how life coaching helps
HOW LIFE COACHING HELPS
Curious about how life coaching helps people? Life coaching is an assisted reflective practice which can help you reach your full potential, whatever that may be. Life coaching can be truly life-changing.
As a coach, my role is to help you in this reflection through a series of conversations focused on exploring your life purpose, challenging your limiting beliefs and negative self-talk, and encouraging you to action. It is precisely this combination of self-discovery with a focus on solutions and actions that determines how life coaching helps. I can help you reflect on any aspect of your life. Once you have gained an increased awareness of what’s happening in your life and why, you can start to make more informed decisions.
Contact me to schedule a free consultation or read on for more information.
Life-changing in your personal life…
Want to find out more about how life coaching helps you transform your personal life?
Purpose
Whether you notice it or not, the way you interact with the world is determined by who you are and what you feel. Do you wonder why sometimes you react in a certain way? That’s a start to self-awareness. Self-awareness is key to being more intentional in how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Without it, we operate mostly in auto-pilot – which may or may not lead to the outcomes we want.
Have you ever reflected on what’s most important to you? Perhaps you haven’t been in a position where you needed to choose between values that seemed equally important – but sooner or later you probably will be. Reflecting on values and beliefs will bring clarity now… for when it is needed most.
Whether you believe that each of us comes to this world for a reason or not, understanding what you aim to achieve in life is important in feeling fulfilled. What you do now is a result of your cultural background, your upbringing and education, your experience and your choices. But perhaps that isn't what you really want to do in life. Reflecting on your journey so far and on what’s important to you will help clarify the path ahead.
Setting milestones along your path is key to achieving your life purpose. And of course having goals you can achieve in the short term is important to maintaining motivation. Yet over-focusing on 'what may be' makes it difficult to enjoy life 'in the now'. Life purpose coaching can help you find the balance that works best for you.
Happiness is an implicit life purpose for most of us. We aspire to achieve this state of emotional wellbeing intuitively, yet sometimes being more intentional can nudge the pursuit along. Certain behaviours such as practicing gratitude, savouring, kindness and connecting are known to foster happiness, so it’s in your hands to act to be happier.
Relationships
Do you do your best to accommodate everyone else, then realize you forget what you want? Do you find it difficult to say 'no'? Establishing your boundaries with each person is key to a balanced relationship. Coaching can help you understand why sometimes it is so difficult to do so.
Do you find that people disappoint you often? It's difficult for other people to know what you want if you don't tell them. And anyway everyone has a personal agenda to follow. Coaching can help you find better ways of managing your expectations.
Do you find that certain people ‘rub you the wrong way’? Do you feel you need to understand how people behave? Do you spend hours thinking of why someone did something? More often than not, you will never understand people's true motivations. Knowing when to let go is a key skill in any relationship.
Are some of your relationships loving yet overloaded with tension? Tension is a natural consequence of people having different perspectives. It can be a positive element in most relationships in different ways over time. Coaching can help you understand the nature of tension... and how to accept healthy tension.
Success Mindset
Self-confidence is important in most life endeavours. While success boosts confidence, believing in yourself is ultimately a mindset. By reflecting on the life experiences that have increased or decreased your belief in your abilities, you can learn to harness the power of self-confidence to serve you at all times.
Do you wake up full of ideas but lack the energy to do anything? Do you find it difficult to self-motivate to do things you know will help you but are so unappealing at the moment? Achieving a balance between short-term gratification and longer-term purpose isn’t always straightforward. So the more you understand how each step contributes to your bigger vision the easier it becomes.
Have you noticed there are certain topics you constantly avoid? Or certain activities you put-off as much as you can? Or certain people you always disagree with? Have you wondered why? Perhaps your dislike and avoidance of certain topics, activities or people are rooted in a fear of rejection, failure or ridicule. These fears come from somewhere deep within you. Face the fears, overcome the limiting beliefs associated to them, and you will open up a world of unexplored options for yourself.
