On my search for a good, clear and not too long definition, I have found a few.
Here they are along with my comments:

“Coaching is a practice of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals.”
Definition by Wikipidia

For me, the important word here is goals. I can’t emphasize enough the need for goals in Life Coaching. Defining your goals is one of the first thing you will do with me as your Life Coach because you and I need to know what you will be working towards. It can be daunting for some people because the problem that brought them there in the first place is that they don’t know where they are going. But there is a structure to determine your goals and make sure those goals are powerful, inspiring and you truly have a change to achieve them.

“Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
Definition by the International Coach Federation

The key words for me here are thought provoking and creative process. One of my main roles, as a Coach, is to challenge my clients’ thoughts. Their thoughts about who they are, what they do, what they can or cannot achieve. The objective is for the client to discover what it is they do and think that is preventing them from reaching their goals. Once they have realised that then I encourage them to think of other ways to move forward in a creative process and we practice exercises to change the way they think about themselves and others (whether it is lack of confidence, limiting beliefs, fears, …).

“Life Coaching is a form of personal intervention that is future focused, goal orientated, and concerned with enabling others to move forward with their lives or businesses more effectively than if they were doing this alone.”
Definition by the Coaching Academy

One of the key attributes of Life Coaching is that it is focused on the future. In Life Coaching, we believe that what you have been and done in the past does not need to continue and YOU CAN DECIDE to change in the present to build the future you want.

Life Coaching is ideal to help you move forward and act so you take control and build the future you want for yourself. Taking action is another important attribute of Life Coaching. Once you have set your goals, understood what you needed to change, then I will help you take little steps every time, concrete and precise actions that will take you closer and closer to your goal.

As we’ve seen, they are a lot of key words: goals, future focused, thought provoking, creative process, move forward. They all help defining what Life Coaching is about.

For me, in just a few words, what I think sums it up simply is:

Life Coaching helps people take control of their life.

It is based on the theory (created in the 1970’s by a linguist and a specialist in personal development) that as we are faced with new situations we unconsciously create programmes about how to deal with each situation. We store these programmes in our unconscious mind and they are called upon whenever needed making us react in a very consistent way to similar situations. For instance when we ride a bike, drive a car, meet somebody new, give a speech, etc… Some programmes are helpful, others do not work so well for us because they trigger fears, negative feelings or limiting beliefs. NLP is about recognizing which programmes stop us from doing what we really want to do, taking control of them and changing them into new ones that can actually help us.

Let me give you an example. You could be scared of driving. Every time you face the prospect of driving, your unconscious programme kicks in and you feel fear. To solve the problem, we can try and minimise your fear (by having a rational talk about accident rates, death rates). Or we could try and increase your proficiency as a driver (taking more lessons, gradually increasing you car journeys). Those are all logical solutions appealing to your conscious thoughts. This approach will probably work over a long period of time.
However NLP has a different approach. It tackles directly our unconscious thoughts and their associated feelings. Through specific exercises, it is those unhelpful unconscious thoughts that we are going to change by using your imagination and associating different feelings to existing programmes.

It is surprising at first because it is not usually how we solve problems. Yet it works extremely well and quickly. I use it particularly to help clients fight fears, negative feelings, cravings and to help them visualise their success.

• Are you worried about your future at work in these uncertain times?

• Have you been made redundant?

• Are you considering reentering the job market after an extended absence (for maternity or other reasons)?

Many clients come to me because they feel stuck where they are and want to reevaluate their career and their options. Some want more money, others a better work-life balance, many look for a meaningful job.

Coaching can really help:

- assess your current situation
- set short, medium and long term goals
- identify realistic options in line with your goals
- understand potential obstacles and find a way forward
- build your confidence to implement these changes

If you feel worried about your work and your future at work, coaching can help you find a way forward and build the confidence you need to achieve it.

]]> http://ichatfield.co.uk/career/feed/ http://ichatfield.co.uk/confidence/ http://ichatfield.co.uk/confidence/#comments Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:39 +0000 Isabelle Chatfield http://ichatfield.co.uk/?p=183
• Do you avoid risks?
• Do you fear new experiences?
• Are you in constant doubt about your life?
• Do you have a strong need for approval?
• Are you sensitive to criticism?
• Do you tend to speak harshly to yourself and reject yourself as you are?

Lacking confidence is about lacking faith in your abilities. It can be specific or broad (speaking in public, job interviews, making a presentation, driving, …). Self-esteem relates to self-worth and how much you accept yourself as you are. Very often low confidence and self-esteem are linked. Whatever the cause (physical appearance, childhood, relationship, ..), lack of confidence and self-esteem can profoundly impact someone’s life by stopping them from doing the things they would like to do and ultimately having the life they would really like to have.

Clients who come to me for weight problems, stress or even career issues might have underlying confidence and self-esteem issues. We work on:

- recognising the signs of low confidence and self-esteem and the high and low confidence pattern

- spotting the limiting beliefs, the negative language and internal voice

- building confidence and self-belief through NLP exercises

In our modern daily life, it is almost impossible not to experience stress.
Work, people, situations, events can all cause stress. It wouldn’t be that bad if stress was occasional. The problem really comes when stress is repetitive. The constant flow of stress hormones can have terrible health consequences (higher risk of heart attacks, high blood pressure, inflammatory diseases, IBS, digestion problems). The feeling of helplessness can cause anger and conflicts and add to the initial cause of stress.

So, what’s the solution? Avoid stress altogether? There are so many different causes of stress that it’s hardly possible to avoid it. The solution lies in learning how to manage stress.

Together with my clients we try and understand the real causes of their stress. Stress can come from poor time management, lack of confidence, relationships issues, lack of direction, wrong expectations … Once we know the real causes, we decide on an appropriate response for each of them.

Here are some examples of the work we can do together:

- thinking creatively of new ways to tackle each cause of stress

- setting concrete actions to solve the causes of stress

- learning to say No

- learning relaxation and meditation

- letting go of negative thoughts and limiting beliefs

I also take clients who suffer from panic attacks. Panic attacks are extreme physical reactions to stressful events. The intensity is such that the physical symptoms you experience make you feel you are about to die (pounding heart, chest pain, breathlessness, feeling of chocking, sweatiness, trembling, nausea, chills or hot flushes, numbness or tingling).

An attack passes but what does not pass easily is the fear that it might happen again. Many people then react by putting a stop to their normal activity in a bid to avoid anything that could trigger another attack.

The work I do with my clients who have suffered from panic attacks also includes identifying and tackling causes of stress. On top of that we work on beating the fear of another attack (mainly through NLP exercises) and on progressively resuming a normal life.

• Would you like to improve your diet, your health, your lifestyle?

On top of being a qualified Life Coach, I am also a qualified Nutritional Advisor.
One thing all my studies and experience have taught me is that change is not good unless it is lasting and, to be lasting, change has to become second nature whether we’re talking about healthy eating, losing weight or exercising.

Together with my clients we:

- set realistic goals
- assess the current situation (eating and exercising habits, lifestyle)
- identify obstacles and ways to overcome them
- reinforce motivation
- implement changes progressively but constantly and in a way that is integrated into the current lifestyle
- build self-confidence

I use visualisation and NLP to help clients overcome cravings and addictions and to keep their motivation up. My weight loss advice is based on healthy nutrition rules.

I really enjoy helping people take control of their health, their weight and observing the positive impact it has on their confidence, stress levels, relationships and life.