LIFE COACHING – WHAT’S IN A NAME ?

The last part of the heading comes from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: ‘What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. This means that what someone or something is called, or labelled, is arbitrary compared to their intrinsic qualities or, that the name of a thing does not matter as much as the quality of the thing.

This is most certainly the case when it comes to the term, life coach. There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding around what this entails, and what a coach offers, so let me put it all to rest, at least as far as the brand of coaching that I offer is concerned.

Your Life & the Connection to Life Coaching

You already have a life in which you exist, and that is happening around you. Depending upon how many years you have under the belt, you will have spent much time, effort, and money in creating this life that you lead.

This life entails a great many things that you have done in the past, and experiences that you have created or endured in order to arrive at the point where you find yourself right now. You have also gathered around you certain people and material possessions that form part of your life. And day in and day out you get out of bed and do stuff, going about your daily routine and activities.

To analyse this and paint a high level picture, I use what I call a Life Sphere, into which we position all of the touch points in this life of yours which, generally speaking and for pretty much everyone, can fit into the following 12 categories:

1. Overall health and fitness.
2. Relationships with:
   1. A partner.
   2. Family.
   3. Friends.
3. Social life.
4. Finances
5. Work or Career.
6. Living situation.
7. Personal development.
8. Religion or Spiritual or neither.
9. Other – and specific major time consuming activities, e.g. professional athlete.
10. Mental health & emotional state.

Here now is the first stage of my involvement with you as your coach. I do not enter your life and start tamper with or suggest that you need to follow a different path to the life that you have created for yourself, or to coach your life. Quite simply, we go through a phase of exactly what I have described above in creating your Life Sphere. This is an audit of exactly where you are right now, and your level of comfort and happiness with each of these touch points.

This phase I call Discovery.

What’s In It For You – How You Will Benefit From Life Coaching

No matter who you are or at what age or level in the business world you are, or any other metric that could be applied, every single person will at some stage in their lives run into difficulties.

These difficulties can be blockages, feelings of uncertainty, unhappiness and a few other even less pleasant emotions causing suffering and despair. This is often the point at which a person will start to look for help, and again this is where the point of this blog becomes necessary. Many people do not directly look for a Life Coach because they do not understand what this means or entails.

We will go through the second phase of our involvement together, and this is where you will start to really see and feel the benefits. We have completed your audit, the Life Sphere, which together with a few other discovery questions has revealed a far greater and in-depth view of where your potential problem areas are, those that you are less happy with. It is not unusual for this process to have surfaced issues that were not expressed during initial discussions.

Now we go through the second phase, which I call Self Discovery. Now you start to discover the reasons behind everything that exists in your life. Why you have done what you have done, the way that you behave, the way that you think, and all of this at a deeper level. This is not about understanding the reasons behind the decisions that you have made; it is about understanding the type of person that you are, or used to think that you are.

This requires some deep reflection. Not only do you have fun doing this, I promise, but you will also start doing things that bring you great excitement and joy. There are a number of steps that we go through here, all leading to your arriving at a far greater understanding of the person that you are.

You will be able to accept and acknowledge everything that exists in your life, and know why. Based on this you will make changes, additions and alterations to your life, that best suit the kind of person that you are, and the life that you want to lead going forward.

Following on from this, we then move into the phase of Self Mastery. This is where you become the expert at managing, controlling, and driving your own life, including the changes that you have put in place. In future, any hiccups and blockages that would normally jump up into your path in life and cause you suffering, you will easily forestall, avoid, circumnavigate, or manage out of the way.

You will be able to do all of this yourself, on your own, with total mastery. The natural consequence of this is that you have become a natural and inspiring leader. You are completely comfortable with yourself which enables you to step out into the world and lead others with complete confidence. This confidence is not based upon arrogance and superiority, on the contrary you lead with kindness and compassion and bring others along with you in helping each other, all others around you, and look after the planet at the same time, each in their own way, thanks to your leadership and example.

What Life Coaching Is Not

In what you have read above you will have observed that not once did your “life coach” tell you what to do. A coach does not give advice or prescribe the way for you to live life. A life coach is not like a sports coach telling you how he or she wants you to ply the art of your sport.

Another common mistake made by people, especially in the UK, is that because they do not know what a Life Coach is, or what a Life Coach does, they immediately make an association in their minds with something that they have heard of before, and they say, “oh, so you do counselling.”

No, I most certainly am not a Counsellor. According to the UK’s NHS here’s the definition of what a Counsellor does:

“Counselling is a type of talking therapy that allows a person to talk about their problems and feelings in a confidential and dependable environment. A Counsellor is trained to listen with empathy (by putting themselves in your shoes). They can help you deal with any negative thoughts and feelings you have.”

As an overall description of what I do as a Life Coach, it hardly scratches the surface, as you will have read from what I shared above.

No, whatever name you might use for me, life coach, leadership coach, business coach, lifeologist, lifestyle manager, relationship coach, it does not matter. There is a process that I follow the core of which is to help you discover who you really are. Through the phases of Discovery, Self Discovery, Self Mastery, and then Living Kindness you arrive at a point of far greater happiness and success, and leading the life that you have always wanted.

Contact me for a FREE consultation at: http://jonohanlon.coach