Is your life so busy that you never have time to stop and think? Are you focusing on a million things and never quite achieving your goals? It is easy to become a victim of mind cluttering, losing sight of what’s most important to you simply because you can’t ‘find it’ in your mind. Just as there are techniques for decluttering your physical environment, you can declutter your mind.
Life-changing in your professional life…
Want to find out more about how life coaching helps you transform your professional life?
Career
Do you find you are constantly sacrificing your personal time to meet professional demands? Or perhaps you can never quite let go of work when you are not working? Learning to set boundaries, to yourself and to others, can help you find a better balance.
Is your discomfort with corporate politics overshadowing your tangible achievements? Navigating corporate politics is as important as getting the job done. Learning how to be part of the system without compromising your values will make a difference.
Are you disappointed with your career progression? Do you feel that your unquestionable successes are only partially recognized? Learning how to promote yourself in a non-aggressive way can help you up the ladder.
Perhaps you are thinking of moving to another company? Or setting-up on your own? Or rebalancing your career towards your life purpose? Whatever it may be, preparing for the right moment will help you make the most of your move.
Is it all just becoming too much? Do you feel your life is no longer yours to live? Are you unable to deal with the stress of constant deadlines, long working hours and corporate politics? With a little coaching, you will feel the power you have to step back from the edge of the abyss.
Work-from-Home
Working from home is more productive for some people… and less productive for others. The reality is that where we work makes a difference to how we work. Assuming that working from home or at an office will produce the same results won’t help. Having a comfortable workspace, being free from interruptions, setting time for meetings or for individual focus, and setting daily goals all make sense. But they must be considered differently depending on where you work. Coaching can help you reflect on the nuances that apply to wherever you have to work from.
Working from home inherently dilutes the boundaries between working and non-working time. While this may make sense for some people, for many it simply means more working time. Setting clear rules and expectations on when you work and when you dedicate time to different types of work is key. Perhaps you could even find a way to dedicate the time previously spent commuting to the office to trying something completely outside your comfort zone. Coaching can help establish these objectives for yourself and these boundaries with others more effectively.
Working from home necessarily implies more time using technology to communicate. While you may know that online fatigue builds up over time, perhaps you perceive that you simply can’t do your job well without being online all the time. Coaching can help you decide which activities require full online presence, which only require occasionally checking-in, and which are best done offline… and then make sure other people understand and respect your approach.
Social interaction at work is for some people just a necessity to manage corporate politics. For other people, social interaction at work is a big part of maintaining emotional balance. And there are newly-hired people who need to integrate without ever going to the office. Whatever the driver, it’s easy to feel that you have lost something by working from home. And perhaps you have… but there are ways to compensate. Coaching can help you reflect on the importance of checking-in, staying in touch and reaching out to offer help in these times of increased virtual social interaction.
The nature of professional life implies for many people a significant need for developing resilience. Working from home has added a few new dimensions to this need. The overall uncertainty about the future, specific uncertainty about job continuity, and spending more time confined within a small space with a limited number of people all contribute to more stressful lives. Coaching can help you reflect on the triggers that lead to stress as well as actions to relieve pressure.
Life-changing in other ways…
Want to find out more about how life coaching helps in other ways?
Neurodiversity
Developing self-awareness relies in part on feedback from other people, often expressed non-verbally. It’s not surprising therefore that people who have difficulty with non-verbal communication find it more challenging to be self-aware. Working with a coach will help by providing a mirror so you can glimpse how you are perceived by others. This in turn will help you reflect on how and why you act or react in certain ways. That’s a start to self-awareness. Self-awareness is key to being more intentional in how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Without it, we operate mostly in auto-pilot – which may or may not lead to the outcomes we want.
