Choosing Your Life Coach

2015-03-222015-03-17 ~ adminlife

“Success is simply never giving in to failure – either in mind or body.” ― Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

You want to have a personal life coach but don’t really know how to make sure that you select the right one.

The article below gives some advice to ensure that you select the right life coach to give you the best results in your life.

How to Choose a Personal Life Coach – By Bill Burridge

With increasing regularity nowadays, I find myself getting enquiries from people asking how they should go about choosing a life coach.

Of course, being in the business of training people to be great life coaches, I find it very gratifying to know that the demand for personal coaching services is growing rapidly in my native South Africa. But it’s hardly surprising, given the unquestionable power that coaching has to transform lives.

A few years ago, while I was still in corporate life, the concept of executive coaching was gaining in popularity. Companies felt it entirely appropriate to hire coaches for their most senior executives and even some of their middle managers in important roles. After all, the benefits of even a small improvement in divisional performance would render the cost of coaching quite trivial.

The rise of personal coaching

Until comparatively recently, personal coaching – or life coaching – was largely the domain of wealthy celebrities in the US. Nowadays, many people around the world are enjoying the benefits of having their own personal coach to assist them in achieving what might otherwise remain poorly defined and elusive goals and dreams.

How to choose?

The law of supply and demand dictates that as the demand for personal coaching services rises, so will the supply. The key question, then, for many individuals already convinced of the benefits of coaching, is: “How do I choose the coach that’s just right for me?”

My advice would be to make your choice in four simple steps, applying four ‘filters’ to ensure you get the best match for you.

1. Demographic matching

The first and relatively easy step is what I call “matching the demographics”.

If you’re set on face-to-face coaching then you’ll need someone who you can reach within a reasonable traveling distance. Now, before I move on, let me assure you that being coached by telephone (Skype is very popular for those with broadband internet because it is a free service) is an option that you should not discount lightly. Believe it or not there are actually a number of benefits to being coached by ‘phone – but that’s a topic for a separate article.

If you work best with people of your own – or the opposite – gender, then this too will influence your choice.

There are many excellent, vibrant and surprisingly wise young coaches around, but you may feel uncomfortable with having a coach who is half your age. Alternatively, as a young person, you might prefer to have a coach that has extensive life experience to draw on; someone who’s ‘been there and done that’!

Coaching fees come into the equation too, of course. But if possible, I would encourage you not to restrict the field by applying this filter right up front.

Look past the advertised fees, if you can. Find the ideal match using the steps I have outlined and then negotiate with your preferred coach if you need to, to fit your budget.

Many coaches are negotiable and some will offer substantial discounts if the client is prepared to pay for the entire coaching program in advance. My advice is to look at what you will pay over, say six months, and then consider how worthwhile that will be if you achieve one or two of your most desired goals.

2. Niche matching

The next step is more difficult. I call it “matching the niche”.

Let me ask you this: If you own a house that is built out of timber on the side of a steep hill and you decide to add an extension with an overhanging deck, who would you be more likely to contract with; a general builder – or a builder who specializes in timber homes and cantilevered decking?

When you hire a life coach, you generally do so with a knowledge of the key issues or areas of your life you specifically want to focus on improving. And it may well be that you’ll find a life coach whose specialist niche matches perfectly.

I recommend to all coaches who want to build substantial and self-sustaining practices that they choose a niche market based on their underlying skills and passionate interests.

I know of life coaches who have been very successful focusing on niches like ‘personal empowerment’, ‘intimate relationships’, ‘self-confidence’, ‘youth development’, ‘career building’, ‘retirement’, ‘financial freedom’, ‘childbirth’, and so on.

3. Skills matching

OK, so once you’ve decided on a rough demographic profile of your ideal coach and the niche (if any) that you fall into, you can move on to step 3. I call this “matching the skills”, although this is about more than just skills.

Remember that there is, at least currently, no form of regulation governing the coaching ‘profession’ in South Africa, or, for that matter, most developed countries.

To my mind this is a good thing in that there are no barriers to entry into an industry where having a passion for people and a gift for helping others achieve their dreams is far more important than a raft of high-falluting academic qualifications.

On the other hand it is also a bad thing in that any ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ or ‘Harriet’ can write ‘coach’ on his or her business card and set up in practice without necessarily having the skills, techniques, experience and structure required to back up their coaching.

