One of the responsibilities of a life coach is professional preparation.
So much of our lives involve our professional work, so that means that one of the things I’m helping with you with is either getting a job, changing careers, or developing your current job status.
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For a lot of educators and coaches, the proof is in the pudding. If you are a barber, your hair has to look good. If you help businesses with their Google rankings, your business better be on page 1 of Google. But for other industries and skill sets, there does not need to be such a direct correlation between the teacher’s accomplishments and the subject he/she teaches.
An English professor does not need to have a Pulitzer to inspire great literary talents (nor can all literary geniuses teach!), the Yankees hitting coach doesn’t have to be an Alex Rodriguez to help Alex Rodriguez, and a life coach doesn’t have to be the father of four doctors, thirteen grandchildren; have financial success, cultural finesse, sexual intrigue, and a clean-record marriage; be faithful; and have a great rack of teeth.
No…A life coach does not give you some magic formula for the complete and perfect life. I don’t make miracles (but I make you feel miraculous). What I do as a life coach is analyze your current predicaments and pull from all potential resources to remedy those issues.
It’s piecemeal, it’s practical, and it works. A lot of people come to me thinking they need to get their life on track when really, all they need is an outside pair of eyes to see that the issue is really about a handful of very unsettling issues. While it might feel like a snowball effect, in reality, it’s a fixable set of problems.
So what does a life coach need? A life coach first needs a very good eye for the problems that affect people. He/She needs to know that one person’s unhappiness, based on the given information, might be work related and another might be relationship related. They need to be attuned and have the background and skill to pick a part the problem(s) in detail. Secondly, they need to help unmask the resources available to the client. Thirdly, and most importantly, they need to prescribe ways to implement changes based on these resources.
So redefine life coaching before you define your life coach. It will help a lot.
Almost everyone alive will tell you that they suffer or suffered some form of stress in their lives. But can they give you a definition of stress, past the standard dictionary definition? It’s important that, as your life coach, I help you define stress, so that we can measure its effects on you.
Stress is a word with many meanings. It was first used in 17th century British physicist Robert Hooke’s law (expectedly, Hooke’s Law) that states that an external force produces an equivalent amount of deformation (or strain) in metals. In this instance, stress was viewed as a stimulus, not a reaction.
A lot of times you’ll hear a life coach or conflict mediator talk about getting someone on “the right track.” I never was particularly fond of this term because there is not just one right track, but many possible tracks that could be right for you.
There are many avenues on which we can find happiness; we are forever at the foot of thousands of different trails which lead to thousands more. Life can go in so many different directions that it makes the notions of “right track”/”wrong track” almost irrelevant.
Some people have the mentality that asking for help is giving up, or makes them less masculine, less independent, etc.
Whatever the case may be I want you to know that sometimes asking someone for a little helping hand is the best thing you can do.