WHY WORK WITH A COACH?

EP #10



“Do I need a life coach?” You’re listening to Episode 10, with Rhiannon Bush



Welcome to the Do I need a life coach? Podcast. We’re here to discuss the ins- and outs- of the life coaching industry and give you tools to use, to see for yourself. I’m your host, Rhiannon Bush. Mother, management consultant and a passionate, certified life coach.



Ok so I can’t believe this is episode 10 and I haven’t done this episode until now – slack of me. Apologies! So today, let’s talk about what you’ll get out of working with a life coach. In previous episodes we’ve discussed the difference between a coach and other mental health professionals. We’ve discussed a lot about communication which is something I love to talk about and which I believe is so linked with coaching. Coaches are incredibly strong communicators. They not only have great questioning techniques, but coaches also have the applicable training to understand emotional momentum and how to use that momentum to facilitate their client to make great decisions from a place of pure authenticity – which in most instances, will drive them to take action. To add in a third layer, nobody (in my experience) who isn’t a “people person” becomes a coach. Why would they? People who train to become a life coach care about helping people and care about helping themselves at the same time, which is a win-win. Often, people who like people have a very curated intuition – a strong ability to sense what’s going on around them and read other people really well. Coaches are great communicators.



We’ve also talked about things to look for in a coach-client relationship. What qualifies somebody to be a life coach. The difference between a coach and a supportive friend. But there’s still a big gaping hole… drum roll please… of “what I would have if I saw a life coach?? Why would I? What would I get?”



Well… let me tell you, it’s profound and it’s a lot. And it should be, because it’s something that’s deemed by so many, to be this “life changing experience”. So… instead of casting a super broad net, I’m going to tell you about my personal experiences – both as a client and for my clients that I’ve coached, things I’ve gained and observed from working with life coaches and also coaching clients over the past 8 years. Also, I’m going to talk to you about what my fellow coaches think are some of the most important things you get when you experience coaching.



If you’ve ever had a life coach price up for you and you’ve thought “oh my gosh, how can they charge that?” or you’ve just been so hesitant to reach out to a coach for an initial consult because you’re worried they’re going to charge crazy prices and be super expensive, I hear you. We’ve all been there. It happens.



And… sometimes, those prices are 100% worth paying. Other times they’re not. And sadly, I wouldn’t recommending resting on your intuition for this. It’s a choice only you can make and, if you’re paying good money, it needs to be a head-heart-and-gut decision. All three of those brains of yours (yes, we have a head-brain (obviously!), a heart brain and a gut brain) . They all need to weigh into this decision. And again, sadly, sometimes you may still be disappointed in the result, BUT I will say this. You are actually the one responsible for your results. Once you make your choice, you must back yourself.



I will also say though, in a paid-services relationship there is a standard of professionalism, skill and capability that is to be expected. This is where the ICF standards come into play. And, as I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, making sure you do your research before hiring a coach is highly recommended in the way of social proof, reaching out to clients who have worked with that coach to talk about it with them – get your inner stalker on. Episode 4 has more detailed information for anybody who wants to re-visit all the guidelines I discuss for hiring a coach.



So, some of the transformational differences from clients, including experiences I’ve experienced within myself as a client, from the beginning of a coaching journey to the end… I’m going to take you through xxx top benefits you’ll get by working with a life coach. There’s so much more to it than just these, but this is a great place to start.



I realised once upon a time that I was telling myself that “life is hard”.. and I worked with a coach to delve into that belief. She asked me really? How so? And didn’t let me off the hook until I was truly honest about why I was saying that. As I went through a list of the usual and fundamental reasons life could be “hard”, I had to go through a process of elimination:

Money – not a problem

House – on the way

Job – challenging in a great way, sometimes not feeling in control but on the whole, pretty positive

Lover – great relationship, great sex, great connection. Sometimes taking my stress out on him but on the whole, we’re doing well and I’m feeling connected physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually

Family – amazing. Kids, beautiful.

Social life – feels missing and pretty minimal. I probably don’t have the usual release from partying the way I used to, or having friends I truly love and trust and just have a tonne of immature fun and good times with… but I’m not in that phase of life anymore. But I feel like I went from being in my mid-20s to being in my mid-70s in the blink of an eye.



