Tag Archives: law of attraction

Developing yourself as a coach

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With the merriment of Christmas now slowly sinking into by gone 2012 and with 2013 ripe around the corner I wanted to share something in the world of coaching that is close to my heart.

I believe that coaching is not just a skill set but also an art form that requires various approaches to be developed into a congruent, person centred and powerful transformational process.

When you learnt to be a “coach” you may have attended a life-coaching course, read books to help in asking questions and on the fundaments of coaching, watched videos and listened to podcasts on the ever increasing world of coaching and its applications and created your own learning in honing your skills as a coach.

To master a skill takes time but also a need exists for you to be on top of your own development.

Within a life coach-training course there is limited time to learn new models, skills and approaches that will need to be practiced out in the world and with clients.

There are a huge variety or approaches within the new world coach that encompasses areas from the worlds of therapy and personal development.

Coaching, as we know by now is not a simple goal setting approach using the out-dated GROW model but is a fluid fusion of skills and techniques that put the client at the very heart of the relationship.

Drawn from the worlds of Cognitive Behavioural coaching, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Somatic coaching and existential theory the coaching tool kit has never been so full.

The challenge here for new coaches and old hat coaches alike is to continue to learn, keep their coaching tools clean and sharp and also remember what tools do which job.

This takes time, energy and practice.

I also believe that a high emotional intelligence is required in order to do the best job possible and part of this will be to get the correct and right amount of support for you as an individual helping others.

This could be to get a coach for your own goals and needs, enlist the help of a mentor within the field of coaching, gain professional development by attending courses, seminars and workshops.

I also advocate getting emotional support when needed to address deeper underlying concerns that will give you clarity on who you are and what you bring to clients in a fully focused and congruent way.

There are a myriad of books on coaching and self-development.

I encourage that you read up on new best practice, strive to keep reading and take what you want and leave the rest.

We can absorb only a small proportion of the huge amount of information that is given to us on a daily basis and through natural ways of filtering information it may not be possible to become a self help  / coaching guru but you will indeed resonate with key parts of books that have emotional meaning for you.

I would also say that no matter how good your skills as a coach are, you also (if required) need to learn about business.

It is fantastic to help people accomplish their dreams but maybe a self-enquiry as to the real reasons you want to do what you do is also useful (Maybe invest in some coaching too)

Have you thought about how much money you would like to make from your coaching?

The key to being a successful coach is to determine what success means to you and creating a vision and plan to obtain this.

Also, we don’t stop learning and with the world of coaching expanding constantly it is up to you to step into your fullest potential.

I wish you every success for 2013 and look forward to connecting with you and sharing more from the world of Transformational Coaching.

Letting go

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Today I was sitting thinking about coaching and some of the challenges that coaches face when they work with clients. Not just this but also the challenges that clients will bring to a session to work with their coach on.

One thing that struck me was the concept of letting go.

In many areas of self and personal development the idea of letting go is widely used and recognized.

I would like to take this opportunity to share my own ideas of what this could mean within the world of coaching.

This is two fold – firstly for the coach and also for the client.

I have noticed at times coaches feeling that somehow they are solely responsible for any results within coaching sessions and they can subconsciously drive the session to these results.

The coach may have an idea of what success means in terms of helping people to move forward to desired outcomes and achievement of goals.

The coaching session will go through different stages of self-inquiry for the client and they will talk about what it is that is bothering them, what they would like to change and what this could mean for them and the bigger impact of change in their life.

When we can truly flow with the client and the session the need for a set outcome can dissolve and we are then working on a very person centered level and allowing the learning for the client to be truly about them and not what we think they should be doing to get results.

The ebb and flow of the coaching session takes on an air of elegance and a rhythm that is unique to the individual we are working with.

We can measure our success as coaches on what results the client is getting and their personal shifts as they go through the process of the session and not on what “we” are looking for as success.

We need to let go of getting it spot on perfect or seeing our value as coach on what we think the client should be achieving but rather see and feel what is presented to us from the people we work with and take on board what they have gained from the experience.

The client will also be letting go within a transformational session.

They will let go of their versions of reality where there life is not serving them any more, let go of limiting beliefs to be replaced with more positive empowering beliefs and also let go of negative behaviors that keep them stuck and unhappy to be replaced with more purposeful ones.