Now, I firmly believe that good quality life coaches are self-selecting. As a life coach you won’t survive long in business without good word-of-mouth endorsements and client testimonials. You’re either really effective at helping people transform their lives – or you’re not!

And this is my point. Always ask any prospective coach for testimonials or references – and check them out. Ask the coach where and in what method they have been trained. Ask to see their certification and do some research on the coach training provider to check their reputation.

How passionate are the coaches you are considering about the calling they have chosen? Are they registered with any body that promotes ongoing coach development? Do they subscribe to any relevant code of ethics?

4. Vibrational matching

The final step is, I think, the most important of all. I call it “matching the vibration”.

Choosing the ‘right’ (as opposed to ‘good’) coach is, arguably, a more important decision than choosing the ‘right’ doctor or dentist. Whereas a ‘good’ doctor will make the correct diagnosis and prescribe effective medication without necessarily doing it in a way that has you warming to him or her, a ‘good’ coach (i.e. a well trained, equipped and ethical coach) with whom you are unable to build a great rapport, will be unlikely to do much for you.

Rapport is vital to the coaching relationship. Establishing an emotional bond with your coach based on mutual liking and respect, trust, and belief in each other, is the foundation for the achievement of great things through coaching.

Great coaches will have that something special that allows them to empower their clients to go well beyond the normal and yet still be compassionate and caring in their approach.

How do you establish whether there’s a ‘vibrational match’ with your coach? Great coaches worth their salt will offer a free first session that may range from a basic introduction to a client assessment to a full blown goal-setting session in some cases. This is a great opportunity to see if you and your coach are an ideal match.

Coaches need coaches

A final thought. If you’ve ever doubted the power of coaching, think about this. Every great coach will tell you that the one thing crucial to their success is having their own personal coach!

So there you have it.

Bill Burridge is a South African entrepreneur with 27 years of corporate experience. His company, New Insights Africa, is dedicated to developing a network of high quality, independent life coaches, inspired to bring personal freedom, confidence and growth to people from all walks of life in South Africa. The company’s core product is a unique, high quality, home study certification program in life coaching. http://www.life-coach-training-sa.com

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Michael

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and your motivation, and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

The Past and Future of Life Coaching

2015-03-17 ~ adminlife

“Too often, people get stuck in a state of over-thinking, the result is that they never reach a decision.” ― Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

If you have wondered about how and why people use a Life Coach, this article gives a bit of a history of Life Coaching and also some advice on choosing a Life Coach.

Life Coaching – Past, Present, and Future – By Tonia Boterf

If you have been searching the internet for something, you will usually end up with a life coach site popping up in your results at some point. Life Coaching has evolved over the years and continues to change and grow – but what is life coaching, how do you choose a life coach, and what should you be aware of?

Life Coaching Past:

Life Coaching really emerged, noticeably, about 10 years ago. Most life coaching was advertised as Executive Coaching or Leadership Coaching and they were usually hired by corporations for staff or individual training. With the onset of in-house corporate training teams, the need for Executive Coaches diminished and many sought other areas to continue coaching in. Since then, there are now life coaches that coach in every area of life you can think of and then some. Many life coaches specialize in one or two main life areas but many still coach in multiple life areas. Originally, life coaches were people who had some kind of previous work experience before going into coaching. Most Executive Coaches came out of the corporate business world and as an Executive Coach or Leadership Coach, were able to make great incomes. Many of these past Executive Coaches also have become Client Attraction or Marketing Coaches in today’s climate and their services are provided to corporations still but mostly to small or solo businesses or individuals.

Life Coaching Now:

Now life coaching is common, easy to find and is for businesses and individuals and can be called just about anything. Today, there are many life coach training schools but there are huge disparities between the qualities of education students receive from school to school. In fact, there are no required educational standards that a life coach school must follow/provide and there is no regulation of the life coach industry. Anyone can call themselves a Life Coach and open a practice – buyer beware becomes a very serious phrase to remember. There are now a couple of professional organizations, such as the International Coaching Federation, which as a professional membership organization, is working diligently to establish coaching standards, life coach school standards and looking at types of regulations that could benefit the industry and consumers.

