“So, is life coaching like getting coached on a sport – except the sport is my life?”
This question may sound a little ditzy but whoever asks that is actually on to something.
To most of us, life coaching sounds like an awesome idea and, at the same time, a completely vague concept. What is it?
In its simplest form, life coaching is just a long conversation between two people where one person needs help figuring something out and the other person, your coach, commits to helping by being a sounding board, a truth teller, an advocate and, an accountability partner.
A coach is basically your go-to person for developing your own clarity, direction and, optimism. Through asking great, powerful questions, providing you structure and empowering you to create solutions, life coaches walk with you towards defining your dreams, achieving personal goals and, breaking through to the next level in your self-awareness and performance.
Still confusing? Yeah, I know right? When there are a whole lot of positive words just strung together, what they all actually mean can fly over our head. To keep us on the ground, just like coaches do, I’ve spoken to three people who’ve worked with life coaches before. They shared what they got from their conversations with a life coach.
*Disclaimer: Two of these people, I’ve coached 🙂 You get content material where you can. If you do know anyone else who has stories from life coaching who would like to share, do let me know
Chris Benedicto, Yoga teacher
At first, I thought that having a life coach would be having someone telling you what to do or steps you need to take to reach your goals – a cookie-cutter, no-fail formula. Thinking about it that way made me feel intimidated, and I’m someone who already finds it hard to openly speak up about my dreams and goals to just anyone, just because I also found them ridiculously hard to attain myself.
However, when I met with a life coach, she acted as my “sounding board” for the most part — it was just talking, with her echoing my statements with more clarity so I can understand for myself where I was coming from and what I needed to immediately work on.
It felt like the steps I had to take to reach my goals were attainable because it was tailor-fit for me, and week by week, I can already see progress. It’s a lot about setting expectations for yourself, building habits, and changing your outlook on the things you want to achieve.
A good coach is someone who puts you first, is a good listener and observer, and is non-judgmental.
Vince Imbat, Writer
The way I experienced it all I can say for now is that having someone ask you questions about your truth and listen to your answers no matter how broken, insufficient, and even illogical they are, is something very enlightening and something all of us will need at one point in our lives.
It’s a practice that can’t be easily done with a friend or a family member who would either sympathize with you for fear of hurting your feelings or bluntly criticize you leaving you hurt and broken. Sometimes we need an unbiased stranger to listen and to confront us with questions that challenge who we really say we are and how we realize that identity in the outside world.
My coaching experience left me with useful insights I could never have thought about by myself. These were very obvious truths staring right in front me but that I fail to notice. That one hour of coaching helped me finally see them.
Read more from Vince on his own blog.
Kitty Dulay-Ferreria, Mom and Life coach
Sometimes, no matter how I go over an issue or situation over and over again in my head, it’s hard to come to an insight because of my own beliefs or programs.
Talking to a coach makes something I’ve made so complex in my head, sometimes so simple. Knowing that my coach won’t judge me, I feel free to speak my mind without filtering. And sometimes it’s when the biggest breakthroughs for me come.
Being able to say things, out loud, makes my thoughts real and I am able to accept or reject them and move on. Many times, my coach would just reflect back what I said, and it brings things to a totally new dimension for me. And I know and trust that whatever she says comes from a place of support and with my best interest in mind.
The commitments I make within coaching sessions are really for myself, but having someone to be accountable to really does the trick for me. I sometimes scramble a day or 2 days before our call to get my actions steps done, but it works. Keeps me in motion. The action part is one of the concrete benefits of coaching for me.
Visit Kitty at her own Facebook page.
Having experienced life coaching myself as a client, here’s what I have to say about it:
It feels confrontational. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not the coach who’s confronting you. Your own words said out loud are self-confrontational to the beliefs and the realities that you live with. With clarity comes reality and sometimes, reality isn’t always easy to look at. The more you realize, the more insights come in. The more insights come in, the more you desire to make a change. And the safer you feel with the coach, the more you realize that all these changes are possible. Read more from me on my other entry: What It’s Like to be Heard by a Life Coach
There you have it.
At the end of the day, all of us could use a little help.
Life coaching isn’t just for people who have problems or issues they’re dealing with. Life coaching is for everyone who wants to become better every day. Hopefully, this gives you a clearer picture of how a simple conversation with a coach can do just that. And, like any coach would say, invest in the help you need.
If you’d like to try coaching with me, I’d be very happy to work with you 🙂 See more here.
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