Becoming A Life Coach

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. Some come from the corporate world. Some, like myself, have many years in the human potential movement.

Consulting, counseling, a strong personal growth background, business training, sports and entrepreneurship are just some of the areas that can provide some of the experience you will need in becoming a life coach.

If you are thinking of becoming a life coach or personal coach, 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 figure out if life coaching as a career is for you is to hire a life coach yourself and find out from the “inside out” what it’s all about.

Collaborative Marketing and Life Coaching

I have been life coaching for about 12 years. I feel good about the impact I currently have and have had on my clients. We have a collaborative, co-creative relationship whereby they tell me what they want to accomplish and I offer tools, suggestions, my experience and my abilities to both “hear between the words” and help them get out of their own way. (NOTE THE WORD “COLLABORATIVE”.)

As coaches know or soon find out, we must market ourselves. Many years ago I went to some traditional networking meetings where what happened was – a zillion people passed me their card and tried to promote me into whatever they were selling. I hated it and stayed away from anything like that for years figuring it just isn’t for me. No collaboration apparent here.

Collaborative Progression

Some years later I found and tried an organization that was somewhat more collaborative in its structure. It suggested and tried to support having a “how can I help you?” attitude in its members. I tried it for a year. It was very expensive what with dues and paying for fairly upscale meals each meeting. I met many lovely people but never got a client. When it came time to pay membership, I decided to not rejoin after having called about 10 other life coaches to ask their experience in the organization. Not one had gotten any clients. They stayed around because the people were nice.

What was wrong? I finally decided that what was necessary for a life coach was for people to really get to know them. Those meetings I attended had 50-80 people at each and even though I followed another suggestion to meet at least two members each week for coffee, that little amount of time just doesn’t create a strong enough bond.

A few years went by and they created exclusive groups where there is only one life coach who is a permanent member and 15 to 20 people. I joined. My year isn’t up for awhile but so far no new clients. Again lovely people who I really bond and connect to who are trying to help me get clients but I think they look around at those they know, think “He or she needs a coach. I’ll tell them about Maia” but still no clients from that source. I think people want to seek out a coach. They don’t want to be told you NEED a coach but the jury’s still out on that.

So back to COLLABORATIVE MARKETING. Well, I think I lost my awareness of what it means because I have been participating in massive connecting on social networking sites which now occurs to me is very much like the stick-the-card-in-the-face kind of networking of old. Where is the real collaboration? This became very clear in a conversation with a lovely coach, Dr. Jackie Black who has helped me see the collaboration light. The watchwords are: request and offer . I have a request to make of you and I offer to help you. Let’s work out what works for both of us and benefits our clients also if we are a good match to do so. Thank you, Jackie.

Is Self Esteem Even Important?

Self esteem may not seem that important to some (they’re probably feeling fine about themselves) but it has a huge impact on your daily life. It has an affect on your moods, your reactions and how people treat you.

Seek learning on how to get past negative emotions like anger, jealousy and blame and not let them overshadow your thinking. (Check out this tool .)

Everyone experiences small episodes of these harmful emotions but if you let them be your whole focus, you will never be happy and everyone you meet will know it.

In addition, these emotions build up and create harmful physical conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure. Make sure you laugh everyday. Watch a comedy show to lift your mood. You can’t possibly feel hopeless or angry if you are laughing.

1. Increase your self esteem by doing nice things for other people. They don’t even need to know you did it. In fact, it might is better if they don’t. It will make you feel very good about yourself though, and that is what is important.
2. Stop criticizing every little mistake you make. Watch the words you say about yourself. No more “stupid” or “dummy”. Everyone makes mistakes.
3. Take all those negative things you are thinking about yourself and turn them into  positive thoughts and your self esteem will be on the rise one little step at a time.
4. Learn to choose how you respond to whatever situation you may find yourself in. You can decide to calmly handle a situation with as little stress and bad feelings as possible or you can freak out yell, scream, cry and make a bad situation worse.
5. And if your emotional residue from the past is so large it doesn’t feel like you have a choice, seek help – self-help, coaching or therapy. Whatever suits you.
6. Another way to make yourself feel better and give your self esteem a little boost is to dress up now and then for no reason. It will make you feel good knowing that you look good. Do not allow yourself any criticisms about how you look, only good thoughts.
7. If you up for a real stretch, ask 3 people what they like about you. Let what they say about you wash over you. Let it in and just say, “Thank you”.