There are now between 10,000 and 20,000 life coaches that are providing services to customers. There are an increasing number of people pursuing becoming a life coach. Many people want to help others but many think they can earn a tremendous amount of money while being able to work at home in their pjs, part-time. If only it was that easy. Today’s world of having a web based business and all it entails has become very complicated and it isn’t as cheap in start-up costs either. Most life coaches are earning much less than $20,000 a year because they don’t have enough clients. Many coaches fail because you have to be a person who can structure their own time while working from home. When you work in a business, it provides structure that you work within. At home, there is no structure except what a person creates and it is all too easy to not be structured. Marketing has become a huge part of daily life for life coaches, much more than ever before and many have taken marketing to an incredible level of hard selling. Those ‘coaches’ providing marketing or small business start-up coaching have created a huge income based industry but it has also gained tremendous competition over the last few years.

Niche Is In:

Niche in life coaching is the current theme – this means that a life coach ‘specializes’ in one or a few areas only. There are many life coaches though who still would be considered general life coaches and offer a much broader range of coaching services. The market is pushing life coaches to have specific niche’s quite hard and explain that the public prefers ‘specialists’ and are willing to pay more for them. It is rather like the medical profession, you have generalists, generalists with a smaller focus, specialists with a broad focus and specialists with very specific focus topics. So, everyone entering coaching is told to have a niche; it could be life coaching, client attraction, marketing, public relations, Christian, organization, health, financial and many, many more areas that ‘coaching’ is being offered in.

Buyer Beware:

Throughout my research, I was totally amazed at how few life coaches will post their prices but also, and perhaps even more importantly, they do not post their educational or work experience! I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in sharing my dreams and goals with someone unless they are qualified and that means having work, life and educational experience in their ‘niche’ or coaching areas. I’ve asked many other coaches, and some of them are very well known and successful, and been told that education and experience are not important! So, I guess from that, if someone worked at the local animal shelter and didn’t graduate from high school, they are just as well qualified to provide life coaching services as everyone else. NOT in my book. We check out loads of information before we buy a car, before we choose a doctor, and even before we purchase a mattress. Why wouldn’t it mean something about what education and work/life experiences a life coach has? So, buyer beware!

Marketing and using psychology to sell whether on the web or in ‘real’ life, is something every business uses. Unfortunately, the web is unregulated and you cannot check things out and be secure that the information you get is honest and truthful. There is no Consumer Reports or Better Business Bureau for the Internet. The science of selling is intense and is geared at: getting visitors to give e-mail address for a ‘free’ gift so they have you in the mailing data base; use words and colors to attract you and make you ‘trust’ them, offer free material to read and low priced items and then you’ll receive e-mails about tele-seminars, videos, guest speakers, and high cost products/memberships/mentorships and mastermind groups. Many coaches are genuine but how do you tell the difference without making many painful, expensive and time consuming mistakes. Also read the fine print, many web businesses do not have guarantees or refunds available. Look for coaches who belong to national organizations, who post their credentials (experience and education), and did they graduate from a life coaching or coaching program or school? You can’t trust testimonials often, due to a business may have provided services to hundreds but you will only see the few who wrote glowing testimonials, a site that has ratings on it is great but can be doctored, asking to speak to a former client is the best method of checking out a particular coach business, even many former clients is better. I hope there will be some type of review system devised someday, as in your community word gets around quickly about a company, but on the internet you don’t have that check and balance system available. So, buyer beware!

Why people should try Life Coaching:

Life Coaching is an awesome way for people to stay motivated, keep their focus, gain self-insights and strive to achieve their goals. Life Coaching deals with the here and now and goes forward from there, it is an action based co-active coaching style that is not like therapy which deals with past life events and more psychological issues. A life coach should have the educational/work/life experiences and tools necessary to meet the needs of their customers and if not, then say so and refer the customer to a life coach that does. I recently tried to get a referral network started at the life coach school I attended, so that I and others would know where to refer a customer if I felt their needs could be better met by another. Only two other coaches felt secure enough to put their strengths out there – no one else!

In today’s busy, fast-paced world, it is often filled with stress, little personal support and difficult to achieve your goals or solve problems. Life Coaching is a great means to help a person with achieving their goals, solving problems, getting the support they need so that life is less difficult and overall, improved.