Ahh…. Was it any wonder that I felt like life is hard?



After some probing, my coach helped me recognise that I’d just done a bunch of CX work with a Cemeteries Trust, creating a lot of their call centre scripts and training resources. That work was both incredibly meaningful and incredibly confronting. Death is something as a society we push away. Culturally, we put it off, don’t discuss it and wait until we really have to, to make plans and think about what we want. To be surrounded by it, talking about it, thinking about it and learning about it every day, was a lot.



My whole life I’d known I wanted kids and while career has always meant a lot to me, the bigger vision I had for my career only came to me right before having kids. So having kids almost felt like an end-state. Goal achieved. Once I’d achieved that, what else was there?



Before you scream at me, my logic brain too kicks in here and says “ahhh you have beautiful kids you get to raise and enjoy and, well… what more do you want” but the feeling was very different. This is why I, and many others, need a coach.



For you it may not be about kids. For you it may be about career progression, or going out on your own. It may be about finding or fixing a relationship. It may be entirely insular – about self-worth and achieving a dream you have, leaving a legacy. You may not even know what it’s about, it may just feel like lack. A lack of inspiration. A lack of joy. A lack of energy. A lack of passion. A lack of spice for life.



I stand by the fact that no matter what, we all need and will benefit from seeing a coach. Even if we don’t know what it’s for. And this is why.



The biggest shift I notice in literally every client I coach is that in the beginning, they demonstrate symptoms of ‘unsureness’. What do I mean? They are slightly timid or frustrated. The predominant emotion they’re feeling is negative. And it’s weighty – as in the negative is somewhat weighing them down and is all-consuming or at least mostly-consuming. It may be frustration, annoyance, stuck. Whatever it is, they’re cycling around the same story and throughout the course of our coach-client relationship, they transform, literally before my eyes from being energetically weighty and negative, to almost being alive in technicolour. Like something going from dull and somewhat lifeless, to blooming and alive, lit-up and vibrant. Until their existing story is disrupted, they can’t see or be out of cycle to find their inner rock-star.



So I’d label one of the first benefits of seeing a coach as awareness – when you speak to a life coach you get a lot of awareness about where you are and where you want to go, what you want to do and what it all means to you. As we spoke about in Episode 1, from A to B. Now to then. Present state to future state. By having a coach facilitate our observation of how we’re behaving and things we’re experiencing, what we’re thinking and feeling and then analysing why that may be, and delving into the root cause, our awareness is dramatically enhanced. Until we have awareness, we can’t make any changes. It takes conscious awareness to make a conscious change. When we’re aware, we’re in control. We can take accountability and responsibility because we know. We can see.



[Story]





That awareness is enhanced because your coach has a way of showing you things you may not be able to recognise. We, as humans, have an incredible ability to be hard on ourselves – consider this for a minute. Would you ever, ever, talk to somebody else the way you talk to yourself? When I was first asked this question, my answer was “oh my goodness, NEVER, ever would I speak to somebody this way”. Why do we do this to ourselves? Isn’t it awful? Instead, how about we treat ourselves with the kindness, the love, the compassion, the care that we should expect from others, and that we show others as well?



When we start to treat ourselves with more respect and we learn to love ourselves, we feel more confident. Our confidence grows. As a coach, we can see the capabilities in our clients to overcome things that they’re experiencing, often before they can. Knowing that they can change and knowing that where they are right now isn’t it for them, is what enables us as coaches to feel powerful in our practice and to hold space for the growth and expansion for our clients. With some new thoughts and focus, we begin to find evidence for what we want to be true for us. When we find that evidence, and yes, we will always find that evidence, our belief and confidence in our abilities and our purpose for being here grows. Then, from a place of increased confidence and empowerment, we make different decisions. These decisions get us different results and expansion into a new way of being commences.