How to know if your relationship is working or not

Not every relationship shows itself very clearly to our defensive minds as to whether it’s working or not. Sometimes we just don’t want to know – or at least our ego doesn’t want to know because then it will mean change and our egos HATE change.

So the simple test: Stop a moment. Think of your relationship. Does it make you happy to think about it or leave you feeling dull, hurting, confused, wishful, pained, __fill in the blank__________. If it leaves you feeling anything like that, you’ve got problems.

I’ve had three kinds. The first one was started when neither of us had a clue about how to do it. I felt hurt, fearful, unhappy and want to leave almost every day for 15 years. I’m pretty sure he did too. We were young and did not know how to treat each other well. The second one would have been the kind to fool most anyone. He was a really nice person. He tried to be a partner but there were the sneaky ways he didn’t tell the truth about himself and what he was up to; the ways I felt wishful that maybe I made a mistake; the discomfort of the imbalance in contributions to our financial well-being. It might have confused me if I hadn’t had my long and hard disaster before it. I knew I couldn’t hold onto something that wasn’t working well ever again.

I think making that decision was what led to the over 25 year never a question, always good and working partnership I have allowed in my life. No confusion. Hurts dealt with right away. Very clearly a well working success story.

What will it take for you to decide to have a good relationship?

Law of Attraction – More

Even with the huge success of the book and movie, The Secret , people still seem to have trouble making the Law of Attraction work for them. Most people are still missing one little factor in making it work for them: you attract what you focus on. So, if you are focusing on what you are lacking, you are drawing to you more  of what you lack. It is very simple. Knock off the self pity after 5 minutes. A very wise woman once told me I was allowed 15 minutes of complaining and feeling sorry for myself a day .

Forget about everything that you don’t have and be grateful for all that you do have. Stop repeating to yourself over and over what you can’t afford and what you are going without. You are just proving to yourself that the Law of Attraction really does work.

Negative thinking is a habit, a bad habit and one that you need to break to make the Law of Attraction work for you. Like any other bad habit, with a strong commitment and determination you can break the habit. Break the negative habit by becoming very aware of your thoughts. If you pay attention to your thoughts for a few days, you will begin to pick up every time a negative thought comes into your mind. When you become good at recognizing these thoughts, then it is time to start to change them. Also, pay attention to your feelings. They are a sure indicator of what you are thinking.

When you find yourself thinking something negative, stop and change the thought to the opposite of whatever it is. Concentrate on this positive thought for a moment and experience how it makes you feel. Eventually, this will become a new habit for you and soon you will automatically begin thinking more positives and less negatives.

And then here is the part that usually always gets ignored. Our thoughts create our feelings. And we are generally actually addicted to our feelings. So our work is really cut out for us. But since life is a journey and a school, what’s the hurry? We’ll likely just come back and choose to do it all over again anyway.

Build Self Esteem

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 boost your 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. 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.

Marriage and Money Communication

I haven’t written anything about marriage and money so far but I think it’s a good topic since I believe most marriages have big issues around money.

Like other areas of our lives, we each have our stuff (definition: Ego + Unheard, Unprocessed Emotions + Unmet Needs). I come from a family where there was a lot of fear and denial around money. My mother was very afraid of not having enough. I believe my father was also afraid but he covered it with many layers of denial. So I come by my stuff quite honestly from the environment I unconsciously absorbed for the first 22 years of my life. I’ve certainly experienced fear around not having enough and in some ways covered that over with denial – a fine combination of both my mother’s and father’s emotional imprints.

The Martian has his own but I’ll let him comment on that. Anyway, since we both believe we attract into our lives at the level of vibration our emotional selves are at (Law of Attraction), we’ve done just that. We’ve always had enough even when we lost it all in 2001 at which time we both experienced intense fear for months. I’m guessing that to some extent our financial situation right now is reflective of all those months of fear.

I’m not aware of much, if any fear, about not enough these days but I only know the full truth about it by looking at the results in my life.

So back to money in our relationship. It’s never been an issue. Because of our high level of honesty and communication, money issues fall under the topic “Everything We Talk About” and we know where the other is. Also, because we have a real partnership attitude, it’s never mattered whether I was earning more or he was earning more. When I was earning more doing work I hated, I was very honest about my resentful feelings that he could not do this kind of work and got through them to the benefit of enhanced closeness and communication.

I guess money issues are only a separate issue if you don’t keep them open and honest and communicate whatever is going on with you about them with your partner.