I know my husband since Oct. of 1982. I’ve been in an intimate relationship with him for 28 years and married to him for 26 and sometimes I haven’t the foggiest idea who he is. He’s like a beautiful being from another planet that has come into my life to give me more than I could ever have imagined. He loves me amazingly. He believes in me and my abilities – often some steps ahead of how much I can believe in myself. He is so known to me and yet – sometimes I’m almost breathless with the knowledge that how this happened – how we finally found each other is like some kind of play Directed by Someone beyond thought.

Now how does that sound coming from am a total proponent in the belief that we create our own lives? But I can’t quite wrap myself around having created so amazingly while being unaware that I was doing it. How did it happen? Am I really this powerful? Is he?Does anyone else feel this way? Do I feel this way because the contrast with my former life and relationship is so great?

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

How would one weed out and figure out which courses to even read the website about?

It is an interesting experience for me to put myself in the proverbial shoes of someone who is starting such a search. I think I would be wildly confused. I just jotted down a list of 5 things that will help and that will give you a way to sort through and recognize which ones might be of interest to you:

• What kind of coaching do they teach?

Coaching is varied. There are coaches who will help you with life skills or specialize in ADD or work with executives. The list is very long and almost as long as the list of people who call themselves life coaches. I’ve seen people who are in multi-level marketing call themselves life coaches and those like I was when I did general coaching who feel they can help most anyone with anything. Ask yourself what do you enjoy helping people achieve in their lives? I eventually realized that I want to help people learn how to divest themselves of the accumulation of old unexpressed emotions and feelings because I realized in my own life what amazing transformational benefits I achieved in my own life as a result of that work. So in my course of training, coaches learn the same thing – how to help clients transform their lives by virtue of teaching tools and coaching them though a specific 8 month program leaving everyone with higher self esteem and a closer connection to who they really are.

• Are the life coaching courses you are looking at inclusive of personal and/or group coaching for you?

It is my experience that you can’t become a coach unless you’ve had a coach. Coaching is not an intellectual pursuit that can just be learned from books or videos. Books or videos can teach you re-useable techniques but they cannot teach you how to use the intuitive parts of yourself to work with clients. It doesn’t mean a course is bad if it doesn’t include this; it only means it is incomplete and you will want to get this experience somewhere and somehow. Because I knew from my own experience that this was true, I built coaching and mentoring in a group and privately into my program.

• Is there supervised coaching?

If there is no experienced person who has been doing coaching successfully for some period of time who will listen to your coaching and give you pointers and praise, it will be your clients only who you will be “experimenting” with and it will be hard for you to have conversations with conviction with potential clients. Which leads to marketing and promotion….

• Do the life coaching courses you are looking at include training and support on how to attract clients to you?

Will you be promoted on their website? Will they teach you how to become a known person on facebook or twitter or how to set up local workshops to let people know who you are? Is their ongoing support and collaboration with other coaches in other areas and who have varied backgrounds and experience and who will contribute what they know to improve the whole?

• And finally it is important to know the cost and the time needed to fulfill the training.

Hope this helps you as you wade your way through the 336,000 life coach courses.

As a life coach, it is important to know when it is the best time for your clients to move on and continue working on their own. It is the role of  a life  coach to  have the communication skills to end the relationship. A good coach is responsible enough to know that the life of a coaching relationship is not a lifetime. Knowing that is how the best life coaches build their business. Not by keeping clients forever, but by letting them go when the time is right and generating more referrals based on their outstanding service.

In the beginning, clients are unsure. They may be testing the relationship and feeling the waters to determine if life coaching is really for them. Or if you really are the right coach for them. Soon, if it’s right, they will start to become a little more trusting and may feel it may benefit them to continue. As things start to come together for your client and some of the small goals seem to be falling into place, the client will begin to expect the life coaching to work and for things to continue to progress in the right direction. When the client has mastered all the skills you have to offer and is doing well towards their goals, you will see that it is time for them to continue on their own.

And it goes both ways. If you have a coach and feel it is time to move on – either to another coach or onto your life by yourself – test your communication skills and have the courage and courtesy to yourself and your coach to give at least a month’s notice. Some coach’s will talk to you about this in the beginning or along the way but they may not and it’s good for you to know. Since you have built up such an intimate connection, be fair to the coaching relationship and build in a few sessions for closure.

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

Hang Up Your Sign

Since there are no government requirements, at least in the United States, then one can simply hand up your sign – on your door, the door of your office, on the internet, on posters, flyers, etc. As a matter of fact, I used to just tell people to do just that.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: Most people don’t have the confidence to just do that unless they come from a background that easily transfers their talents and skills and if they have the personal confidence in themselves to do so.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: You just do it and start promoting and marketing yourself however you think is best.

Take an Online Course

If you’ve looked at all, you know there are approximately a zillion online programs telling you that they will train you how to become a life coach. I myself have never done that but have heard many reports.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: I hear even about the best ones is that there is no support and no actual training. There may be books and tapes and videos but that is not really training as a coach. Coaching is a doing kind of thing and all the information in the world does not give one the experience of coaching.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: I believe these courses are fairly inexpensive.

