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WHAT MAKES ME A GOOD LIFE COACH
In a nutshell, because I haven’t always gotten it right in my own life.
In fact, I’ve taken more paths that were wrong for me than ones that were right for me.
From relationships, jobs, self-employed ventures, socialising, and even my beloved running.
I have found myself at rock bottom on more than once occasion and, despite asking for professional help along the way, I ended up rebuilding my life by myself, slowly but surely.
Each time I started over with my life, I did so with a different approach. Each time was mostly getting me closer to where I wanted to be, but also encountering more setbacks.
WHERE IT ALL BEGIN
I first explored the idea of life coaching back in 2014, when I was delivering personal training sessions alongside my sports massage.
It was clear that both overlapped quite a lot in just those two elements of people’s lives.
The more conversations I had with my clients, the more apparent it became that what happened in their personal lives, careers, and everything else that made up their days, could have a profound effect on any one or more area of their lives.
I’ll be honest, though – back then, I wasn’t a big fan of the term ‘Life Coach’. I was ready to move forward with my business in this way, but the world wasn’t ready to receive it, at least not in the UK. Or maybe it was the people in my life at the time that discouraged me.
However, although I knew that was what I wanted to do, and I began rolling out a more holistic approach to my sessions, my marriage rather suddenly fell apart (although with hindsight being a wonderful thing, it probably wasn’t as sudden as it appeared to me at the time).
I had to abandon my business ideas and focus on me and what I needed from me at that time.
MY OWN SELF-DISCOVERY
My journey of self-discovery really took off in 2019 when I started reviewing and questioning every part of my life.
A large part of this came in 2021 when I received an autism diagnosis and later in 2023 when I also received a diagnosis of ADHD.
However, as much as these diagnoses answered many questions, sadly the support is not available for late diagnosed adults, so after the initial euphoria of ‘I’m not broken, I don’t need to be fixed’ feeling, came even more wrong paths and further self-discovery and personal development.
In reality, I did need to be fixed. I needed to unpick most of my life that had eventually become a series of masking and coping strategies as a result of not understanding who I was for so many years.
And once I had unpicked enough to get a sense of what I really did like and dislike, I had to work out how to move forward so that my life was made up of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that did work for me.
This was really hard. I mean, beyond hard. It resulted in more crashes than I’d had before because I was constantly trying new things, realising they didn’t quite work for me and either unpicking the bits that did/didn’t work and moving forward again with a slightly different approach.
To say this was exhausting was an understatement.
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
However, whilst life continued to evolve for me, I started feeling calmer and more sure of myself, what I wanted and, most importantly, no longer afraid to say ‘no, that doesn’t work for me’.
One of these areas was my business. I find the social element of my in-person sessions really hard, so I had to limit the amount of sports massages I did.
I developed some online run coaching courses to start sharing the knowledge I had without needing to physically speak to people.
It still wasn’t giving me what I needed from my work. I knew I wanted to help people but I also knew I needed to find a way to do this without compromising my own health and wellbeing.
And then I discovered that it wasn’t speaking to people that I found difficult per se, it was the nature of the conversations. Talking about my life, for example is exhausting for me – I really don’t like being centre of attention, even in a 121 conversation.
HELPING OTHER PEOPLE
Asking people questions about their lives, especially with the focus on helping them to discover what they want to do with an element of their life, was empowering. Regardless of how much I talked with them, if I was able to help them make a decision about something, I felt invigorated for the rest of the day.
And, this is exactly what life coaching is for me.
Probably 70-80% of of the talking in my sessions is done by my clients, so I don’t have to overthink my part of the conversation. I listen to them intently (which I love doing), and ask thought provoking questions when they reach a point of indecision or uncertainty.
For me, this is such a powerful partnership between me and my clients – they leave feeling lighter and more in control, and I feel like I’ve made a difference, no matter how small, to someone’s life.
Whether I am helping someone with a specific goal, or supporting them through a bigger transformation of their life, if I can help my clients reach their goals, then it gives my own life experiences some kind of purpose.
And for me, that’s what life is about – having a purpose.
SUMMARY
Although it was a while before I wholeheartedly launched my life coaching as a business, I continued with the sports massage and run coaching, but added some life coaching into these sessions instead of a standalone service.
Eventually, after my own personal development, I realised there was a very real need for people like me.
And by that, I mean I am human. I have worked hard to better understand myself following decades of masking by improving my self-awareness, setting boundaries (with myself and others), and generally learning to know what is right or wrong for me.
Whilst I still don’t have all the answers (does anyone?), my life experiences have given me extensive exposure to different approaches to life that I can now incorporate into my coaching sessions.
NEED SOME HELP FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE?
Whether you want to feel more confident about yourself, completely transform your life, or discover what your full potential looks like, I will help you unpick what’s not working for you, identify who you are, rather than who you think you should be.
The first step is to book a free discovery call. This is a Teams video chat where we’ll get to know each other, talk about where you are and where you’d like to be, and see if we’re the right fit to work together.
Alternatively, if you would like to know more about how I can support you, please either send me a message or email [email protected].