What to look for in a Coach:

Tips for you, as a customer in choosing a life coach include: know ahead of time what you want to achieve with a life coach and be able to answer how a coach can best work with you and you with them. It is also helpful to have an idea on how long you are willing to be in coaching before you expect to achieve your results and how much you can afford; research different life coach websites and read their articles, newsletters and check out their education/work/life experience and training; interview 3 different coaches – include in the interview all your questions on experience, prices, examples of accomplishments related to your goal, how long do they think it would take to achieve your goal, explain how you prefer to work with a coach and ask what their style of coaching is; ask for two references that had goals similar to yours; and most importantly, make sure the life coach you choose is one that you ‘connect’ with or that ‘feels right’ to you. Other possible questions can be asking what the life coach feels are their strengths and weaknesses. Also be cautious if you get the impression that the life coach may end up ‘telling you what to do’ or pressuring you into goals or avenues that you do not want and they seem more the agenda of the coach than yours.

Life Coaching is supposed to be about the customer and what they want to achieve and their style of learning/growing/achieving through the process of reaching their goals. It is not about the life coach. In fact, every life coach’s goal should be to put themselves out of business. If coaching were done well, then eventually, fewer people would need it. As the saying goes, ‘teach them to fish rather than feeding them fish and they will never go hungry’. Costs for life coaching services can typically run $300-$600 a month and some will go to $300 or more an hour. Some coaches actually earn $18,000 hour. If the life coaches you check-out don’t publish their costs, ask.

What is the future of Life Coaching?

Where is Life Coaching going in the future? While the economy and the increasing stress of everyday life is severely hurting the quality of people’s lives, life coaching will continue to grow in the number of people it serves as well as the number of life coaches entering the field. The number of people utilizing the web and becoming web based businesses will continue to increase the number of coaches who provide marketing, client attraction and who start business types of services.

One of the newer life coaching waves coming is ‘Wellness Coaching’ which is similar to health coaching. Of concern to me is that many, who are entering this ‘niche’, receive only 20 hrs of training. Many life coaches practicing health or wellness coaching have not checked their state’s laws on what they can and cannot coach on in this ‘niche’. A life coach cannot treat, diagnose, cure, prescribe or provide counseling. As a Holistic Practitioner, Certified Life Coach and Licensed Social Worker, I fear for people receiving life coaching services on health related subjects from life coaches with so little background in health and thus the potential for harm of the customer may occur. This is my concern and opinion which is shared by some and not by others. The pressure for more specific specialization, ‘niching’, will likely increase as well.

Will social media change the face of coaching? That’s unknown at this time. There are many blogs and forums now that people can access for support for their specific needs, meet and get to know other people interested in the same things. The world has gotten smaller and it is much easier to find people to talk to on the web, yet we are more isolated in our ‘real’ lives than ever before.

I envision the complexities of marketing, which include free give aways, membership groups, increased administrative time (which means less time for coaching), hard selling and heavy marketing will continue to increase, as well. I envision there will be expanded Coaching Schools that provide coaching education that gives core basics for all types of coaching and then gives additional education in specific areas of specialty types of coaching. These will greatly lead to better qualified service providers. I found it amazing, how many coaches actually came out of the computer field from computer programming, IT support, web design and such. I do hope that something can be done to make sure the competency, skill, education, and experience of life coaches becomes more uniform and is not as much a ‘shooting in a barrel’ experience for customers to find truly skilled and dedicated coaches.

In conclusion, life coaching has gone from corporate America to mainstream. The benefits of life coaching are becoming better known and there are many gifted life coaches available – but you will have to do some weeding first. Life Coaching can improve the quality of your life and even your physical and mental health and thus, it is hoped, it may be covered by health insurance as pro-active services someday. In the mean time, life coaching is affordable and easy to find. If you are in search of life coaching for a very specific area of your life or goal, there is likely a life coach that covers it. But the bottom line is that it is up to the consumer to pick the ‘right’ life coach for them and if it doesn’t work for you, then stop and switch to a life coach that will ‘fit’ you better. Life coaching has evolved considerably and will continue to do so and in 6 years, we’ll write another article updating you on how things have, yet again, changed.

If you have Questions in your life, Tonia Boterf at http://www.thepracticalexpert.com has answers. A multi-tool approach of services and products for you to start getting Answers to your Questions is just a click away. Check out our series of books on caring for aging parents and decrease your stress too. Tonia Boterf is your Practical Expert to finding the tools and answers to get what you need and want out of life.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Life-Coaching—Past,-Present,-and-Future&id=2553464

Michael

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and your motivation, and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Why is Life Coaching Successful?

