Life coaching is a powerful way to make a breakthrough in your life

Life coaching is a process aimed at bringing all areas of your life to harmony and even development, which, in turn, will give you a feeling of fullness of life, joy and simple happiness. An important part of the process is to have a clear understanding of what you really want. During coaching sessions, you get to know yourself more deeply, your awareness, self-confidence and your actions increase.

What is life coaching.

The pace of our lives does not leave us a chance to implement most of our projects and plans. Under these conditions, the opportunity will stop and reflect on how we live, how satisfied we are with the quality of our life as a whole, and not its individual aspects, what we really want to achieve in life, what awaits us in the future and where the chain of endlessly accepted by us will lead us. decisions become an unaffordable luxury.

After all, even when we have a free minute, most people long for one thing - peace and quiet, not thinking about anything, relaxing the brain, indulging in laziness, watching TV shows or sitting in a bar, which, mind you, is also is a conscious decision. So, the moment when we realize the presence of a certain bias inevitably comes in the life of every person, for someone earlier, for someone later. If you think that this will bypass you, do not flatter yourself. Of course, if you have a clear, step-by-step plan for the development of your life for the next 15-20 years, I am completely calm for you, you are not afraid of any storm.

At the moment of crisis (awareness of distortion), we begin to rush from side to side, going to extremes, as well as exposing ourselves to the dangerous influence of dishonest and dishonest individuals who are just waiting for the opportunity to take advantage of your weakness. It seems to us that all troubles, misfortunes and just minor troubles arise by themselves and somehow suddenly. This is not true. Perhaps I will upset you if I say that you could have prevented all this. But there is good news - everything will be fine, you just need to want. And the best news is that even if everything is fine now, it can be even better!

Life coaching allows a person to evaluate his whole life, every area of it. Even the very realization that there are separate areas in our life that make up the overall picture of life is a discovery for many.

If you focus a lot on financial well-being, material things and pay little attention to your personal life, the result may be a relationship with the wrong partner. And instead of your home becoming your fortress, a place of rest and a source of recuperation and energy, it can become a place where you don’t want to return.

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Life Coach

A life coach is a coach who helps you achieve results in your life. We at Megaplan became interested in this area when it turned out that several of our former colleagues had chosen this new profession for themselves. Together with them, we will try to figure out what it is.

This article will be useful for those who are looking for their own life coach, and for those who are just studying such a modern direction as life coaching.

Mikhail Sukhov

Mikhail Sukhov-Agile coach and personal consultant (formerly product manager of Megaplan mobile apps):

— I came to coaching gradually. David Yan, the founder of ABBYY, helped me. I was working as a product manager back then, and he noticed that I was good at structuring processes and bringing order to chaos, and I could "straighten out what was confused." Then my friends recommended me to Sberbank for the position of an Agile coach, and I realized that this was mine. Then there was Avito, where I already have 100 teams. And at some point, I just thought that my knowledge and skills can be applied not only in business processes, but also in life. I decided to test this hypothesis by working one - on-one with 20 people, and after the first successful results, I realized that the request is there and very strong.

Dina Babaeva

Dina Babaeva – coach-consultant, integral therapist (ex-editor-in-chief of Megaplan mailing list):

— For me, coaching is the second profession. I have extensive experience in journalism, writing, and leadership. I came to coaching through personal changes: there were health problems that forced me to reconsider my attitude to life and what I do. I started studying spiritual practices, psychology, and neuropsychology, got to know myself better, and only when I got my questions sorted out did I start working with people.

Training program

Coaching is the art of promoting the development of another person. If you want to achieve certain results in your personal and professional life, then it's like in sports: you need a coach who will help you determine the vector of movement and tell you the right training program. Officially, a life coach does not teach life and cannot give advice. It helps to look at the path of life from the outside, asks the right questions and helps you choose the direction of movement.

In 1974, Timothy Galvey rethought his skills as a tennis instructor and developed the concept of coaching in business. And a couple of years later, Thomas J. Leonard has noticed that clients who come to him for advice on personal finance planning are actually looking for personal and professional growth. Both of these events were the starting point for the emergence of life coaching.

Despite the fact that there are international associations and accredited life coaching programs, it is quite difficult to determine its professional boundaries. The Higher School of Economics believes that life coaching should be based on psychoanalysis. Erickson University of Coaching trains its graduates to work with problems in the present and not look for the cause of failures in the past. As a result, many experts develop "rules of the game" based on their life experience.

Life Coach 1

Michael:

— I generated my program based on the business processes that I have been working with in teams for more than 15 years. I use Scrum, strategic frameworks, Objectives and Key Results, and many other business techniques. At the first stage of work, I help the client formulate a personal strategy for one, three, and ten years. At the second stage, based on the strategy for the next year, we formulate goals for the quarter. On the third stage, we start working rhythmically on weekly sprints, starting with planning and ending with a sprint review with a retrospective.