Have you noticed there are certain topics you constantly avoid? Certain activities you put-off as much as you can? People you always disagree with? Over the years you’ve probably developed techniques to compensate for the fact that you perceive yourself as being different from most other people due to your high-functioning autism. Have you wondered why? Perhaps your dislike and avoidance of certain topics, activities or people are rooted in a fear of rejection, failure or ridicule. These fears come from somewhere deep within you. Face the fears, overcome the limiting beliefs associated to them, and you will open up a world of unexplored options for yourself. And you will find that the strengths associated with high-functioning autism can be very powerful.
Having lower degrees of empathy for others is commonly associated with the Autism spectrum. As empathy is a fundamental component in establishing meaningful connections with other people, you may become lonely or feel excluded from social interaction. And yet, while emotional empathy may be challenging, cognitive empathy is easily achievable for people with high-functioning autism. Cognitive empathy can be defined as knowing how another other person feels and what they might be thinking. It can be achieved through verbal communication. Some exercises, particularly perspective-taking, are very useful in placing yourself in someone else’s shoes… even if you can’t actually feel how they feel.
People with high-functioning autism enjoy predictability/routine and tend to develop repetitive habits. Changes in life – small or large, expected or unexpected – can wreak havoc with your emotional balance. And yet change is an inevitability in life, and in fact change often brings opportunity. Learning to accept change as something that 'just happens'… something that generally isn’t targeted at making you feel upset… something that can enhance your life… this is a key skill that will make a fundamental difference to you.
Do you find that certain people ‘rub you the wrong way’? Do you feel you need to understand how people behave? Do you often feel wronged by the world? Do you spend hours thinking of why someone did something? Given the heightened cognitive capabilities of people with high-functioning autism, the temptation to over-rationalize everything is understandable. And yet the truth is, more often than not, you will never understand people's true motivations. Knowing when to let go is a key skill to achieve balance in life.
Tension in a relationship is a natural consequence of people having different perspectives. And yet, it can be a positive element in most relationships in different ways over time. Tension can be particularly difficult for people with high-functioning autism to accept – perhaps because difficulties with non-verbal communication make the tension so incomprehensible. Coaching can help you understand the nature of tension... and how to accept healthy tension in your relationships.
Expatriate Living
Constantly adapting to new cultures is perhaps the greatest challenge that expatriates face. Cultural expectations people have of you won’t necessarily change just because you aren’t aware of them – often you have to rely on non-verbal communication to understand what is going on. The problem is that body language, posture, facial expressions, type of eye contact and tone of voice vary significantly from culture to culture. Coaching can help you understand how your own non-verbal communication can impact others. It can also help you recognize and understand what other people don’t say yet feel strongly about.
Do you find you are constantly sacrificing your personal time to meet professional demands? Or perhaps you can never quite let go of work when you are not working? Achieving work-life balance is difficult enough in an environment you know well… let alone as an expatriate not understanding the unwritten expectations at work. And yet not finding a balance will significantly increase your day-to-day stress – at work and at home. Learning to set boundaries, to yourself and to others, can help you find that balance.
An expatriate who is busy at work seldom finds time to really make the most of discovering a new country. A trailing spouse who isn’t working full time typically finds it hard to feel fulfilled. Children often find it difficult to integrate at school or establish a satisfying social life. These common situations for expatriates create frustrations that can easily result in family tension. Learning how to recognize and talk about these tensions will help promote happiness at home.
A busy life in a country distant from where you have your roots makes it hard to keep in touch. You might also have the feeling that you simply can’t relate to family and friends from your pre-expatriate life. And you are probably trying to build up a social network at your host location anyway. And yet, keeping ties with people back home is crucial in maintaining your sense of identity. Reflecting on how you imagine your life unfolding and on the importance of your support network across the world will help you achieve a better balance between keeping in touch with newer and older friends.
Moving is always a stressful time for an expatriate, whether you are going back home or on a subsequent assignment. Quite apart from all the logistical matters you have to handle, you probably have mixed feelings of loss, anxiety, frustration and excitement. If you are repatriating for good, you may also worry about integrating back home and about the loss of your expatriate benefits. Coaching can help you accept and understand these feelings, and seek ways to capitalize on them to make the most of your expatriate experience.