Confidence comes from competence. While sometimes we can fake it until we become it, there’s a very clear, energetic difference between someone who knows that they know their stuff, versus somebody who’s faking that they know their stuff to exude confidence. For budding coaches out there, my key to this is that you need to drop into the reasons and purpose for which you became a coach in the first place. You need to settle into that because it will guide your intuition and enable you to serve and not make it about you. When clients grasp onto new thoughts that are believable enough for them, not necessarily entirely, 100% believable, but believable enough to maybe, possibly, could-be true, it opens their eyes to question and therefore look for the evidence to support it.



Benefits two (and maybe three). Responsibility and accountability. Responsibility I’ll define as the verb of accountability, as in, it’s about the action required to get the outcome. When we’re accountable, we take 100% ownership for our results and therefore 100% responsibility for our actions. There’s a coaching tool called Cause and Effect and I’ll go into it later, but basically when we’re in that negative, weighty place feeling down-and-out about something or everything, we’re usually looking outside of ourselves for answers.



So Benefit 4, expert facilitation of what YOU want. Not your coach, not your family, not your friends or children. You. Let’s call it authenticity. Coaching gives you that – a sounding board to listen to what is right for you, what is true for you. Something we, in life, rarely get an opportunity to hone in on, pay attention to and really listen.



100% ownership of your results, plus enhanced authenticity generates empowerment. Benefit 5. You gain something from seeing a life coach that’s very personal to you… and you don’t get it from your coach because you can’t, you get it from within you. But often, without seeing a coach, we can’t get to a state of empowerment because we’re never taught how to, and unfortunately this isn’t taught in schools. It definitely should be but we’re not taught that our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings create our behaviour. Otherwise we’d all be walking around having more honest conversations and we wouldn’t be addicted to posting so much fake stuff on social media.



After clearing a lot of the negative emotions away through therapy-based techniques, catharsis or simply answering questions asked by your coach, you can start to focus on B – where you want to be instead. Benefit 6 is clarity. You not only get clarity for your big vision, your purpose – the vision you have for your life, how you want to live it and what time on this earth means for you, a vision not influenced or inflicted by anybody else. It’s in true alignment with you, your values, your goals and what you truly want… You also get a road map. A structured approach to achieving that vision and all you want to achieve. By outlining that vision and having that roadmap, you have steps to take action on and a process in which to achieve it and overcome roadblocks as you get to them. This gives you a focal point to move forward (let’s make focus Benefit 7).



Living in alignment, and from a truly empowered place gives you benefit 8: Energy. Energy to do things that feed your energy and your purpose because you’re moving towards the thing you actually want. The things that give your life meaning. Think about doing things you love to do – those things that when you do, truly light you up. It may be singing, dancing, having fun. Catherine Price delivers a great Ted talk on the definition of fun and says fun requires the meeting of 3 criteria: playful, connection and flow. Fun is absolutely in the present moment and gives pure energy.



How often do you say you’re “tired”, or “busy”, or “bored”? Working with a coach will help you identify what you’re currently doing in your life that is out of alignment and preventing you from having fun. From finding that playfulness, connection and flow. Seeing a life coach will revitalise your energy and do it in a way that is self-sustaining, independent from the coach. Meaning you don’t need to keep seeing your coach to keep your energy levels up. That is not the purpose of seeing a coach.



The ultimate benefit from all my fellow coaches believe and I too believe is the predominant one is freedom. Freedom to live your life your way. Freedom to chase those big dreams. Freedom to love and search and work and do whatever you want, whenever you want with who every you want, however you want. It’s the freedom to choose, in alignment with who you are, what you want and making the most of your time on this earth. And only you can make that choice for you. Only you know what you truly want. And if something is sucking your energy or causing you to feel negative, it’s telling you you’re missing something. You’re not listening. It’s up for you to listen and chase, and follow your heart.



Hey! Before you go, I always find reviews really helpful when looking for new information or insights…



I you’ve found this podcast valuable, please take a minute to write a quick review about what you’ve found most beneficial for you, so other people can benefit from your insights, and listen in too. I would LOVE that!

Also, if there are any topics you’d like me to cover specifically about life coaching or the life coaching industry, visit rhiannonbush.com to contact me. Thanks for joining and I’ll see you in the next episode of Do I Need A Life Coach?!

Please note, this transcription may not be exact.