What is Coaching? Optimizing Life & Maximizing Potential?

First, I would like to explain a little about the basic life coaching process and the coaching relationship. At the heart of the coaching process is the relationship. I am a co-active coach. In co-active coaching we enter the coaching relationship as equals. I am not the boss who is going to tell you what to do. Rather, it is my job to guide you in clarifying what you want to work on, where you want to go, or how you want to be by exploring your current situation. We may then strategize goal formulation and co-design a plan on how you want to get there. We may identify and diminish your obstacles while building on strengths, work on awareness building practices, and build new behaviors. The process is full of choices as is life.

You are the expert on you. You hold the answers inside of you to what is most meaningful for you in life and how you may go about fashioning that life in a way that not only gives fulfillment but makes you happy as well. My job is to assist you in drawing this information out from the unconscious and helping you to manifest results on this plane.

Basically, we will start with some assessments to discover where you are now at being satisfied with your life. We’ll assess your life satisfactions, identify areas for meaningful change, and target intended outcomes. We will then co-design a plan to get you to where you want to be or what you want to be doing, or the state of being you want to be in.

I also want to inform you upfront of some of the techniques we are going to be using. In coaching it is important that I share observations and give feedback. I am also going to make use of what are called “powerful questions.” I will ask permission before we go anywhere too deep and I want to ensure you that confidentiality is strictly upheld. What you say here stays here.

A little warning about the state of homeostasis which is the tendency of any system to resist change. Through science we have discovered we are essentially compound systems made of many subsystems. Every system’s natural resistance to change is a part of an immunity system designed to challenge those changes. In many cases coaching will result in a push back from your system as it is rejecting change. It may throw things at you that are dug up from your pandora’s box, the personal unconscious. Things sometimes get worse before they gets better for your conscious ego mind. It is always darkest before the dawn. However, with sustained energy and perseverance, along with fifty years of research in human potentiality, and a good supportive coach we can push the self through that natural resistance to change by identifying and using the support around you.

Coaching works from the premise that you are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. If you have fallen from this state, I will do everything in my power to get you back on track. You hold in you all the answers to a successful and fulfilling life and a coaching relationship may bring clarity to new positive situations. I promise to support you 100%. Let’s get you on to living the life you want to live and being the person, you were authentically born to be.

REFERENCES

Kimsey-House, H., Kimsey-House, K., Sandahl, P., & Whitworth, L. (2018). Coactive Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.