Ali Beal -B’Ed(Hons) OCR L5 Assessing SpLD CPD Life Coaching Disc Practitioner
This is a question that I often get asked so I will attempt to answer it here as you may also be wondering.
I came across Life coaching years ago a few years ago as I heard someone give a talk on Life coaching to a group of teenagers. I was fascinated to hear about the huge difference that Life coaching can make to someones destiny and purpose in life and was hooked.
For the dreamers, of which I’m one and I expect you are too there often seems to be an ocean dividing what we are hoping to aspire to and what we actually experience in life and in a way Life Coaching helps to ‘mind the gap.’ and cross the bridge. That dream might be as simple as not being swamped by the piles of laundry and keeping on top of the food shop or theres a sense that the job you’re doing is really not fulfilling you because you’ve got a hope to achieve and create something else. These are two examples of goals that can be coached, everyones got their own coachable life goals.
Coaching is essentially a serious of conversations and deep thought and reflection. You, the coachee choose what goals you want to explore. Any type of Life coaching is usually aimed at helping people identify and improve upon their strengths and skills, achieve their goals, achieve personal and professional or business success and manage transitional stages of life and challenges. In general effective Life coaching can also help promote physical, mental, holistic or spiritual development. Overall, life coaching leads to a host of positive benefits that help improve peoples lives. Personally I love coaching, using a variety of the life coach tools acquired in training and in my years of teaching and mentoring. The coach facilitates and enables the client to explore the issues that they choose. and then theres the sense of intuition and Spiritual sense. With coaching I love to encourage the use of metaphor, each person is different and some people may want to use drawing, writing and different senses to express themselves.
Coaching conversations can happen over different time frames and in different environments. It could be a two hour face to face session or a 10 minute phone call . A personal coach normally works within arranged coaching sessions over a period of time, the coach facilitates a process of enquiry and discussion for example by listening, questioning and offering summarised observations and feedback. The person being coached the coachee or client gains increased clarity which enables them to make progress. A coach will also support the coachee to decide on ways forward by facilitating the decision making process or by encouraging them to get into action and make things happen. I love to encourage people and seeing clients gain increased clarity and freedom to achieve their goals boosting self esteem is priceless. Where the client can use spiritual or soul discernment they are often able to tune in at a deeper level which helps accelerate progress. Although our forms of expression may be different Life Coaching is geared around the needs of the client. We help our clients explore anything that may be preventing them from making their desired changes. We all want to be listened to and conversation helps us to process and make sense of our lives and experiences. Maybe in a previous century there was more time for this reflection but for the average person we seldom have a network that really allows us to talk things through.
Highly skilled Life coaching is golden, it could just be time now to invest in yourself. My Oceans Coaching enables you to take time out of your busy schedule, as the tag line says ‘ for the changing tides of life’ our lives ebb and flow and sometimes we all need that extra conversation and coaching to help us reflect, regroup and moveon.