Once a few years back, whilst chatting an a bar with an old friend, Dave, we broached what coaching can do, said to me in very matter-of-fact way, “I’ve done well in life for myself and without needing any of that coaching faff!”
This sort-of stayed with me, throughout my times being coached, and always got me thinking, “what has it done for me?”
My first chance to be coached I turned away from it. Sounded good but in all fairness I wasn’t that receptive and the price seemed expensive just to talk about achieving things.
The next time I jumped right in!
For some context, I was burned out from work, mentally and physically in a bad way. Confidence was low and had to back out of work, causing me to be unemployed for about a year. After getting back to work, signing up for a new gym membership and all that stuff, things in life didn’t seem to improve.
After another conversation with another old friend and I was introduced to a life coach with a decade of experience, helping others in similar life situations. What she said hit a nerve and I realised I had to do something and get guidance on doing it, whatever the ‘its’ were.
Otherwise I knew I would be going back downhill.
So I signed up for a 3 month package of one-to-one sessions.
And that was the first of many very positive experiences with life coaches.
So, what did the coaching do for me? Here’s 7 ways that coaching helped change my life.
- To see clearly what I wanted. When I was confused, depressed, unsure, or lost direction, my coaching helped me get clarity on who I wanted to be and things to do. When you’ve lost sight of yourself, having a coach to help see your life objectively is a top priority.
- To rebuild and gain confidence. Limiting beliefs and a low esteem of my self image caused my own confidence to tumble, even when I knew I had the skills to complete a task. My first coach, she made me challenge these negative belief patterns and replace with new ones, which have continuously helped me through life’s ups and downs.
- To break out of comfort zones. I came to learn from coaching that a lot of comfort zones are self imposed because of limiting beliefs. With guidance I was able to push myself into new situations and positive experiences; My uncomfortable zones are now seen as zones of excitement, learning, growth and sharing.
- To be intellectually honest with myself. My first life coach, she helped call myself out on why my life was what it was, my explanations and excuses for not doing things, not being productive and so many other delusions I had. Even though she saw my fear of facing my own words, her support and encouragement was vital. Being honest with myself opened to way to understand my habits and behaviour and change them so improve my life and others around me.
- To visualise what I wanted in life. We all have ambitions and dreams and aspirations for our lives and all my various coaches were consistent in the visualising my dreams and have the courage to start living them. There are many visualisation methods, some have personally worked better for me, but suffice to say it is invaluable to visualise.
- To acquire the skills needed. Coaching has given me a wide choice skill sets and techniques to use everyday experiences. To make the changes last, even if they were difficult and uncomfortable at first, they helped to develop the new skills and tools needed in the new life I was creating.
- To accept help and support. Being able to ask others for support, knowledge and guidance helped build inner confidence, and my coaches all allowed me to voice inner obstacles and difficulties. No doubt this helped in many very powerful ways which I will with you later.
At the end of the day, coaching helped me get my life back on track in new directions, resulting in an all round better life achieving so many things I wanted.
This is just a few of the things coaching did for me, just imagine if was all have access to great coaches. If you want to read more, visit our Life Coaching page and have your first coaching session for free.
