You know the phrase, “We teach what we have to learn”? Well, I should never be surprised that I spend a good deal of my days teaching, coaching, reminding clients about the very things I need to be reminded of. Some days I find I’ve done such a great job that my clients say exactly what I need to hear! Today was such a day.  I needed to hear that I should be living in the now and that’s what happened.

My client started describing how she believes she is overcoming her anxiety. Besides being vigilant about what thoughts she’s thinking and giving up complaining, she realized that when she consciously was living in the now situation (whatever situation or task it is she’s involved in), her experience this past week has been – way less anxiety.

Just the reminder I need. I’m not having a problem with anxiety but I sometimes have a problem of feeling emotionally flat. I believe that habit comes from my childhood when the negative feelings and sense of powerlessness was so acute for me that I had to numb out so that I could survive my childhood. And that habit has survived to some extent all these years later. But when I am living in the now, I feel myself and feel my lively, juicy interior self.

You might be wondering how you are in the now or not even know what I mean.  I’ll do it right in this moment and stop and explain the experience.

1. I stop and notice whether my full attention is on what I’m involved in. Right now I’m writing on the computer and because I write often and fairly easily, I notice that part of me is a little absent which means I am not in the present.
2. Now I come out from behind what feels like an inner door and be here with all of my attention focused on this very moment.
3. Now I’m trying to type and stay present with what I am doing – notice my fingers on the keys, my eyes following the type on the screen.

I knew even as I wrote the above that it isn’t the best description in the world but, hopefully, you know what I mean, will practice a bit and can duplicate my experience of living in the now.

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]]> http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/living-in-the-now/feed 1 http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/attraction-marketing http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/attraction-marketing#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:00:55 +0000 allaboutlifecoaching http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/?p=13 Law of Attraction – How Does It Work in Marketing?

I’ve spent many years doing what I recognize allows positive change to happen. I work on healing the past, changing my beliefs and performing inspired action (inspired because now my inner energy field is free to attract what I want – Law of Attraction in action). And boy! Am I attracting!

In the last month I’ve gotten 3 new clients and attracted a really big, wonderful business opportunity that makes use of my gifts and gets me really excited.

For years  I have worked to clear  my blocks that keep me from abundance.   I have also been coaching my clients to do the same.

Can it be so easy? Why doesn’t it always work? My experience is that most people are afraid to deal with the emotional part and so those hurts from the past must keep them bound to continue to create the same thing over and over.

It’s not a very black and white, this-is-exactly-how-you-do-it kind of thing. But I do know it takes healing, changing beliefs and then comes the inspired action. Oh, what is my inspired action? Well, because I know that my marketing efforts work best when people get to know me, I am creating ways for that to happen.  I have built a place where people of all walks of life can come to feel secure and grow. This is just one of the ways that I have allowed the law of attraction to work for me and help those around me.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

]]> http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/attraction-marketing/feed 2 http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/is-just-listening-an-acceptable-activity-for-coaches-with-their-clients http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/is-just-listening-an-acceptable-activity-for-coaches-with-their-clients#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:00:26 +0000 allaboutlifecoaching http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/?p=968 Life Coach & Listening

This blog is turning out to also be a bit of a forum for life coaches – not just people who might be interested in hiring a coach. One of my favorite client experiences has been helping a newbie client take off into her coaching practice and responding to questions like these from a reader of this blog:

Thanks so much Maia for your response to my question about coaching clients who can tend to be looking for someone to listen to them rather than in taking action. Yes, I have indeed been asking lot of questions to get my client to be more specific about what he wishes to get from the coaching, but it’s proving hard to pin him down (especially as it’s coaching via email). As you say, it’s important to confirm exactly what someone wants to achieve from the coaching so that I’m clear on what they expect from me – and to ensure we are a good fit.

Tamsin Butters, nudgeme (http://nudgeme.co.uk)

Part of the role I play with many clients is partly listening but I always find out early on what I’m listening for. What I mean by that is: if I know where a client is headed, then I can hear if their account of what’s happening with them sounds like its heading in the direction they want to go. I am good at listening between the lines so no problem. But I don’t think I’d want to work with a client who was email only. I definitely exchange email with clients in between sessions but email is a funny and tricky thing and easily misinterpreted.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Thinking about a career change? Once reserved for sports, coaching has spread into all areas of our lives. Becoming a life coach is easier then it sounds since coaches come from all sorts of backgrounds. Consulting, counseling, business, training, sports and entrepreneurship are just some of the areas that can provide some of the experience you will need. You could, for example, have a lot of experience with relationships and make that your focus or part of what you offer your clients.

