Getting Started With a Life Coach
What’s your story? The one you tell others about yourself... and more important, what do you say to yourself about who you are? Are you an introvert who hates the spotlight? Or a workaholic who can’t relax, even on vacation? Consider this: If you look at your life and see mostly mistakes and shortcomings, are you being fair with yourself? As fair as you might be with someone you really cared about? Working with a life coach can help.
Research shows that early on in life, we begin to develop a story about who we are and why we are the way we are. Over time, it can become very fixed. Sometimes, the stories support us. For example, “I’m an explorer, open to new experiences.” If I believe that about myself, I will enter a new job with a sense of excitement, and others will usually respond to my enthusiasm, helping me succeed.
But many of us have stories that we buy into that hold us back. These may have been handed down to us before we were able to discern for ourselves, or picked up along the way as we continually focus on what went wrong and repeatedly take what went right for granted. For instance, “I’m terrible under pressure.” “I lack follow-through.” Or, “If something can go wrong for me, it will."A life coach listens to your story and helps you make positive changes.
We all have evidence we look to that supports these ideas we hold about ourselves. Maybe you bombed a presentation in college or early in your career, or you have a lot of interests and feel like you are always running from one thing to the next. Maybe you wrecked a friend’s car. Or stayed in a relationship that was unhealthy. But these stories never capture the whole picture of who you are, and if you widen the lens, you will always find evidence of a different story. The story of the person who made a decent choice given the options before him at the time, the story of the person who handled a difficult situation realistically and survived.
It’s what we choose to focus on that ends up being our dominant story, and it’s based on partial evidence. The good news is that we can change not only how we feel about ourselves but also how we live and how we treat others by taking the time to examine the stories we tell about ourselves and look for evidence of another story. Once we find the seeds of that other story, we can nurture that to become our dominant story. And that’s when real change starts happening.
My story is that I love to hear other people’s narratives and help them recognize their strengths and best qualities and to grow and use them more, so that their dominant story can become one that they are excited about and which conveys who they really are.
This is about grounded positivity, making the choice to take the time to reflect on who you really are, looking for evidence that backs it up, and then developing a plan for living an authentic life.
If you want to live life in sync with your values, interests and strengths and want to explore research-based techniques for how to do this, contact me to see how a life coach can help you. I look forward to hearing your story. I know it’s a great one.