Do you want to feel better in yourself? Have more confidence and energy, less stress and anxiety and generally be a happier, more content and fulfilled person? If the answer is yes, coaching could be the tool you need to feel your best self in your life.
What is coaching?
Coaching can be a truly transformative process for an individual either within their professional or personal lives. Through a process of structured conversations it can enable positive change, through self-reflection, and help you to feel your best self.
There are many formal definitions of coaching. I like this one…
Coaching is a way of:
“unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance [by] helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.
John Whitmore, Coaching for Performance
There are also many types of different coaches focusing on different areas. For example: life coaching, relationship coaching, development coaching, executive coaching, business coaching, financial coaching and health and welbeing coaching. I’ll focus on life coaching and fitness and wellbeing coaching primarily in this post.
How can life coaching be beneficial?
So you might be asking how can coaching benefit me? Life coaching or wellbeing coaching can be particularly beneficial if you are:
- Stuck in a rut and not sure where to go next
- Feeling overwhelmed with too much to do
- Not sure where your career or life is heading
- Feeling anxious or stressed about a particular area of your life
- Unsure about a relationship or what to do with a family dilemma
- About to make a change, or just made that change, in your life such as moving house, having a family or changing jobs
- Difficulties or challenges at work (crossing over into Executive Coaching)
- Wanting to change your habits such as implementing a long term exercise or diet programme (see below for more on this specifically)
How does it work?
Life coaching usually consists of a one to one relationship between a qualified coach and an individual over a period of at least 4-6 sessions. These sessions usually last between 50 minutes to an hour and a half. Sometimes the individual has a specific goal in mind. For example: changing careers; going back to work after maternity leave; growing their confidence, self-esteem or resilience. Often a client may not know exactly what they want, or need, but they know something in their life needs to shift and change. The coach will work with the client, sometimes using tools and giving them homework, to devise goals and work towards where they want to be.
Why is coaching right for you…
A lot of people think it’s indulgent to invest in themselves but I think everyone can benefit from coaching and what it can offer. I can’t imagine there are many people who don’t want to grow and further themselves. Indeed, the evidence for the effectiveness of coaching at a personal and professional level is really strong across the board.
How much does it cost?
Coaching can vary in price enormously depending on the experience and skillset and expertise of the coach, where the coaching takes place and the length and duration of sessions.
My coaching is reasonably priced and I am happy to discuss the details with each individual. I will also offer discounts for those who cannot afford the usual rates at the moment. Generally coaches will price for blocks of 4-6 sessions. Most coaches will also do one off sessions for a particular issue someone might be facing.
How coaching helped me
Studying for my postgradudate certificate in coaching at Birkbeck was a life changing and transformative process. As part of the course we took the role as coach and coachee/client from day one. This lead to an amazing journey of self-reflection and discovery for most people on the course.
Until you have experienced being coached, or have had therapy, I am not sure you can appreciate the value of dedicated one to one time with a professional listener.
My sessions with my peer coach Meera Garratt have been instrumental in giving me the confidence to try new things with my business, push me forward, get me thinking of lots of new ideas and keep me on track. It’s really astonishing what 50 mins to an hour of focusing on your own agenda can do. Coaching can be instrumental in aiding greater self-awareness, personal growth and resilience.
There are very few safe spaces where you can really explore in depth conversations in the way you can in a coaching environment. In the same way as therapy, coaching provides an unbiased, safe, structured and empowering space to explore ourselves.
Misconceptions of coaching
- It’s about advice giving: A lot of people assume coaching is about a coach giving you advice. This is usually not the case at all and coaching is generally non-directive in nature. Often a coach may say very little and allow the client to explore their own thoughts, ideas and responses. The coach may guide the client by asking probing questions, picking up on what is said and importantly what is not said, and taking into account body language. The coach does not need to be an expert in the topic the client is exploring as generally the coach believes the client to have the answers within themselves.
- Coaching is the same as mentoring: Coaching is often confused with mentoring. The main difference between the two is that mentoring is usually more aligned with advice giving and sharing the mentor’s own experience to influence and guide the mentee. A mentor will usually be more experienced, perhaps older (but not necessarily always) and have some background in the area the mentee is working on.
- Coaching is the same as therapy: There’s lots of overlap between coaching and therapy and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish. The theory of both disciplines comes from the same schools of thought (psychoanalysis, cognitive behaviour, people centred, solution focused etc). The main difference is that coaching is usually focused on future development and growing potential. Therapy is generally focused on analysing past emotions, feelings and traumas. This blog post explains it well if you want to understand the difference in more detail. If a coach is trained properly they will know when to distinguish between whether a client needs therapy or coaching and will abide by ethical guidelines (note, if you are opting for coach make sure they have followed a reputable route and are adequately qualified. This was very important to me and why I chose to study coaching at postgraduate level at a University).
My coaching approach
My coaching is usually non-directive in nature and based on a combination of different coaching approaches including cognitive behaviour, self-compassion and mindfulness based techniques. I take a whole person approach and I believe challenges experienced in our professional lives are not necessarily easily separated from issues in our personal lives and what we do in our personal lives can benefit our professional lives.
I am a member of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) and follow their code of ethics.
Coaching, exercise, body image and self-worth
My passion is for everyone to find an activity they love for life which will bring about positive change in every aspect of their lives to enable them to feel their best self. Coaching can play an important role here.
I think the mistake most people make when taking on a new exercise programme, diet or regime to lose weight or get into shape is that they don’t fully consider the mindset, habit and the behaviourial aspect. We are fixated on the end goal rather than the whole process and system behind it (as James Clear talks about in his book Atomic Habits). We want quick fixes and fast results, which in reality are not possible, at least to sustain for the long-term. Especially in the world of fitness and weight loss.
Embarking on behaviour change for life is difficult and you need to work on sustainable and long term habit change for it to be a success. In a lot of ways it’s not actually about movement or food it’s a lot more complex than this.
Feel your best self: what my coaching programme can do for you
My coaching programme takes people through all the stages they need to explore before they actually embark on the exercise programme, fitness regime or diet. It covers:
- What exercise means allowing you to explore how your past has shaped your attitude to fitness and exercise
- What the barriers are and how to overcome them
- How you really feel about yourself and your identity and how you want to feel
- What you really want to achieve, rather than what you think you want to achieve
- Giving yourself permission to do what you want to do
- How to transform habits: stick to good ones and reduce bad ones
- The route to finding the activity which you will love for life
- How to fit this around your existing schedule, family commitments and work
- How to get your family on board and supportive of your activity
- How to actually commit to the plans for the long term
If you don’t think it’s truly possible to embrace a new exercise regime or diet and fitness plan then I challenge you to take on my programme and see how truly transformational change can be.
Ultimately the aim is to create positive behaviour change for life which has a ripple effect in every other area of your life through to health, diet, weight loss, growth in confidence, purpose, self-esteem and self-worth.
Contact me if you would like to explore coaching in more detail. I have slots available now!