If you are thinking of becoming a life coach starting a life coach business, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you an authentic person, living your values and experiencing success?
• Are you a good communicator?
• Do you sincerely wish the best for everyone?
• Are you great at making life work for you?
• Would you like to design your own workday?
• Are you willing to market yourself?

The best way to begin to figure out if life coaching as a career is for you is to hire a good one and see what the experience of being coached is like from the inside out.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

I haven’t really asked any therapists how they feel about life coaches but I’ve felt some things from some. My first experience with a therapist about coaches was with my first coach who had been a therapist for 15 years. I don’t know if she ever told me what prompted her to change hats but certainly she had no “issues” around coaches. However I have run into a couple of therapists whose questions and comments and my reading between the lines and experiencing their tenseness, leads me to believe that some therapists have issues around the profession of life coaching.

The issue I’m referring to is the one that feels something like “I went to a zillion years of school, spent 3000 hours being supervised and you just call yourself a life coach and hang out your sign. It feels like you are stepping on my toes.” And I don’t blame any therapist who feels that way. If I had done what they had done, I’d probably feel the same way or at least have to reign in my judgments very tightly not to feel that way.

And what’s the difference between a therapist and a life coach anyway? Well, I can only speak for me but I’d say therapy is often about working to heal past trauma by going into it deeply. The results of therapy are often and, hopefully, profound.

Sometimes, maybe often, life coaching has similar results but is most often based more on doing things – like changing careers or improving your relationships or improving your work performance. It tends to be more about going forward rather than backward. The results of any improvement are therapeutic to your self esteem.

I will say this. If you came to me for coaching and wanted (or needed) therapy, I’d know it – and would be able to support you in knowing it too.

I’m going to contact some therapists and ask them to comment.

After I wrote this I had a long conversation with a fabulous woman who is a therapist. She loves life coaching and life coaches so much that she has started an association so that potential clients can get a feel for and get to know possible coaches before they even contact them and so that coaches and mental health professionals have a place to connect and support each other. It is called Online Organization of Coaching Associates . The mission stated is: The OOCA is a grassroots associative organization dedicated to bringing unity to both online and community professional personal  coaches and expert mentor professionals by way of information, education, and supportive services, not only amongst professional coaches; but also, with the clients that utilize their services.

So either things are changing as they tend to do, or I ran into a really unusual therapist in Angela D.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Life coaching is designed to help clients determine and achieve goals and improve their self view in order to make them happen.

Life coaching has developed from executive coaching, sports coaching and leadership training and uses techniques from counseling, sociology, psychology and mentoring. Life coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a client’s current and future behavior and life.

According to a survey of coaching clients, “sounding board” and “motivator” were the top roles selected for a coach. The survey said that top three issues clients seek help on are time management, career, and business. Those are areas I may work with someone on but only as they impact their lives in the realm of their view of themselves.

So if you want to be a life coach, I believe you first need to have the experience of being coached. There are many training schools available and more seem to be popping up every day. Formal training may be what you want or maybe just working with a good coach yourself will give you what you need to help people achieve their goals.

When I work with clients who have a lot of life experience and have a way of positively influencing almost everyone they interact with, I suggest the possibility that they might not need formal training at all. I did attend a top coaching school, The Coaches Training Institute, but I didn’t get that much out of the training. That is not to say that their training isn’t good. It is. That is to say that it probably wasn’t such a good fit for me. I learned much more about being a good coach by working with a good coach for 2 1/2 years.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

If you decide you want to become a life coach, one of the things you’ll have to think about after the decision is how to get clients or how to let people know you are available as alife coach.

I attend a monthly networking meeting where I go so the people there can refer business to me and I can do the same for them. One of the activities at each meeting is a 30-second “elevator speech” or, as they call it in this meeting, a “round robin”. I was lamenting to my son that people need to get to know me if they want to consider either hiring me or referring me and that 30 seconds doesn’t really allow for that. So he offered to write my round robin for me. It is as follows:

There’s a subject I’d really like to broach.
30 seconds isn’t much time for a life coach.
My job is to give suggestions, advice and tips
In the realm of life and relationships.
But here I can’t say much, just give a dose.
I need more time, though I’m not verbose.
While I’m not perfect and I’m no messiah.
I help people plenty and my name is Maia.
I’d like to end my little rhyme.
Saying lets get together when we have more time.

It takes me 30 seconds to say and always gets a smile. And, he, my son, Magic Matt, has a website full of little poems about each of the products he sells.

Oh. I forgot to say I never got a new client this way but I don like to experiment with whatever is suggested to me.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!