What is it about Coaching that makes it an addition to your life journey?

Many people are still unaware of what coaching is? What does a coach actually do? Why would coaching add to your life journey? Or if it was indeed a necessary tool? Before enrolling with the International Coach Academy, I posed these questions and many more. I had this passion to assist my friends and my students to get better than just satisfactory results in whatever endeavor they handled: their life in general, their interpersonal relationships, their professional lives, or their academic achievements. In many instances, my free services were not taken seriously and even resisted. It didn’t take long before I realized that to be effective, coaching has to be sought, not enforced. This, then, becomes a pre-requisite to actually benefiting from the coach’s service, but

What is coaching?
Coaching is about having a partnership with another person whose aim is to support you discover priorities that would make your life more meaningful, enjoyable, and fulfilled. Once you are able to pinpoint these, your relationship with a coach will help you devise a plan with concrete objectives to achieve within a set time frame. During the process, your coach plays the role of your: mind-assistant, devil’s advocate, cheerleader, and your backup support. We all have our moments of doubt in ourselves. In such instances, you will find that your coach will never be a skeptic in your potential, beliefs, or uniqueness. The coaching relationship helps you be your authentic self, create your own plans and solutions, and pursue your goals. We all need to see things from a different perspective no matter how sure we are of our own. We all need to share our aspirations, fears, accomplishments, and dreams with someone who has only our best interest. This is exactly what you’ll have in a coaching relationship.



Why not be self-reliant, resort to close friends, partner, parents, siblings, or other people we can trust?
You are better of having a coach because you need someone who is an expert at listening, someone who has only your best interest as a topic of focus, someone who can speed up your actions towards change. No matter how ingrained your belief is about yourself, a coach will help you identify any limiting beliefs. No matter how powerful your circumstances are, a coach empowers you to surpass any constraining factor. A coach is just trained to see things from many different angles; and this is why you can’t always be self-reliant. Your friends, partner, parents, or siblings have a tendency to see you in a role that serves your mutual relationships. They might not delve deeply into what really matters to you, or have the time to monitor whether you are taking action to progress towards your goals. This is the coach’s role not theirs. Being an outsider, a coach has the ability to see you thrive in different and multiple roles. Finally, you need not worry about opening up too much to a “stranger”. All coaches abide by the “Code of Ethics” set by the International Coaching Federation. Confidentiality is assured during the coaching process. It would be just like talking to your self on a clear shiny mirror….

When is coaching needed?
Any time during your life journey a coach is needed especially in times of transition, loss, change, confusion, or emptiness. Difficult times can be surmounted with the help of a coach, so do fast-pace times. An objective input is always an asset at any point in our lives.