Go to a Training School (In-person or online/teleconference)

This is how I got my training. I was trained by one of the top schools. I went to 5 weekend classes along with around 22 others. The training was the very most basic of trainings.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: We did what they called popcorn coaching which meant that all 22+ of us got to do about 2 minutes of coaching in front of the room which made me feel very self-conscious and uncomfortable and really didn’t teach me anything much. If I wanted to work with a coach, I’d have to hire one trained by them for $400+ per month and go through their certification program which cost another $6,000 or $7,000.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: Since I decided to forgo that experience, I can only report what the many others I know have told me. They felt like they could coach however their support and coaching were over after the program was over and they were on their own again.

Become Trained by a Coach/Mentor with Experience

No this isn’t a sales pitch but this is what I do. I work directly with each trainee and supervise their coaching when they get to that part of the program. I actually teach them how to become a life coach by helping them find their own unique gifts and talents. They weekly hear not only my coaching but coaching done by those that have come before them. It seems silly for me to go on about it. But if you’ve been asking yourself how to become a life coach, click here and read and see if what I do is right for you.

Whatever you decide, have a ball coaching. It is a most joyful thing to do for and with people.

by Maia’s Martian

Yesterday evening Maia and I were talking  and she brought up the topic about how having sex too soon (whatever that means) in a new relationship sometimes seems to confuse things for women and not always in a good way.

Because I am wired and socialized as a Martian my first impulse was to think “the more sex the better and the sooner the better, what’s wrong with that?”

As I thought about my own experience however, I realized that there is more to it than that and so here is  the view from an older Martian after 25 years in a successful relationship:

The word intimacy usually is a more polite way to say “sex”.  Here is a more inclusive meaning of intimacy – INTO-ME-SEE -  which maybe means “through sex we are able to know each other.”

And that is the gift of an intimate long term committed relationship. You develop  a mirror to each other’s Soul. In simple terms you get to see the Real You and the Real Her reflected  through each other’s eyes on a daily basis. How incredible is that? Maybe women already know this but I know from being a man for almost 75 years that most men don’t know that is even possible.

Think of sex as a door that opens into a room where you will find this gift of discovering each other’s Soul.

The difficulty is that Martian DNA  is only about opening as many doors as possible. However, if doors are too easy for a man to open then they will never venture into the room and discover the gift.

Opening the door is easy, finding who you and she is (the Real You) takes a long term committed relationship.

So, in answer to the question of how soon to have sex in a new relationship, it is and always was totally up to the individuals involved and hopefully after reading this you are able to make a decision that comes from a higher consciousness.

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

I really love my husband. I respect him. I am proud of him. I am proud to be in a relationship with him. So where does the evil little bitch that I can be come from? Is it from my past? Is it hormones? Is it morning blues? YUK!!!!

Here’s what happened this morning. I got up earlier than usual which for some reason brought me to my computer. That’s always a mistake first thing in the morning. I get pulled into work so now on top of the usual duties I’ve assigned myself in the morning – putting dishes away, making the Martian’s lunch, making his breakfast.  By going to my computer, I now subconsciously have taken on my career duties as well.

So the Martian, who had gotten up before me and was relaxing with a cup of tea on the couch started sharing stuff from work with me. He teaches high school science and physics. He asked me a couple of times if I was listening and I said “yes” although truthfully his talking and relaxing was beginning to annoy me because I was working, stressed, blah, blah, blah – you got it -

Now why would I think that working at 4:30 in the morning is more important than connecting with my husband and hearing a beautiful story about one of his students. It was so moving to him, he was choked up with feeling and I was WORKING!

Oy! Well, fortunately I saw my stuff quickly, apologized and – HOPEFULLY – learned something.

I promise to respect my husband. I promise to respect and appreciate my husband. And I love myself with my pimples, foibles and wrinkles anyway.

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

]]> http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/respect-in-our-relationship/feed 3 http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/improve-self-esteem http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/improve-self-esteem#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 15:00:42 +0000 allaboutlifecoaching http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/?p=29

Many people go through life with low self esteem. This is a sad, but true, fact that is made sadder by the fact that it doesn’t have to be that way. Every person on the planet is a special, unique person and deserves all good that comes along. Everyone deserves to feel good about themselves. Many of the littlest things in life can do so much to improve self esteem.

To improve self esteem you can:

• Smile at the people who come across your path today.
• Find something funny to laugh about.
• Turn negative thoughts into positive ones and see what happens.
• See what you can learn from what happens in your life.
• List all your positive attributes.
• Ask your close friends and family what they love about you – and let it in.
• Do something for someone that they don’t expect and let them express gratitude.
• Do something wonderful and kind for someone that they know nothing about.
• Compliment the grocery checkout person.
• Make a “To Do” list and check off each thing as you accomplish it.
• Do something that scares you a little.
• Learn something new.
• Forgive someone.

These things are so simple to do that you will be amazed at what happens when, for example, you do something nice for someone for no reason, do something that scares you a little, learn something new and you feel better about yourself. What have you accomplished besides spreading some joy? You have worked to improve self esteem.

There are endless possibilities to love others and yourself. And remember to accept what you can’t change. Give it a shot for a day or two and see how much better you feel about yourself.

Self esteem is not a static thing. If you pay close attention and focus on each day instead of making broad statements about yourself and to yourself, you may begin to see that some days you feel not so bad about yourself. Those would be good days to improve self esteem so that on your low self esteem days, you can begin to look back and see that you are doing something to change it. Even acknowledging to yourself that you are working towards feeling differently about yourself, will help you improve your self esteem. It is not very much fun to walk around feeling badly about yourself. It tends to be a self perpetuating situation where feeling badly about yourself supports you to do things that make you feel badly about yourself. Work done to improve self esteem will change your world and you are worth