A question that I get asked a lot is: Does a life coach know everything about life? Or my favorite version of that question from someone who is older than me: You are younger than me, what can you tell me about life?
First of all, I don’t know anything about your life at all. You are the expert of your life. You know in what areas of your life you are excelling and in which areas you are hitting a glass ceiling. And more often than not you have figured out ways to push though those glass ceilings that you met in the past, haven’t you? You may have not found the fastest way, you may have not found the best way but you found a way. And you will find a way through your next glass ceilings. You may also want to push through faster that you can on your own. You may have things that are holding you back from finding the fastest way: Emotional Baggage, limiting beliefs, blind spots, lack of accountability.
I talked about emotional baggage in an earlier post, so let’s look at the other three. Per definition a belief is a conviction that is true for you. We tend to reframe our reality and target our actions so that they are congruent with our beliefs or even prove our beliefs true. Popular limiting beliefs are beliefs around money. If you think “Money is the root of all evil!” or “Having excess money means you are greedy!” and as you also believe you are good and not greedy, you will unconsciously prove that you are good and not greedy in may ways, INCLUDING staying poor. Those beliefs serve no other purpose than making it hard for you to accumulate wealth and therefore limit you. Installing new beliefs like “Money flows to people that solve problems for other people!” or “Having excess money enables you to give a lot of money to those in need!” helps you set up your unconscious mind to unconsciously prove that you are a problem solver and a person that strives to give to people in need. Unearthing limiting beliefs like these and replacing them with empowering beliefs that serve you, is an uncomfortable and lengthy process that a coach can accelerate significantly.
A blind spot is a trait or behavior or belief that you are unconscious of. So it is per definition impossible for you to discover it on your own. Once in a while a friend may point you to it, but chances are that you brush it off. Have you ever pointed a friend towards a blind spot but to no avail? A Coach can help you identify those blind spots, make you aware of them and if you chose to, help you remove the corresponding behavior or view.
Lack of accountability is what many of us encounter when we set goals for ourselves where we are the only ones that benefit. Have you ever set a new years resolution and did not follow through? I guess your answer was: ONE???!!! The problem is that watching TV or browsing the Facebook feed is always an option. And it is so much more comfortable. Many of those resolutions are easy to do, but it also easy not to do. Having an accountability buddy that participates in your goal setting process (What will be different when you reach that goal? How long will it take? What will you have to give up to reach it? How do you need to change your environment to make it as easy as possible for you to reach the goal? …) and expects you to report in when you’ve worked on it and show progress. Do you think an accountability buddy can accelerate the distance between now and your goal?
I believe so, and in order to reach my goals I have three coaches at this time. One is a general life coach that helps me work on myself. One is a business coach that helps me grow my business and focus on the right things and one is an online coach that helps me create online courses and market them. Could I live without those coaches and figure everything out myself? I sure could. The time I am saving, enables me to serve more people at an earlier time which helps those people move forward with their goals at an earlier time which helps them be happier or generate more income which they will be grateful for and show their gratitude by moving money to my end of the table in proportion to the value they received.
So a Coach does not know everything about life. What does a coach know? A coach knows how to ask the right questions that help you discover your emotional baggage, blind spots and limiting beliefs and helps you discover your own solutions. He knows tools that help you disrupt unwanted patterns and establish new ones, he knows how the unconscious mind works and can teach you how to utilize it to your advantage instead of being remote controlled by it. Your Coach provides you with resources that enable you to reach the next level and make problems you had yesterday become non-issues in the future. He gives you 100% of his attention throughout every meeting and shares information about himself for the sole purpose of delivering metaphors for similar situations in your life as examples of how to overcome challenges.
What a Coach doesn’t do: A Coach does not tell you what you should want. He holds you accountable for what you say you want. He gives you specific tasks that are a fundamental part of the coaching and will help you establish the things you want and these tasks are part of the coaching. A Coach does not enter into a relationship with you. A Coach does not judge you. A Coach has no respect for your old problems but utmost and total respect for you.
How do you know that you are ready for coaching? You have identified a problem and want to solve it as fast as possible. You know that solving a problem requires effort and energy and that you can only get out of coaching what you invest into coaching. You are willing to put in the necessary effort and energy to get your results.
Coaching is expensive! Is it? I have helped a person quit smoking after 50 years. How expensive is a year of smoking a pack of cigarettes per day? How much money are you not making by keeping your business at the level it is right now and staying there for another year instead of having moved a level up by then? If you had a bad relationship and carry that emotional baggage over, how expensive would be falling in love with the same kind of person again, maybe even having kids with that person and getting divorced? If you have accumulated the amount of money that everybody dreams about and realize that it does not make you happy, what is it worth to get on the path to discover what really makes you happy within the next weeks instead of the next years or never?
I believe not having a coach is expensive. What do you think?