2014-06-092014-06-08 ~ adminlife

“Share your aspirations only with those who will support you, not those who will respond with doubt or lack of interest.” ― Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

Can you measure the success of life coaching? Why does life coaching work for a client? These and other questions are answered in the article below.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

Understanding Why Life Coaching Is Successful – by Feroce

Accounts of the effectiveness of executive coaching have proven returns on investments of more than 500%. No like studies have been done regarding life coaching and quite honestly, a human life has fewer valued metrics than business so that anyone could measure coaching. However coaching executives have little more to do with business than coaching people on their lives does – even executive coaching in essence comes down to life coaching – so there’s no reason to imagine the ROI in life coaching, if it were calculable, would be any different. In truth when it comes to coaching, clients’ lives change impressively. I have seen it over and over again. How does is it possible? One could compose novels on the topic, but here I will expand on a few high-level reasons.

Life coaching essentially works for one reason: because the client desires it to work. Life coaching is firstly about the intent and goals of the client. This is one huge contrast between coaching on the one hand and advising on the other: your consultant can succeed in large part without your dedication to what he or she is doing, because he or she is the one doing it. Coaching is carried out by you- with a difference.

Coaching works in an impressive way because a good coach meets several human basic needs:

The overpowering power of commitment and accountability, like when a person wanting something works harder for it because of a promise to another.
The aching for a friend or partner on one’s path, particularly during difficult times.
The odd but true need for authorization to change, especially when you know doing so will mean a loss of understanding by, or even growing away from, old friends.
The desire to be and feel understood.

Coaches use many tools and methods in order to assist in the client’s desire for change. Coaching is a career built on a foundation of layers. Methods can be acquired from psychological development, business strategy and motivational theory, for instance. Yet life coaches and business coaches collectively have a few tools that the professions from which we’ve adopted do not.

Personal Life Combines Diverse Methods and Professions

Personal life coaching is a job that utilizes the most effective techniques of its forerunners, which include:

Sport’s psychology
A psychoanalyst’s position of unconditional positive respect and a mediator’s listening skills of non-judgmental awareness
Mentoring
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Organizational growth
Spirituality
Marketing
Philosophy
Self-starting skills
Personal development and change
Motivational theory
Existential Philosophy and Psychology
Leadership
Strong business coaching skills including planning, setting goals, reverse-energy strategy and maneuvers based on the goal, analysis, follow-up and accountability
Holistic healing and the like
Cognitive behavioral therapy

The Strong Points of Coaching is in Its Dedication to Your Expanded “Knowingness.”

Once the client’s intentions are already strong, there is one reason for the effectiveness of life coaching- as it does seem to be more effective in generating measurable results than similar person (centered fields such as psychotherapy)- it could possibly be from the power of commitment. In this case, a client’s commitment to the coach through him or herself is, to work with the coach to thrive through awareness. It is the awareness of her “self”, her self-limiting thinking, her relationships, her career and her situation. Personal power is attained through greater awareness.

The strength of commitment is planted from social support of people adapting to who they say they are and doing what they say they’re going to do. Plainly speaking, personal coaching takes your own natural honesty and good will to embellish it for your benefit.

Tightly related to devotion in the success rate of coaching, is this fact- coaching is a united effort. Coaching is two people united and working towards the same goal. Just imagine the strength that can be reigned in with two or more wills trained on the same object! Also, the other person’s will is what keeps you accountable to your own.

Coaching succeeds because it’s Supported by Responsibility

Even though therapy and coaching may use exchangeable skills at times, they hold to different means and goals – including the setting of goals in the first place. When you see a therapist, you probably won’t set any measurable goals (often with legitimate reasons). At the most specific, you may say you desire something such as comprehension of who you are, to feel better, or to have more “balance” and quality in your lifestyle. You don’t usually go to a therapist when you are healthy and want personal growth or to be more successful.

All the same, without the presence of goals you will be missing any vision of where you are going, you will have no way to measure and hold yourself accountable. In addition, the easygoing nature of the psychotherapeutic relationship calls on most therapists to try not to hold you to any goals. However sociologists and business experts who work in goal theory know that all of this is a concoction that allows one to be unable to meet one’s goals. If you’re seeking a coach, being unsuccessful isn’t one part of your plan.

