Coach’s Corner November 26, 2019

I have decided it would be good to start documenting and sharing my journey to becoming a life coach; what I am learning in school, what that is showing me about myself, what I am struggling with throughout the process, what starting a business is like and all of the ups and downs associated with that, and anything else that I am feeling personally in my life.

This week I wanted to reflect on what I am learning about myself through the school curriculum.

I have been struggling a bit with the idea that we, as coaches, are not supposed to offer our own advice or direct the client with action steps. We are supposed to trust that they know what they need to do and we are there to ask questions to lead them to a place where the client realizes through their own thoughts, words, and reflections, what they need to do. I struggle with this on so many levels.

• First, I am a control freak, I am action oriented, and I love steps and lists and to-do’s.

• Second, I got into this to tell people all of the great things I know so I can help them!

• Third, when I am being coached by my fellow classmates I get frustrated with the lack of focus and direction that comes from only asking curious questions and letting the client meander through.

BUT

I trust the process and I know I need to change my mindset because coaching has worked for so many people and they cannot all be wrong so that I can be right, Right?

Well good news. This all changed for me this week with two separate experiences.

The first, Monday night (my class night) I volunteered to be the ‘client’ and my fellow students took turns coaching me. The topic I chose to speak about was limiting beliefs because that was my focus for the week on my blog

(Check that article out here).

I have always struggled with identifying my limiting beliefs. I don’t really know why, I believe I have limiting beliefs that hold me back, particularly in the achieving and relationship departments, but I have always struggled with finding the actual belief, or phrase, or truth, that is holding me back and that I need to change.

So, I thought it would be a great place to explore with some ‘curious questions’. My fellow classmates were amazing. They asked great questions that really stumped me because I had to try to come up with an answer with all of them watching. The hardest question was:

Who are you?

I couldn’t say for sure. All I could come up with was what I do…not who I am. What does that even mean…I don’t know yet.

As they were coaching me a few times the word purpose came to me, and then I heard it:

I am not my purpose.

It was like a light went on…that is my trouble. I think my worth is in what I do not in who I am! It was such an incredible place to start with my limiting beliefs. I realized that I only know ME through what I do, not who I truly am. And not that I need to know who I am exactly right at this moment BUT it made me realize that my limiting belief is that my self-worth is tied to what I do, and it thus follows that when I am not doing, my self-worth is in the toilet!

I have been working on figuring out my own beliefs so I can rewrite them and in the process,  I created a worksheet to help me work through them (Click here if you want to use it too!). I am still deep into it and will hopeful have a good post to share soon about my own limiting beliefs and what I have learned but I have shared some of it and my knowledge of them on my most recent blog post (Here).

To go back to the beginning with my change of coaching perspective, this experience helped me to really trust the coaching process. I stopped getting frustrated while my coaches were asking me questions I thought were off topic, and just went for it and ended up exactly where I needed to be. And sure enough there it was, inside of me the whole time, my REAL TRUTH:

I AM NOT MY PURPOSE

I was so fired up and excited about the session because I really felt like exploring those questions got me to think differently about myself and revealed something deep and meaningful about who I AM.

Coaching works! 😊

The second experience that helped me to trust the coaching process was coaching my dear friend in a practice session the following day. Like me, she was very focused on a particular topic with a focus on goal setting and achieving. As we talked, and I asked curious questions she kept trying to go back to the ‘goal’ topic, but other, deeper feelings and hang-ups kept coming to the surface.

As I continued to ask her tough questions her whole focus shifted and she came to a surprising conclusion (that had nothing to do directly with her goals), and a conclusion that once she spoke it out loud, she realized had been inside her for a long while just waiting to be acknowledged!

To see her own that realization and then move forward with it was so amazing! It was so special because we found something that deep down was really important to her and interfering with her life and her ability to focus and achieve her goals but it appeared to have nothing to do with them and we would never have gotten there if we had been focused only on the HOWs of achieving.

By the end of the call we were able to create action steps for her goals as well as for this new revelation, so we achieved what I always thought was the point of a coaching session (action steps) as well as achieving the actual point (self-perception).

This experience got me really excited to continue my own work on limiting beliefs using this worksheet as well as affirming my decision to be a life coach because of the wonderful possibilities it affords of helping people to get unstuck and realized their true potential!

Leave a comment and let me know what you think about trusting the process and where it has worked in your own life!

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