Can a coach really help me improve my life?
These days, it's the norm to find a personal trainer if you're serious about looking and feeling great. We start by wanting to get fit, lose a few pounds, or tone up...so we do some exercise.
If we decide to go further, we take out a gym membership, do some classes, lift a few weights.
But it's pretty well understood now that if we want really great results, we hire a personal trainer. We make that commitment of time, energy and money because we’re determined to get the fitness, confidence or appearance we’ve always wanted.
We understand what personal trainers are and what they do - they're in the mainstream - and if we want success badly enough, we go to one. They teach us things about diet and fitness, they help us build up confidence in using and pushing our bodies, and they’re right there to motivate us and keep us moving.
So why is our thinking lagging behind when it comes to other things that really matter? Happiness, confidence, success, money, relationships, sex, fulfilment...?
Unfortunately, people who are struggling in life tend to believe they have to do it all alone.
But that’s NOT the way highly successful people think. If you analyse the choices and lifestyles of highly successful people (and there are now a LOT of studies into this), you’ll find that they have various things in common. But one is: they get the help and information they need to improve themselves - they learn the techniques and they get the support they need to get the results they want out of life.
Those of us who weren’t taught the lessons of success as we were growing up tend to get trapped in thought patterns like this:
I keep getting the same results when I do things - I succeed at some things and I fail at others. But I’m not getting the results I want. I don’t have the money, the free time, the confidence, the skills, the love, the passion or the happiness that I really want.
I believe that I have to do everything alone. I look around at my friends, family or colleagues (who often aren’t getting the results they want either) and they’re also doing it alone. Sometimes one of us gets lucky and is successful, and they tell me they did it alone, so we all should.
I’m stuck. I don’t know how to do things differently and I don’t know what the next step is. So I just keep using the methods that I know, and coming up with the same results.
But lets use the fitness metaphor...
When we want to get fit, we begin to exercise.The equivalent in success and happiness skills is to begin to think about what we really want, what we’re currently doing and what we could do differently. We stretch and exercise our thinking.
When we’re more dedicated to getting fit, we join a gym.In developing ourselves, this step is finding the right books (see my reading list) and maybe going to some workshops on confidence building, problem-solving, communication skills etc.
When getting fit and strong becomes really important to us, we hire a personal trainer.When we’ve had enough of waiting to be happy, confident, fulfilled and successful...we find a life coach.
You find a coach who inspires you, who you get along with, who seems to have the skills that you want. You approach your coaching with the same kind of commitment and willingness to learn that you would with a personal trainer. You arrive at each session fired-up with determination to make your dreams come true. You choose to trust that this professional has the skills and experience to transform your whole way of life. You accept that others are not going to understand your transformation, your growing strength of character and your new approaches to things. They may try to undermine your change. Don’t let them. You know that YOU are doing the changing, the hard work, the visioning, the goal-setting. That YOU are resisting the urges to behave like you always have. That YOU are bringing about the new results that you begin to see in your life.
That’s how it works. A life coach CAN help you do better in your life.
Are you ready to put that time, energy and money into learning new ways to thrive, excel, succeed and get the things that you want?