But then if you pay for the services of a personal trainer, the difference between sitting at home doing nothing and sporting a new figure, washboard stomach, or cardiovascular fitness is simple. You already know that you should be at the gym every day and your trainer is already there preparing your workout for you. You hire a personal coach or a trainer because you realize that you may not have the conditioning or tools to get there by yourself. However you do know you have the persona and sense of honor that will not allow you to let others down – nor yourself, once you have made a commitment “publicly” to your coach or trainer.

Coaching can give you that power that can virtually guarantee results you just can’t get any other way. Or, if you can get the results somewhere else you’re likely have a long, drawn out wait (and experience a great deal more frustration).

Coaching Offers Clearness and Visibility in Transformations

Coaching aid clients in being able to see and then realizing what they really want to do in their lives and careers, professions and businesses.

Most people find that that is the hardest part and many of us don’t even have an idea of what we want to do or we don’t know how to get there. We may even demand a little help in bringing out the fearlessness we already have. Yet if it’s anxiety that keeps us from seeing that we already know where we want to be, a coach is a loyal friend and confidant in facing and overcoming the fears that we conceal.

Source:

To know more please visit Life coach and coaches

Powerful Words When Life Coaching

2014-05-252014-05-24 ~ adminlife

“If not now, when?” – Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

Life coaches ask lots of questions to help you to find your blocks and develop those areas that are holding you back from being successful.

Here are 7 words that coaches should be using and what you should be asking yourself.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

The seven most powerful words in Coaching by Jaco Beukes

Seven small words are so powerful, it can and will change your life!

There are not many words that have the power to unlock possibilities and help people fulfill their potential. But these seven words are crucial to any coach or ambitious person’s toolkit. If you know how to use them effectively, they can be a brush in your hand in front of an open canvas. However, if you use them incorrectly they will create a barrier between you and the person you work with…

Coaching requires many questions to be asked to the person you work with, and this is an art! Before discussing particular effective words, I want to share a few thoughts on questioning itself. This is to ensure that the environment in which the questions are asked is optimised…

1. Know why you are asking specific questions. Your aim is to help clients think through their circumstances and generate possibilities that will help them to reach their goals. This means that you do not need to know everything and should not ask questions to merely satisfy your own curiosity, but rather to help them come up with what will help them move forward.

2. Make sure that you establish good rapport with your clients before you start with in-depth questioning. If in-depth questions are asked before a suitable level of rapport has been established, your questions may actually cause the client to close off instead of open up.

3. Always ask open questions, questions that cannot be answered with only a “yes” or “no”.

4. Really listen to the speaker, do not use the time to think of what you’ll say next. Let them determine the direction of the conversation.

Once you have created rapport and the right context, the following seven questioning words can be particularly powerful: what, why, how, when, where, who and if. Let’s look at each in turn:

What

This is probably the word that any good coach will use most frequently. It could be used to elicit information, help clients to think through the possible consequences of their actions and assist them in defining their goal. A very strong addition to what is the little word ‘else’. By asking what else continuously, clients are helped to generate countless possibilities from which they could then choose the most appropriate action.

Why

This word should be approached with caution. If it is used wrongly, someone might react defensively, e.g. why did you do that? These questions will then form a barrier between the coach and the client. It is therefore much better to change into a “what” question, e.g. what were the consequences of this action? Or what made you decide to take this action? However, when used to test or increase motivation, why-questions can be very effective. For instance when someone talks about their goal and you want to help them to make it into a strong and compelling reason to follow their dream, ask: why do you want this so much?

How

This word could help people to take action, by thinking through the steps they will need to take to turn their dreams into reality. Asking a question like: how will you go about achieving your goal? will help clients to think through the actions they need to take next. Another powerful how-question would be to ask: how will you know when you’ve reached your goal? This question will help clients to become very clear on what needs to happen and what specific elements are required. This will make it easier for them to recognise when they have achieved their goal.

Who

This word can be used to achieve two major outcomes. Firstly it can help people to find out who they can ask to support them or who could help them reach their goals. Secondly a who-question could help clients to realise their own responsibility for achieving their goals. This question, whose responsibility is this, can help clients to really take ownership of what needs to be done. This could be a powerful experience for clients when they really take ownership of the goals for their life.

