What exactly is a Life Coach?
A Life Coach is exactly what the words say: A coach that coaches you to win in life. We are there with you. We support you, guide you and when necessary push you, like any other coach.
If you want to get good a basketball, sure, you can just go the the playground, shoot hoops and hope for the best. Everyone in the NBA right now did just that. After a few days they realized it’s going well, so they changed their approach. They worked smart and hard. Not even one of them got to the NBA alone. They all had a lot of support. They did not have one coach, they had many. Usually, the first one was also their biggest fan: Mom. They had a team of coaches helping them get there. Because even though you want something as much as you need to breathe, without support, it’s almost impossible.
Life is supposed to be like that as well. You are born helpless and get two people to support you, if you are lucky. They are your first Life Coaches, your first mentors. After that, you get another coach: School. It’s filled with teachers and peers, and it’s here to prepare you for the real world.
So, around 18 years old you finish high school. Now, some people are well defined, assertive and positive people by then. To them, you can just say: Go forth into the world and make your mark on it. And they will. For them, the combination of their parents and their schooling turned out great. For most of us tough, life looks a bit different. We get some low paying job that we don’t really want, or if we studied hard enough, we go to college. Why? So we can have more knowledge and skills, but mostly more time. Why more time?
Because, if you’re like most people, you don’t have the faintest idea what you want to do with your life at 18. Therefore the world needs Life Coaches. To pick up the slack.
In my mind, we are all born winners. We were just taught how to be losers, without anyone realizing it. A Life Coach helps you get from where you are to exactly where you want to be. We are like genies in a bottle, only better. Why? Because, if you can’t describe exactly what you want in the most minute detail, a genie will use that and trick you. We won’t.
We will support you, guide you through the process of figuring out what you want. Then, when you are sure, we will make a plan. The plan will have a lot of steps. Now, all you have to do is stick to it. Easy, right? Wrong.
Most people don’t achieve something because they procrastinate or buy into their own excuses. We coaches know this. We expect it. There’s nothing I love more then a good excuse from a client. The better the excuse, the more energy he will have to achieve his dreams, once we flip it upside down.
Every obstacle is just an opportunity, a challenge that will make you feel alive while you deal with it and proud once you overcome it. You don’t have to believe me now. If you work with me tough, you will see it. You will look back at your problem and laugh at it, because it will seem absurd that something so simple seemed so hard and held you down so long.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not because you’re stupid and I’m not. We are all like this. I laugh myself to tears every day, as I realize I was running around in circles while the solution was staring me in the face. The only difference between you and me:
As long as I can remember, I could not stand to see people suffer because of mind games and lies. I had to and still have to do something. After some time, I realized the truth of that old proverb: “if you give a man fish, he’ll eat today. If you teach him how to fish, he will feed himself, every day.”
For me, coaching is how I can make sure that there is less suffering and more laughter in the world.
My end goal is not to have a set amount of people that depend on me to succeed in life. Nope. My dream is to live in a world where no adult needs a Life Coach. To live in a world where parents are taught to how be Life Coaches. To live in a world where Schools teach children how to life a happy and fulfilled life, not how to memorize facts and sit still. Sure, everyone should learn to be accountable and competent. But this is not all they should learn, and if we’re being honest, it’s not really what the school system does, it’s just what it promises but fails to deliver.
That brings me back to the sentence I wrote before: I believe we are all born winners, we just learn to be losers along the way. If we learned it, we can unlearn it.
A winner is basically a person that you can count on. If he says he will get you that cup of water, he does. If he says he will bring you that Olympic gold medal, he does. If he tells you he will do something, he does. He focuses on the future, on the goal. When he looks at the past, all he sees are victories. Why? Because failure does not exist. There is winning and there is falling down, slipping along your way to the victory. This is the mindset they have, deep in their core.
Consistency is key here. This will not happen overnight. It won’t be just one thing you change. It will be the sum of everything you did. But you don’t even need to think about it. This is what the Life Coach is for.
During the coaching sessions, we focus on you want and make sure you get it. Behind the scenes tough, you are building habits and thought patterns of a winner, while breaking down and letting go the ones that sabotage you. One day, maybe it’s after the 50th session, maybe it’s after the 5th you won’t just know these words, you will feel it in your bones: I am a winner. No matter what life throws at me, I will smile, take it head on and achieve what I set out to do.