A few years ago, if someone had told me to work with a life coach, I would have wondered – Why? What’s wrong with me? The judgment would have kicked in even without knowing any facts. This response from people thus doesn’t surprise me, for our cultural conditioning is to “be strong” & not ask for help.
Now further to this limiting belief, let’s top it up with
Lack of Knowledge & awareness about Coaching – Large mass of Society has no clue what life coaching is all about and how it can empower individuals.
Attitude of taking ourselves for granted – As Aldous Huxley put “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted” – We don’t prioritize ourselves. Our growth, our health, and our relationship with self, until the day we are forced to, encounter a major turn of events.
Seeking Instant Gratification – Like instant noodles, we want instant results with minimal effort.
Trust Issues – With everyone having a long list of merits & certifications next to their names, we don’t know who to trust & how to go about our vulnerability and not being taken advantage of.
Money beliefs – “When a doctor only charges this much to cure me, why should I shell out so much to work with a Life Coach?” – a persistent challenge we encounter before we take a leap of faith to invest in our own growth & wellbeing proactively.
In this blog, Priya Sundaram attempts to inspire you to look beyond these limiting beliefs and take a leap of faith to experience Life Coaching for its sheer amazing benefits that could transform your life in a profound way.
Life Coaching Meaning
“Our lives are a sum total of the choices we’ve made” – Wayne Dyer
I would like to further add, that our lives are thus, the consequences of the choices we’ve made.
And Change, being the only constant, every new situation in our lives, demands we make a choice. But repeating our decision pattern may result in the same results, thus Limiting.
Every new situation in life, calls for an upgraded version of ourselves and presents us with two choices – REPEAT or EVOLVE. And, when we are able to no longer change the situation & neither repeat success, “Evolving” is the only way forward.
A part of this evolution is observable w.r.t to the outcomes produced and the behavioural change. It’s safe to say this is obvious to notice for others as well as for ourselves, this is in the common conscious or awareness space.
However, a lot goes on at a deeper level in terms of managing emotions, breaking old limiting patterns, acknowledging and letting go of the beliefs that no longer serve us and choosing to function from the value system that serves us the best in the new circumstance.
We may encounter resistance, fear, anxiety, denial, breakdowns, and self-doubts when the invisible/non-observable part is set in motion to cope with the changing external environment.
This churn is not visible to others & largely in the unconscious realms for ourselves. We may experience the symptoms but may not be able to put a finger on what’s churning in us and how we can manage it. A Life Coach can show the mirror & help you get in touch with the very source of the churning.
Long-lasting change when driven from this place by making the unconscious – conscious is called transformation.
Unlike what we may expect, the transformation journey is not easy and definitely doesn’t happen overnight.
Individuals wanting to transform their lives can greatly benefit from Life Coaching. Life coaching works on the core premise that every individual already has the answers to the questions they are seeking.
Life coaching helps shift focus from the external to the internal being & takes stock of what’s at the core of an Individual and enables positive desired transformation – Inside Out.
What Is a Life Coach?
ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
In my own words, with coaching being that, A life coach is a person, who partners with an individual, enabling them to realize their true potential and most importantly – aiding them to live from a place of congruence – inside out.
Whether certified or not, a life coach has a few common qualities:
➥ Life coaches are able to hold a safe space for the individual to dig deeper into their own internal world, to encounter & embrace their whole selves – the good, the bad, and the ugly too.
➥ Life Coaches are able to contain a wide range of emotions, self-concepts & world views without being judgemental.
➥ Life Coaches extend unconditional trust and positive regard to the individual, even when the individuals struggle to extend that to themselves.
Not all life coaches are ICF Certified, however, ICF Coach Certification is considered a gold standard in coaching, inspiring a lot of Life coaches to take up ICF Certification to add credibility and brand value to their line of work.
What Does a Life Coach Do?
A life coach helps an individual become the person he/she desires to be.
Surprisingly, a life coach doesn’t lead, hold hands, show the way or give solutions, but rather extends a helping relationship which can be used by the individual for their desired personal growth & well-being. This relationship doesn’t develop overnight, but over a period of weeks and months, where the life coach shows up as
➤ Trustworthy – By being consistent, transparent & congruent
➤ Expressive – To communicate unambiguously
➤ Non- Judgemental – extending unconditional positive regards
➤ Strong & yet extending empathetic understanding – Strong enough to stay separate from the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing at the moment, without losing their own identity in the process & express/communicate what’s felt & perceived without judgement.
As the relationship deepens in trust & mutual respect, the client gathers the courage to explore their own true, vast potential waiting to happen, in a constructively realistic way.
Five Amazing Benefits of Life Coaching
Apart from getting to work with another human being, who is equally invested, if not more, in your growth & your success journey, here are some amazing benefits one stands to benefit from having experienced life Coaching.
Some of these benefits are obvious, some subtle, some external, some very personal & internal and some are transformational & life-changing.
Individuals working with a life coach are set on a path of self-awareness and self-transformation.
When they learn to extend the gift of undistorted awareness to themselves, they
1) Become Authentic, courageous & comfortable in being who they are and not just what others expect them to be.
2) Become More aware of the imperfectly perfect world. As a result, the focus shifts from chasing perfection to choosing compassion towards all those that are trying to do their best. There is no more blaming, anger & frustration, but understanding, helping and collaboration to lift each other up.
3) Become kinder to their past self and patient to the evolving future self. The past version did exactly what it knew best then, and landed us in today’s treasure of awareness, gifting the opportunity to become the person we were waiting for, with patience, reverence, grace and gratitude.
4) Become process focussed than outcome focussed – In today’s world of instant gratification, where there are many ways to fulfil one’s dreams, including but not limited to compromising on health, habits, relationships etc, Life coaching helps one lays the foundation of good process aligned with one’s belief & value system. While guaranteeing outcomes, this approach helps avoid the pain of internal turmoil and conflicts.
5) Becomes aware of the impact of self on others and the society at large – Life Coaching inspires people to walk their talk and live congruently inside out. Thus, the person becomes a change agent and shows a way for others to lead life more authentically. This has a cascading positive effect on society at large, contributing to the collective advancement of the human race.
Even big celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman, Deepika Padukone, Serena Williams, etc – who have everything that a common man would identify as “Success”, had felt the need to work with a coach, and have explicitly advocated the benefits they reaped from having worked with a life coach. This convinces me that almost every single person can benefit from Life Coaching, not just in a crisis situation, but to live our full potential & make possibilities a thriving reality.
What’s stopping you from taking the leap of faith and investing in your own growth and well-being?
What may be limiting you from making this decision, could precisely be the thing you need to work on, for that pattern may be showing up subconsciously in other aspects of your life, without drawing your awareness to it.
You deserve Life Coaching – Don’t shy away from it. Book a free discovery call here
On the other hand, if this blog has inspired you even in the slightest possible way and you feel gravitated to the idea of becoming a life coach yourself – click here to know when the next batch of ICF coach training starts at Regal Unlimited.
