Do you recognise yourself in any of these descriptions?
Is this you?
You are at a cross roads in your life
and are not sure what to do next. Maybe you are returning to work after an absence, been
made redundant and want to start your own business,
possibly a change career, or you feel you need to start
your life all over again. What ever it is, it seems very daunting and your friends and
relatives seem to dwell on the pitfalls of taking a
new course of action, or focus on what is right for
them but not for you.
Or maybe this is you?
You are already successful and you have achieved nearly
everything you have set out to achieve and are wondering
where the next meaningful challenge is going to come
from. Alternatively,
there may be areas of your life that are out of balance.
You feel that you are spending too much time
at work and your family, relationships and health may
be suffering and all your efforts to do something about
it seem to fail. You are worried that if you don’t act
soon it may be too late. Financially you are secure
but there is still something missing and your usual
method of solving problems just isn’t doing the trick
so you need to try something different.
Or how about this?
Have you ever wondered why the dreams you once had
have not been fulfilled; why you start something new
(a new project, lose weight, etc.,) and rarely see it
through; why your new year’s resolutions get forgotten
virtually as soon as they are made; why you question
the quality of your life more and more and wonder “how
did I get here and do I want to be here anyway?” Welcome
to the club. Like so many of us, the chances are you
have taken the path of least resistance and stayed with
the familiar.
On top of that you probably question whether you are
really capable of achieving those dreams. Throw into
the mix an all too typical fear of failure and a belief
system that focuses more on the negative than on the
positive, demanding you be “realistic”, and you’ve got
the recipe for a life that falls far short of your capabilities.
The result is you live a life realising only
a fraction of the potential you were born with and which
lies dormant in us all.
If you see yourself in any of these descriptions then
you might benefit from working with your own personal
coach.
But surely a life coach is just for people who don’t like hard work and have
too much money.
Real people sort their own lives out and don’t
pay someone else to do it for them?
Plus it all sounds a bit ‘New Age’ lightweight
to me.
Well in answering that
question I would like to talk about the value of sports
coaches, not only to professional athletes but also
to all people who play sport.
For a start no one would expect a world-class athlete
to train without a coach.
Such an idea is almost unheard of.
Why is that? The simple answer is that sports coaches help their athletes
raise their game to the very highest level.
They work with their athletes, constantly training,
encouraging, supporting and when needed bullying them
to try harder because both the trainer and the athlete
know that it is so much easier to improve when you’ve
got someone working with you who believes you can do
it and whose whole focus is on your success.
Even amateur and recreational
athletes know that if they are serious about improving
their game or level of fitness quickly a coach or personal
trainer is a worthwhile investment.
So then why do we believe we should be able to improve
our “game” in other areas of our lives without any outside
help, especially when we haven’t been terribly successful
to date? We
seem to think we should have all the answers, that all
we need to do is tell our selves that we want something
and that should be enough.
Well the answer is that
for some people this will be true.
A course in personal development or the right
book will provide the skills they need to take them
to the next level. To continue with the sport analogy, these people are likely
to have a strong grounding in the basic skills needed
to be successful in their chosen field and they will
be able to build these new skills into their already
fairly solid game.
But even for these people it is unlikely that
they will ever be as good as they can be or produce
results as quickly as possible unless they work with
someone else, who can stand outside them, helping them
to establish their goals, identify the barriers to success,
motivate them when they start to flag and support through
to success.
But what about the rest of us who don’t have that firm
foundation? Who haven’t been taught the basic rudiments of the game? Are
we expected to be able to succeed on our own?
Well until relatively recently the answer to
that question was a resounding yes.
But lets face it, if it was that easy why have
so many of us fallen far short of our ideal?
Is it because we are lazy and self-indulgent
and expect everything to be given to us on a plate? No it is not that at all.
I believe it is because life is the biggest game
in town and as we become more affluent, with more choices
and opportunities and correspondingly higher expectations,
life becomes even more complex, but without any real
training and support as to how we play at our peak.
This is where life coaching comes into it’s own.
Coaches work with clients to help them achieve
their best in life; working with them while they establish
their goals, helping them to overcome barriers and blockages
to success, encouraging every step of the way, picking
them up when they stumble, believing in them when they
doubt themselves and celebrating with them in their
success.
But as in sport, coaches cannot do it on their
own. Coaches
and clients must work together as a team, a partnership,
to achieve success for the client, but without commitment
and dedication from the client all the work is for nothing.
But if you know there is more to life than you
are currently experiencing and you are prepared to rise
to the challenge then your life will never be the same.
Are you ready to take your game to the next level? If the answer is yes then call me, Gill Best, Caelum Coaching
on 0161 4916476 and let us see if we can take you to
your peak.
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