The process of letting go for both the coach and the client is based on trust and rapport within the session.

Allowing the session to unfold naturally without due concern with exactly and how the end result will be.

When you next coach take these ideas into the session and see what happens for both you and your client.

Time Travel in Coaching

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In coaching there are many questions that raise a hypothetical awareness to a session. In other words we ask questions to a client that look at the potential of achievement and what this could be like for them.

The goal hasn’t yet been reached, the outcome not yet achieved and the client will still be looking at what they have to do in order to get what they want to.

A useful and in my experience very powerful technique for helping someone “experience” the future as if they have already achieved it is called future pacing.

This comes from the world of Neuro Linguistic Programming and can be used as the next step once the initial and desired outcome has been talked about and decided upon from the coaching session.

The first time I tried this technique I did say to myself this is just a bit crazy and won’t really be useful.

I was sure that my client would think it was just too way out for them to really buy into the experience.

As I became more experienced at coaching and helping people transform their lives I started to believe in my abilities to make a difference and believed that the client would get good results.

This approach has always worked and I make sure I go into the session prepared and confident in what I am doing.

To make it clear I will break the process down step by step.

1. Have the client describe their outcome in sensory-specific detail and with the date they will have it. What are they seeing, hearing, feeling etc?

2. Identify locations in the room that represent that present and the future time when they have the outcome

3. Walk the client out to the future location and have them recall the outcome in detail

4. Have them look back at the last step they took and ask what they last step they had to take was to get to their present location.

5. Once they have described that step, make notes of it and ask them to step into that last place.

6. Then repeat the process step by step to the present.

7. Ask what the client got from that journey and then coach from the results

It is a very useful technique that works with the unconscious mind and will install that the client has already achieved what they had set out to do.

The key is that you as the coach look back at the past situation using a past tense in the words and questions used and that the situation as it is now that it has been achieved is talked about in the present tense.

This encourages the unconscious mind to trust the process and believe in what is happening.

To me this is like time travel for the mind and the clients that I have worked with in this way have loved the exercise and very importantly got amazing results in hugely positive ways.

Is it time travel? No of course not but it may well be the next best thing in helping someone to achieve what they want to.

The Law of Action in coaching

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I was thinking today how being a spiritual person can fit into life coaching. I have a number of ideas and I would like to share them with you.

First of all what is “being spiritual”

We all have different versions of this and of course yours may be different to mine.

Some believe it is about having trust in a higher energy, the connection with that energy and being able to utilize this for the better good. For some it could mean being active in their spirituality by meditating, doing yoga, working with other complementary concerns, reiki healing, crystals, gongs and other approaches.

For me when I look at what I see is a spiritual person I see a wholeness that can exude from them, a sense of understanding their place in the world, maybe having a higher purpose and being ok with that.

The danger as I see it with spirituality is that it can also be an avoidance strategy that people turn too that makes them feel better or avoid taking responsibility for their lives.

The law of attraction is in play as I write and as I sit and think about what I want it will come to me. I agree that we need to start from a place of knowing what we want and allowing that to take on board a sense of reality for us, to make this come alive and take shape.

I would then ask

Is this enough?

From experience I see how time and again people wont put action into getting what they want and then become frustrated with the end result or not getting results.

I do agree in putting it out to the universe to say what we want and believing in a universal energy to fuel that want.

I also believe in action, accountability and creating shifts in awareness that the universe doesn’t know about.

In fact we may not know about it either.

Within a transformational coaching session these desires can start to surface, blocks of potential may be removed and accountable actions built in to client interactions that a process of questioning has brought about.

The power here is that people don’t do this by themselves. The end result for the client is one of more clarity, purpose, awareness and direction. If you are coaching someone who believes in the Law of Attraction and all things spiritual it wont be your job to challenge this (unless it is useful!)

You would want to work with them and create goals and shifts based on their model of the world. What they are seeing is true and working with that in creative ways.

There may be times that challenge is entirely appropriate for the coaching session and that through this approach the client can go away with more clarity and also a wow moment that they might say

I can’t believe that’s how I have been living my life!We don’t know what we know until we know it.

This is true of most things and whether you choose to live by the Law of Attraction or the Law of Action I’m ok with that.

I would ask you could you work with both to get what you want?