This word is used to help clients see possibilities and unlock their creativity, e.g. if you were to do this, what would happen? If you knew the answer, what would you say? If a miracle happened and everything was how you would like it to be, what would your life look like?

When

After someone has decided on their action plan, this word is probably the most effective word that could be used. This word transforms dreams into goals. The word “when” can change an idea into a specific action. When someone has made plans and seem excited about doing it, just ask: when will you do this?

Where

Although this question is not often used, it could be a real gem, especially when it is asked not to determine a specific place, but rather a direction or consequence. For instance asking someone: where will this lead? Could help them to realise the consequences or possibilities of their actions and could motivate them to take action as soon as possible. So, if you asked this question after someone said they would clean their garden, they could respond with the following answers: I will not be embarrassed to have friends over anymore; I may even invite my neighbours over… I think we could actually become good friends… This question could thus generate a lot of possibilities and subsequent excitement about the future.

These seven words are powerful, they could change your practise and they could help to change people’s lives. So use them with precision and care and see how they will help people to unlock their amazing potential.

Source:

Author: Jaco Beukes – Personal Performance and Life Coach

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Making Life Coaching Work

2014-05-132014-05-09 ~ adminlife

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

We all sometimes feel that life is not unfolding as it should. It is possible that we just don’t understand all the things that are in our way of reaching our goals and success.

The article below gives some information on what a life coach is and how they can help you.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

Life Coaching: What it is & How to Make it Work for You – Coach Guerci

Have you ever felt as if your life lingered in a permanent state of confusion? Are you trapped in a constant state in which you don\’t know where you are going, what you are doing, or what your priorities are? Many people grapple with highly destructive, near-paralyzing inner dialogue and overall outlook on a daily basis. They do not understand themselves and their talents. They have no real goals, or they do not know how to attain goals that they have set. Life coaching can help anyone who feels that they can benefit from some assistance in finding direction in their life.

What Does A Life Coach Do?
A life coach will help you restructure your thinking and goals, in order to let you take charge of your own life. They can help you to take a look the direction in which you are going and decide what steps you need to take to improve your life situations. A life coach is not an instructor, telling you exactly what you have to do, but rather a mentor who can help you to determine the best paths.

Expertise and services that most life coaches provide to clients include:
– Long and short-term goal setting
– Insightful dialogue and guidance for the resolution of personal problems
– Development of strategies for attainment of goals
– Dialogue that assists client identify and understand his/her own needs and wants dialogue that fosters an understanding of the role wants/needs should play in relationships
Impartial, but sympathetic, opinions and advice, when needed and warranted

There may be many other benefits for each individual who chooses to use a life coach. It all depends on what you and your coach determine are your goals and desires. There is no cut-and-dried formula to the process of coaching. Everything is an individually tailored experience, designed around the client, their needs and goals, and their personality.

Are You A Good Candidate For Life Coaching?
Life coaching can be a positive experience for anyone who wants to make changes in their life. However, you must be at a point where you can be cooperative and ready for change. You should be able to take friendly criticism and suggestions and commit to following through with the plans that you develop with your coach. Be prepared to share those difficult personal issues and admit to your own faults and weaknesses. A life coach has no magic wand that will transform your future, however they can help you to obtain the tools needed to find the answers and solutions you are seeking for life’s problems and challenges.

If you are ready to take a step forward in your life, consider a life coach. They will become an invaluable resource to you in your quest to live out your hopes and dreams. Take the initiative to partner with a coach to discover who you are, what your goals are, and how to obtain them. No matter where you are on your journey, you can always make the rest of the ride a bit smoother and more enjoyable by finding purpose and direction.

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About the Author

For over 15 years, Coach Jim Guerci has focused his entire agenda around helping people create lush lives of peak performance, academic excellence, and spiritual awareness. Coach Jim Guerci is an acclaimed Master NLP Practitioner, Certified NLP Hypnotherapist, and life coach who has been helping individuals make effective life changes for over fifteen years. Visit Coach Guerci’s websites http://www.peakperformanceguy.com

http://www.teacherguy.org

http://YUSinc.com

http://www.PeakPerformanceGuy.com for more information.