Ironic as it may seem, none knows what to ask for oneself. People live in a cloud of ignorance and self-satisfaction of knowing everything and claim to know what they want in life. They believe they can define their goals and desire clearly without any help. But unfortunately, this is not true.
For last 9 years of my life, I have heard people asking, why do I need a life coach? Why pay a person that tells you what you already know?
My answer to this question has been always same. I tell them, you don’t need a coach. If you are happy with your life and what you have achieved so far, and you don’t have any desire, then you don’t need a coach. But, if you think that you are yet to explore what is under the surface of an iceberg, and if you think that you want to design your own destiny then yes, a coach is for you.
We all love tennis. Well, may be most of us. I often use an example using sports coaches and a few years back, Andy Murray became a prime example. Andy Murray is a very good tennis player and he has won many tournaments over the years from his youth till today. He did this while being managed by his mum, who was probably also his most passionate supporter. Andy however realised that he could not make that final step to the top, i.e. winning a Grand Slam. He therefore teamed up with Ivan Lendl and after 77 years Britain had a Wimbledon champion once more. And interestingly, after breaking up with Lendl, he didn’t win. (Thanks Andy, for making my point so clearly.)
So, what made the difference of the external coach? Andy knew exactly how to play tennis. I don’t think that Lendl had to teach him that. Andy knew the pleasure of winning titles. Andy knew how to recover from setbacks. But I think the key difference was that Lendl could challenge him in a way his mother couldn’t. Lendl could push him that bit further to reach his Grand Slam goal, and Lendl had been there himself, so he knew what Murray had to go through.
In life, it is not different. Most of the times, we think we have everything sorted out. But this is true up to a certain point. If you want to get out of your comfort zone and want to create a magic in your life, then you need a 3rd person, who is there to push you beyond your limits.
A life coach’s job is to help you overcome your fear and self-doubt. They help clients set meaningful goals, so they can create a life on their terms. As a coach, the singular most important goal – to assist the client close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. The key difference here is that a life coach can help the client get from where they are to where they want to be much more rapidly.
Funny thing is, now a days we all use google maps, GPS etc to go from one place to another but when it comes to our life, we think we don’t need any direction. We know it all. And therefore, when we get lost in life, we have no one to help us by re-routing our direction and take us to our destiny.
Some people always mix up between a life coach and a counsellor. But they are totally different. Life coaches aim to motivate, offer emotional support and create confidence in their clients. Many life coaches focus on creating a new life path in order to achieve goals, whereas counselling or therapy sometimes looks into emotional resolutions to past problems in order to move forward.
In our life, we all like to design something from our own bedroom to business cards, a new nursery to website. But, have we ever thought to design our lives that we love?
I often challenge people to ask themselves, are you living the life you truly want to live. If not, what are you doing to design the life you want to be living?
It can be tough learning how to balance work, life, and still find the time to be creative. We all have a number of competing priorities at any given moment. Your job, a significant other, children, or even a side business you’re working on, will all take a significant amount of your most precious resource: time. And of top of that, if you need to think about designing your own life, it becomes more hectic. And that’s when a life coach can help you.
A life coach can break it down in few steps such as, how to break our preconceptions, how to see the same thing but from different point of views and how to give your new life an elegant design.
No matter how you look at it, life is hard. As the weeks, months and years pass, that pressure mounts. It piles on top of us, adding more weight to the shoulders that can’t seem to bear another ounce of it. But we have to carry on. We can’t stop. But there are times, when we don’t know where to start, we are unable to define a clear vision and the passion that we have once in our life is gone.
And therefore, in our life we need a coach or a mentor who can guide us through some of the most unbridled times and direct us in the right direction to achieve our goals and our dreams. It’s difficult to see things from a fresh perspective and realize what you’re capable of without them.
Each one of us holds tremendous power within ourselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes we just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen even before you know it.