Why choose Coaching?

If your like me I rejected coaching as rubbish several years ago while I gave it a cursory 5 minutes google search to make a conclusion!

All I saw then were young people on social media with no life experience and a weekend certification willing to tell me how to live my life! I was 50 then so you can imagine the language in my head towards them right?

So I dismissed coaching....

Fast forward to a few years ago where I realised I needed outside assistance ( something a deeply introverted person like me would never normally do!) and I contacted and paid a life coach to help me with my inability to access and deal with my lifelong buried emotions. ( I didn't even know he was a life coach at the time which is probably a good thing in retrospect!)

So now I'm getting help from a life coach to get me in touch with my emotions...and he does...and I also get an insight into how powerful the coaching model is and why it can be more effective than someone going to therapy for years with a PHD Psychiatrist and not getting anywhere, or at least not as fast as you could with coaching!

Wait, what? Coaching is faster? How? Why? Whats going on here?

From personal experience and observation it seems as if there are several elements involved that make coaching, one of the fastest growth industries at the moment, so able to create rapid and lasting change in its clientele! Here are just a few reasons why, from the perspective of a new coaching client:

1: Commitment.

2: Ownership/Total Self Responsibility and Empowerment.

3: Follow Through.

Let's look at all 3 of these briefly.

COMMITMENT: When you decide to get coached on a matter, get committed! Otherwise you are wasting your time. If you have not made up your mind or become committed to creating a certain result by being coached you are deluding yourself. By signing up for coaching the problem or issue does not just automatically go away! At the end of the day it's not actually up to the coach to sort things out but it is up to you!

OWNERSHIP/TOTAL SELF RESPONSIBILITY AND EMPOWERMENT: This is the BIG one! The reason coaching is so effective is when you take total responsibility for everything in your life including the ultimate outcome of your coaching sessions, you get results. If you spend years in traditional therapy you can consciously or unconsciously let yourself off the hook when the therapist gives you advice. Why? Because if they say do this or do that and you get a great result then you attribute that to the therapist but not yourself. Disempowering yes? And if the therapists advice gets no real result you can blame them as well! No responsibility as it wasn't your idea! Yeah?

But with coaching you get a client centered approach. This means firstly that the coach believes you already know the answers to all the questions but they are just hidden from your view right now. Secondly the coach is not giving you advice as they are using techniques including types of questioning that lead you to discover your own truth on the matter and the way forward. When you uncover this within yourself it is no longer advice but self discovery! Then you have to own it and act on it as it's your own truth and not advice. Now, if you act and it works out you can self congratulate and this is self empowering!! If you fail then you have to take responsibility for the outcome! See the difference?

FOLLOW THROUGH: As indicated above, the key to success with all insights from your coaching sessions is follow through. You will discover with a coach that you already know the answer to whatever issue you have. When you gain clarity, ACT. Thats it! You came to the coach through committment. You gained clarity on your issue through the process and you owned it. Now follow through on what you learned and decided to act upon. The result is now all on you. Get it? Ownership. Empowerment. Results. Scary but powerfull right? Happy coaching sessions everyone!!

Namaste,

Paul