to everybody’s life issues. Coaching unlike therapy does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past, instead focusing on effecting change in a client's current and future behavior.
The profession started around 15 years ago, and now the International Coach Federation claims that there are around 10,000 full time coaches in the United States.
Once it was primarily a means of educating and motivating junior executives, coaching has become associated with almost every human endeavour. The coaching movement already enjoys a privileged position in popular culture, thanks to Oprah Winfrey, as she has coaches in her shows and magazine.
So to be a coach is an exciting career full of meaning and surprise. The coach always looks at the client as a capable individual with all the intelligence needed to use all the possibilities given to us.
Therefore the coach keeps this statement close to his heart: » The client is creative, resourceful and whole”. He meets the client in order to design the alliance to work on three areas:
· Fulfillment
· Balance
· Process
The first paradigm, fulfillment helps the client identify his values, making sure he is honoring them, and when honoring them what is he chosing and what is he leaving.
This area of coaching deals with the saboteur, otherwise called the gremlin. This creature in ourselves trying always to keep the status quo, protecting us to move to unfamiliar places. Coaching deals with the client as a whole identity, and his gremlin tends to participate quite actively through meetings. The coach identifies the saboteur, talks to him or goes around him.
Otherwise, fulfillement deals on what completes us, finding our purpose in life. When we live with a purpose we have the energy, the direction, the desire to attain it and the satisfaction of having lived well.
The second area of coaching is called balance. When we balance our life we are more stable and calmer. The client and the coach identify the topic to be discussed and brainstorm perspectives. By looking at them the client exercise his power of free will. He can look at an issue from different points of vue and choose to deal with the topic from a choosen perspective. The client commits then to a course of action. He has to report the outcome. This paradigm deals with looking at the issue and act upon it in the present and near future.
My experience in coaching in balance is when Mary told me she was too busy to meet people, and she wanted to have friends. After addressing her powerful questions, I understood that she had problems with intimacy and ashamed of it. We talked about the posibility of finding a boyfriend, she froze and felt in a prison. We talked to the possibility of being in nature, she liked it, and then to be with a man there. She was able to picture the idea while looking at the forest. She was able to be friendly with someone in an open space but not in a closed one. We chose a course of action to open possibilities.
Now the last paradigm called process is when times come and the client is blocked in an issue that comes from a deep place in his being. Usually those places are related to being hurt, having fears, feeling very small.
My client that I will call Susan is a very successful woman in most walks of her life. She has a “problem” that makes her life difficult. She thinks that she is not worthy enough in the eyes of her bosses, her partner or her parents. When we met, she was stressed, putting many more hours of work trying to prove to her boss that she was worth the salary she was getting. It took the skills I acquired through my courses to get to the bottom line of her attitude. I hold a space and accompany her in those terrible places where it hurts, it is all black, where it is frightening till she herself made a shift and was able to feel different. I felt exhilarant to work with what is most delicate in the human, the inner self.
Conclusion
For me coaching is a permission with acquired skills to help another person do more, be more, dare more. We feel empowered when we give ourselves permission of reaching out, having another person to mirror us, challenge us, accompany us in our journey.
It is not an invented science. It is a concoction of several venues of knowledge that have been effective in the past to create success. That is why is quickly accepted, because it draws from many sources, it is claimed because it is accessible, it is searched because we need, all and each one of us to be supported, to be listened, to be connected, to be cheered in our successes and encouraged in our failures.
If we have friends like that, we are lucky. If we do not have that support system, we can today acquire a life coach, and have all that in one phone call periodically for a period of time.
Life coaching believes that the individual is creative, resourceful and whole. It takes an anchor to make deep changes. Since going alone is so difficult, this venue has come to tend a hand to our fellow men.
We can dare to say that it is possible to have a fulfilled and purposeful life.
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