Have you seen life coaches around on the internet and wondered what the heck do they do? In this post, I’m going to go through what happens in a coaching session and what makes a great coach, so you can walk away knowing what coaching is. Toward the end, I’ll give you my perspective behind coaching.
Don’t listen to the person that has the answers; listen to the person who has the questions. – Albert Einstein
What is Coaching?
It is a space for a lot of things to happen like:
- holding compassion for the parts of yourself that need it oh so badly
- getting to the bottom of the issue at hand
- untangling your repetitive patterns
- seeing through the stories you tell about yourself and others
- reimagining what is possible
- receiving support and accountability as you make changes in your life
All of these happen through the coach facilitating exploration and holding space for what comes through.
Don’t get me wrong, coaching is a skill you learn, but a great coach is all about how one shows up in a session. One important quality of a coach is they hold the belief that change is possible for the client, even if the client can’t see it themselves. This core belief is what the rest of coaching sits on. Also, you want a coach who is curious and genuinely interested. It is through powerful questioning, listening, and reflecting that clients are able to discover more about their situation.
Don’t forget, coaches are human being too; they have faults and flaws. A great coach acknowledges them when they come up and repairs any damage that occurred.
All of the ways a coach shows up builds trust in the coaching relationship. When the client begins to see that the coach is there for their own wellbeing, personal guards can be let down.
Anything can happen through trust by leveraging all of your resources—emotional, physical, mental, social, and even spiritual—toward the pursuit of that which you want in life.
My Coaching Perspective
The perspective I hold behind what I do in coaching comes from my own struggles in life and what has brought me healing, peace, and joy.
To start, since this tends to be what holds many people back, you are so capable and have so much to give! Building up our self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-worth is often needed.
From here, we then come across the dilemma of what do I really want to do, and what do I have to give (who I am).
We all want to live a life that lights us up. We want to feel good. We want to do work that is meaningful, sustainable, and aligns with our values. We want to be a person who makes some kind of difference, some kind of impact even if that is just to one person, one animal, one component of a system, whatever you desire to impact. I believe we can have these things. Of course, such is life; It is not all rainbows and butterflies, but we can learn how to come back to feeling good more frequently.
It is through untangling our inner world that we then see our external world falling into place. Here we find ourselves aligning with soul.
Okay, Kristina you lost me….
What is Soul?
I use the term soul to encompass aspects of the self we can’t quite put our finger, that component of otherness – “not I” – that we experience in our lives.
We experience soul in our bodies.
We glimpse it in in altered states.
We feel it in heart-moving moments.
It shocks us with knowing that feels as if it came from somewhere else.
Soul is the experience of awe. It is there in the “holy shit this is better than I could have ever imagined” moments.
Soul is also a way of looking at what has happened, is happening, and will happen in our lives. It is a perspective that provides meaning.
If soul is anything concrete it is spirit in matter. We don’t transcend our issues, drama, pain. We go into them. Spirit is here, not somewhere beyond or above.
The prefix psyche in psychology means soul in greek. This concept goes back to the start of western civilization.
It is a term for powers that are beyond our control. Psyche encompasses both consciousness and unconsciousness. There will always be things that we are unconscious of, thus there will always be powers that influence our lives that we are not aware of.
So back to coaching, a whole person approach involves leveraging the whole self (the heart, the mind, the gut) to move through life aligned with soul. So you are working with what you are made of, not against it.
This approach to coaching allows healing to occur while you are working through what you want to change in your life. I provide the space for deep inner work so you can get back to living your life.
Come get individualized coaching with me, if you’re feeling the call to transform pain, open possibilities, and live on purpose.
much love,
kristina