WHAT IS COACHING?
Someone recently asked me, “What’s the difference between coaching and psychotherapy?” since he knew I was both a coach and a therapist. What flew out of my mouth — without me even having to think about it — was this:
“Psychotherapy is about healing, and Coaching is about love — the love of something important to the client. Therapy deals with issues from the past and the present; Coaching focuses exclusively on the present and the future.”
Clients usually come to therapy because of their own pain or someone else’s pain; they don’t know how to stop hurting or how to grow something else.
Clients seek out a coach because they want or long for something in their lives that they can’t find or don’t think they know how to manifest on their own.
What happens?
When you reach out to find or hire a coach, you, the prospective client, already have some idea as to what you want to create in your life — personally or professionally. You may have tried to manifest it on your own, yet keep banging up again brick walls. You not only need help disassembling the walls — you need help in learning how to step over them, sprinting on your way as you create your “dream” or all that you want in your life.
As a coach, I have found that most walls clients unwittingly create are built by the words they speak to themselves, thousands upon millions, over the course of their lives — through their self-talk. What clients say to themselves about what they want, their ability to build it, when they can move forward, or why they’re stuck, blocked, limited, unable to manifest that which they deeply want, etc. determines everything. In my experience, all success and failure originates with our self-talk: we, generally speaking, either lift ourselves up continually, or put ourselves down.
Is There A Process?
Absolutely! There are several, actually.
• A coach’s job is to listen deeply to her client, what he wants, helping her client identify what will move him forward as well as what’s in the way.
• Listening and deepening understanding are important competencies the coach brings to the “dance”; the client also learns to listen to her/himself, understanding more deeply what will enable her/him to create the changes s/he seeks in his life.
As a result of co-active planning, the client makes daily, weekly, and monthly progress through taking the necessary steps s/he decides are important to take.
• The coach’s job is to elicit from the client, things s/he knows yet may not be aware of without the aid of the coach’s powerful questions.
• The coach may make requests, challenge what’s going on or not, will acknowledge all manner of positive movement in attitude and action, helping the client make action plans each week that they meet.
• Summarizing what s/he, the client is “taking away” from each session, empowers her/him to “ground” her/himself in new awareness’s as fuel to take the next steps that s/he co-actively plans with his coach.
Inner Voice Coaching: Learning how to notice and then transform how s/he speaks to her/himself may a vital part of the process:
• The client may simply need permission to champion and acknowledge her/himself instead of remaining neutral or worse, critical of everything s/he thinks, feels, does.
• S/he may need to become aware of the different ‘voices’ that speak to her/him inside and the influence they wield over her/his energy.
• The client’s self-talk will need to be highly encouraging, nurturing, and positively determined for her/him to take each step s/he designs on the new blue print s/he’s drafted for her/his life.
• Self-Talk Coaching will illuminate ways in which her/his self-talk dramatically lifts her/him up, discovering which inner voice needs to remain dominant in order to so.
• The client also may need to transform the energy of her/his inner Judge in order to become free, to live from her/his true self, soul, and mature Ego.
A Plan? A Regimen?
Yes, there is a plan: that coach and client co-actively create an atmosphere in which the client can grow and manifest that which s/he loves.
• Each “plan” will be completely unique, based entirely on what the client wants to achieve or accomplish.
• S/he may want to manifest a vision s/he has for his life, fulfilling a life mission that s/he’s always felt deep inside.
• The speed to which this happens is entirely up to the client as well: s/he may quantum leap at moments and/or s/he may prefer to systematically take the steps s/he maps out with the coach. What ever works best for her/him is what the coach will respect.
• However, if there is stalling, stuckness, avoidance, etc., it is the coach’s job to nonjudgmentally inquire, and help the client get moving, once again, toward that which s/he loves.
No, there is no regimen. Coaching is highly creative, intuitive, and one of the most joyful experiences a coach and client can have.
• We use strengths of the client to move forward, leveraging them against any impediments that appear, and quantum leaping at times to reach desired goals.
• There is tremendous support from coach to client, with powerful acknowledgment of everything that the client does on his own behalf.
There is amazing growth and learning that takes place in coaching.
• Clients learn to stretch themselves in amazing ways—their mindsets, changes in their self-talk, their devotion to manifesting the vision they have for their lives, actions they take, learning to love both themselves and every step they take to create joyous, fulfilling lives at work and home.
• They study, learn, create, delight in.
Coaching is one of the most sacred (revered) things in the world: two human beings devote their energies and focus in specified (and sometimes unspecified) ways to facilitate miracles (shifts in perspective) so that the client can create her/his soul’s “dream,” manifesting her/his full potential while dong so.
