Archive for May, 2009

How is life coaching different from therapy, consulting, sports coaching or having a best friend?

Life coaching is not and should not be confused with therapy or counseling. A life coach assumes that you are creative, resourceful and whole and that you have all the answers within your reach. Life coaches do not deal with “issues”, the past or understanding human behavior. One of the foundational beliefs of coaching is to coach the client, not the problem. The real purpose of coaching is to “close the gap” between where a client currently is in their life and where they want to be. One of the gifts a coach brings to the coaching relationship is the belief that the client can get where they want to be AND beyond. Coaches generally hold a bigger vision of a client’s life than the client will and a coach will call the client forth to step into their potential.
Coaching and consulting are often used interchangeably, especially in business coaching. Again, the coach assumes that you have all the answers within you or within your reach. A coach will help you discover what it is you want to learn, but will not normally teach it to you. A consultant will teach you tools to use in your business or in your life, and may or may not coach you in their use. A coach will help you use the tools and resources you have and that you learn to their best effect in your life. While a coach does a lot of teaching, they are really mentors rather than teachers. If you want to learn marketing tools, hire a consultant. If you want to start using the marketing tools that you have learned from the last five workshops you went to, hire a coach.

Life coaching and sports coaching both focus on principles like going for goals, being your best, practice, team work and accountability. The main difference is that life coaching is helping look for the win-win situations and solutions in your life as opposed to the win-lose situations and solutions. Sports coaching is generally competitive, while life coaching is cooperative. The best sports coaches actually coach to these differences and achieve amazing results with their athletes and teams. Youth coaches that stand out especially tend to be focused on developing people, not just athletes.
A best friend should not be your life coach. Even life coaches have best friends and their best friends do NOT want to be coached by them. A best friend listens to your stories, colludes with you, and puts up with you no matter what. A good life coach won’t do any of these things. A good life coach is going to help you shift into personal responsibility, growth and learning and action. A life coach will ask you tough questions, provide meaningful distinctions and push you to your limits and beyond. A life coach and a best friend both want what’s best for you. Have both a life coach and a best friend.

Carrie Kish is a life coach and leadership trainer who specializes in coaching women entrepreneurs, especially coaches, and leadership training for corporations and teens. For more information, visit www.CarrieKish.com or call 661.255.2100.

In order to get results in your life, manage your focus. Do you notice when you get a new car, you start seeing that car everywhere? It’s because you are now focused on that car. Do you ever focus on dieting and all you want to do is cheat? It is because focusing on deprivation makes you feel deprived. Have you been focusing on the “sorry state of the economy” and feeling financial stress? There is an easier way, a result’s oriented way.

The first step is to get clear about what you want. This is actually the step where most people get stuck. Most people focus on what they don’t want, rather than focusing on the result they want to create. When you focus on what you don’t want, you get more of what you don’t want. It’s called The Law of Attraction. So, what do you want? State your intentions in the positive. Rather than getting out of debt, focus on being financially abundant. Rather than losing weight, focus on being healthy. Rather than cleaning up the disaster in your office, focus on getting organized. Rather than focusing on the current “economic crisis”, focus on gratitude for the abundance in your life. Stating your intention is only the first step.

The next step is to get really clear about what you want and create your vision. You can do this by keeping a journal, by creating a vision board or by visualizing the result in your mind. A journal can be used to create your original vision and to practice a daily visioning activity such as writing one affirmation to use during the day and keeping a record of five successes for the day. A vision board can be easily created using a blank poster and pictures and words from magazines to create a collage focused on your desired result. Simply spending three to five minutes once or twice a day visualizing your success with your eyes closed is especially effective. Visualizing your success clearly and re-visiting your vision is imperative to your success.

Any success you have created in your life is likely the result of active visualization. You think about it all day long and nothing can distract you from your result. Obstacles become problems to solve instead of insurmountable hurdles. Focus on your outcomes and practice staying clear about your visions and watch your results show up in your life faster, better and easier than ever before.

Carrie Kish is a life coach who believes YOU are destined for greatness! She helps her clients get focused and create visions in her Destiny Board workshops. For more information, visit www.CarrieKish.com or call 661.255.2100.