What is Life Coaching & How can we get Maximum Benefit out of it?

What is Life Coaching & How can we get Maximum Benefit out of it?

“I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum potential.”

                                                                                                                         – Bob Nardelli

Asit Negi

 

What is Life Coaching & how it adds values in life?

Life coaching is aimed at helping you meet the goals in your personal and professional life by guiding you- to maximize your potential and the capability you are unaware of; to help you find the untapped hidden talents within you.

 

To make it simpler, let us understand the role of a sports coach. What does a sports coach do for a sports person? The coach observes her/him minutely, understands the strengths and weaknesses, and counsels her/him with a positive mindset and technique. The coach does not go to the ground to play; s/he inspires the player to play with mindset and techniques to perform the best. We all know the coach plays a vital role in performance and consistency in all sports personalities. 

 

It holds true with our personal and professional life as well. Life coaching is an extension of professional help and guidance in resolving our issues. However, the approach is unique. As for sports coaching, the technique applied for Sachin Tendulkar will not work with Rahul Dravid or Tennis champion Sania Mirza or ace Badminton player PV Sindhu. The approach, thus, for life coaching is unique and person and objective- dependent.

 

Sometimes our mindset is deeply entangled in various beliefs and patterns surfacing as bad habits. It gets demonstrated as cognitive behaviors that are recognized by others and ignored by the self. This blindfold makes our vision blurred and unclear resulting in clouding our goal and loses our focus. 

 

The aim of life coaching is to help you:

-          Break the negative patterns,

-          Overcome fear and self-doubts (which stands as a barrier in life)

-          Act more decisively with a new perception and vision,

-          Set meaningful goals towards achieving what they want in life.

 

However, for the life coach, the most important goal is to help you close the gap between where you are where you want to be.

Life coaching is not a new concept; it’s as old as civilization.

In the battlefield of Mahabharata in Kurukshetra, Arjuna was empowered with every quality and component of a great warrior such as strength, weaponry, single-pointed focus, undeterred commitment, great will power, determination, and skills besides lots of practice. Moreover, he was confident which came from the victory in Virat Battle wherein he had single-handedly defeated the entire Kauravas. 

 

Just at the beginning of the war, he wanted to have a look at the situation and what happened then is interesting: in the middle of the battlefield, he got confused and perplexed. Captivated by the emotion called compassion and sympathy, Arjuna dropped his weapon, and declared not to fight. What a difficult situation! While on the one side you have your responsibilities, expectations, commitment, and your followers waiting for your instruction, on the other, you have lost the will to act. Gone are the focus, commitment, will power, determination, strength, skill, and all the practices he had been doing as a preparation for this day! With all these also is gone the opportunity he had long been looking forward to.

 

Fortunately, Arjuna had a coach right in front who counseled him, guided him, and inspired him. This is a historical moment and Arjuna got up and promised to Krishna, “I promise to act as per your guidance. So what is there in between ‘No’ and ‘Yes’, between ‘giving up the weapon’ and ‘picking up the weapon’?” Life coaching is a meaningful interaction between lost hope and high hope. 

 

What Lord Krishna gave to Arjuna to boost his morale, to motivate him to wage the war:

 

1.      A holistic approach towards life: it helped Arjuna overcome his emotional turmoil

2.      A long-term vision of life: it enabled Arjuna to take a decision over the short-term goal

3.      The mindfulness: it made Arjuna aware of self, others and the nature around him

4.      The cause and effects of life: it made Arjuna understand the root cause of all problems

5.      The action and reaction principle: it helped Arjuna set priorities and  to act for a higher purpose

 

Life is unique, and so are our perceptions, inspiration, goals, visions, and objectives; our approach towards success and happiness is also unique. Similarly, our problems and challenges are unique as well. Our approach towards resolving these issues is specific and demands specific attention. Unaware about a solution and unable to read the situation properly, in the process of trial and error method, we often end up paying a big price in the form of time, money, and energy. In this critical time, we turn towards our friends and family for an immediate solution. Often we get advice which is too generic and looks like a copy-paste option but such a copy-paste solution does not help in resolving our unique problems.

 

This is where a Life coach plays a role in our life. Life coaching helps us resolve our problem by giving us a new direction and perception which makes the solution workable. A life coach helps us with a different perspective as if it is closer to your heart and more importantly you feel as if it is already inbuilt in you. Your intent, strength, state, commitment, and hard work are not enough and sometimes you get entirety lost, and then look for the missing link. You try to see the missing link with small techniques, at times the style or the mindset, some other time the skill set, or the mix of all of these. But it does not help; you miss igniting the fire in spite of having all the ingredients which are an indication that something is missing. But wait, life coaching can help you come out of this mess!

How does life coaching work:

Life coaching is getting popular in the business world. It helps businessmen and professionals overcome their business-related and professional challenges. It is gaining ground in personal life as well. Life coaches are dealing with personal life in helping individuals in overcoming personal challenges of life including relationship, stress and anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence and many more personal problems. Life coaches help them explore the root causes of their problems and also help them find routes to success.

Life coaching is a series of individual sessions- either face-to-face or through telephone or video conferencing to help you discover yourself and find solutions to resolve the problems and achieve the desired objective. It touches various disciplines of your life- your psychology, your professional strengths, your academics, your surroundings, etc. It involves a variety of counseling forms: 

 The Life Coaching Format:

 1. One Complementary coaching consultation

2. 60-90 minutes – Discovery Session

3. One 30-90 minute session over the phone (time frame is goal & coach dependent)

4. Access to tools, resources & reference materials 

5. Unlimited email support

5. Open access to coaching platform

Life coaches offer general services but may also offer specialized services such as relationships, stress, personal growth, business growth, career, motivation, family, spirituality, etc.

 

How can I get Maximum Benefit from a Life Coach?

We all have our blind spots and dark areas of life within which lie lots of untapped potentiality and hidden talents. With the support and guidance of a life coach, you can shrink our blind spot and uncover our hidden dark areas. By discussing our issues and challenges, by asking questions and engaging with each other, you can discover the underlying ideas, new perception, opinions and motives that ignite our hidden potential which bring fire for a solution.  You can discover a new self with our renewed self-esteem and confidence.

About the author

 Asit Negi    |   asit@lorekin.com 

Asit is an adviser in enterprise-wide talent and learning transformations who brings deep industry and consulting experience in corporate learning strategy, learning technology, and learning journey. As a Life coach, he coaches & helps individuals and leaders in achieving their great results. Asit is based out of Bangalore.