Dina:

— I developed my base through Erickson's coaching and hypnosis, spiritual practices, and body-oriented therapy. I work with a person in a complex way: not only with a specific problem, but also with their attitudes, inner world, and body. My approach is about deep motivation, I'm not one of those coaches who drives the client to the goal with a shovel. I help people understand what they really want, what their unrealized potential is.

Professional standards

According to the standards of the International Association of Coaches (ICF), a coach must have eleven key competencies. These include active listening, asking strong questions, designing actions, and others. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) has its own career development: depending on the number of hours of practice and the disciplines studied, you can get an associate, professional or master coach diploma. But this is the hierarchy of just one of the official schools. Each coach can choose the direction of their development and decide for themselves how to measure professional success.

Life Coach 2

Michael:

— I hope to spend the rest of my life coaching. I like working with businesses and people, leaders of teams and organizations. I like that I can see growth points and help people become happier, become a better version of themselves. I love my role in a supportive profession. In the future, I want to expand the contexts: I used to work with engineers, now with marketers, and try my hand at supporting people with IT education.

Dina:

— I don't know yet if I'll be coaching for the rest of my life. The world is very changeable, and it is difficult to predict anything at this stage. All I know is that there is no end point for personal change. I used to ask my teachers when I would "pass the exam". But this is a process: you peel off the husk, layer by layer, then look under the microscope – and there are more layers. And so on ad infinitum. It seems to the person: That's all now, I've solved all my problems. As time passes, new ones appear.

Costs of the profession

Working with people is a subtle science. The principle of "do no harm" and the coach's ability to remain dispassionate is very important. But coaches are also people, and they have their own problems, difficulties, and worries outside of the session. In close contact, their mood can affect their work, so they are responsible for personal difficulties not only to themselves, but also to the client. Professional coaches know that they need to work with a personal coach themselves.

Michael:

- The difficulties I face are the internal resistance of clients at the final stages. We can easily define a strategy and set goals, but when the work moves into the client's area of responsibility, where you need to work with sprints, fill out tables, difficulties begin. Someone is lazy, someone is distracted, someone does not have a resource. Dragging a client is very exhausting work, so now I have limited my program only to the first steps. I plan a sprint, and then I let the person go. After all, it is very difficult to give 100% and see that the result that the client has achieved is only 5% or even zero.

Like professional psychologists, coaches consider it mandatory to take money for their services. This principle is partly based on the effect of lost deposits: we value more what we pay for, and therefore pay more attention to paid tips. But the amount for an appointment depends on the coach himself: there is no average price for services in a professional environment. Novice coaches choose the starting price based on the advice of their colleagues, and then gradually increase it if they receive a new diploma or increase the flow of clients.

Dina:

- Disadvantages for me personally in the profession are the finiteness of resources and the financial ceiling. I can accept up to three clients a day, and I work with clients only three days a week. The rest of the time I run a Youtube channel, Yandex Zen, advise small and medium-sized businesses, and organize field trainings. And no matter how hard I try, I can't accept more people one-on-one. This means that I have to increase the cost of the session: the number of applicants increases and the price immediately increases. And this is a minus – few people can afford such assistance.

Choosing a coach

Unfortunately, coaching is not suitable for everyone: only people without mental illnesses can receive such coaching support. And it is also unlikely to be useful if the client has chosen a specific training style that is not suitable for him.

Michael:

— My method is suitable for people with a rational type of thinking. I have clear limits, boundaries, goals for the quarter, we set slots in the calendar and work with specific tasks. And I always have a safety measure: I don't go into psychotherapy. If I see that the problem is beyond my competence, I will never work with it, but I can recommend a specialist who can handle it.

A coach can help when there is internal tension. For example, you are not satisfied with your current job and want to change it, or you have your own goal setting system, but you want to improve it and make it more connected. When there is a state A and you want to move to state B. Of course, in most cases, we don't know what that state is. Therefore, we need help to formulate it clearly and develop a roadmap with goals and guidelines.

Dina:

— My method is not suitable for people who drink antidepressants. With them, the hormonal background changes, and we are engaged in body therapy, so there may be negative consequences. I also don't work with people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other mental illnesses.

How do I know if I need a coach? Sometimes, we have a specific question, we have reached a dead end and do not understand how to get out. Or, for example, we know exactly what we want, are ready to make a move, but we don't — the coach will help us understand why. Or we have started a new project: at work or in life, but we doubt that we will reach the end. There are a lot of situations, but the idea of contacting a coach most often comes intuitively.

Life Coach 3

If a profession appears, it means that someone needs it. Coaches, like sports coaches, are needed to achieve concrete success, even if not in the stadium, but in life. Some people don't have enough self-confidence to move forward. Some people just don't know which direction to go in. And someone seems to be so successful that they have lost their purpose in life and need to understand themselves in order to continue moving.

Have you ever resorted to the help of a coach: in your personal life, at work, or to solve career problems? Write in the comments what it was like and we'll share your impressions and recommendations. Or maybe you've worked as a coach yourself or want to try it out?

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