What is personal coaching?
While therapy is an explorative modality, coaching is a more directive approach to wellness. In coaching we are going to talk about goals, what important change you want to make in your life, and a more directive approach to getting there. We are going the ask the question, "What does your future life look like five years from now?" and then examine what benchmarks of progress are needed to get there.
Well-being as a lifestyle change
While goals are important, change isn't something that just happens once when we cross a finish line, we want it to be lasting.
Lasting change is a lifestyle change. It's a change of the fundamental ways we operate in the world, and goals are many times achieved as the by-product or secondary effect of building a better foundation.
Take this hypothetical example, a goal of losing a certain amount of weight. Rather than aim for a number of pounds lost, you might consider making movement and healthier eating habits a regular part of your life. Focusing on creating the conditions of a healthy lifestyle now, will likely lead to weight loss down the road.
Foundation is important. Most people have a set of habits that form a foundation for how they show up in the world. Going to work every day is one example of a habit. Some habits really support us and others supported us at one point in time, but may no longer be as effective as they were. As we have a conversation about lifestyle change, we are also going to talk about habit change. Creating new habits or adjusting old ones so that your present moment actions are supporting the future you will be creating for yourself. Executing those new habits with consistency will create lasting change, and create a new foundation.
Building your ideal life is like building a solid foundation for a new home. Aspects of life such as, sleep, movement, relationships, and creating meaning in your work all contribute to the frame of the house. If the foundation is strong you can build the house anyway you like! In contrast, if a foundation has a weak point, then you might be limited by having to build the house around compensating for that weak point. Let's talk about and explore your foundation.
Working with Your emotional experience when you are feeling "stuck."
In my opinion, one of the greatest skills in life is being able to do something that I REALLY don't "feel" like doing, but I know is important to do. There might be an exam you don't feel like studying for, a performance that you don't feel like practicing for, or even asking for help when you aren't sure what to do.
The emotional felt experience of this not wanting to do something, can be really tough to work with. If we only ever do things that we are excited and happy to do, we would be in a really tough place.
Many times in life we are asked to do the difficult thing, and it is so important we know how to do difficult things, because creating the life we want for ourselves will require us to do what is difficult. To show up and be brave, and to find out... that we are really much stronger than we knew.