The Time of Your Life
Insights & Inspiration
from Coaching Practice
By Chris Wesley
Published by Chris Wesley at Smashwords
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© Chris Wesley 2010
The moral right of Chris Wesley to be identified as the author of this work and the aforementioned website has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner the above publisher of this book.
Designed and edited by Amanda Williams
ISBN 978-0-9565130-1-4
The Time of Your Life is also available in print from the author’s website at:
http://www.uklifecoaching.org/shop/lifecoachingbook.htm
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Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
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CONTENTS
Preface
What is Life Coaching?
How Coaching Helps Real People
How Can You Change Your Life TODAY?
Meet the Norms
The Real World: You Live in a World You Invented – so Invent a Nice One!
Giving Up Bad Habits: Life Coaching Can Help
Does Your Past Predict Your Future?
Quiet Your Chattering Mind through Meditation
Get Out of That Rut!
Coaching Practice Tips: Choices and Consequences
Cultivating Consciousness: Finding Opportunities
Trying Harder Fails: So Now What?
Self Confidence is a Magic Key
Building Confidence: "Anchoring"
Do You Know Who You Are? Beliefs
Who Are You? Values
How Would it Feel if You Knew Why You Were Here?
Learn Fast: Stay Stupid!
Your Friends Control Who You Are: Choose Them Wisely
Can you Really "Buy" Happiness?
Are You Going Through Mid-Life Crisis?
Powerful Goal Setting
Is Depression Flattening your Life?
Stress Management & Life Coaching
Conquering Fear
Happiness Now: It's all Around You if You Look
Overcoming Inertia
Fluid Thinking: Being in the Don't Know
The Time of Your Life: the Key to Change is Time
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Preface
Fundamentally, this is a book about coping better with your life, to become happier and to realise more of your potential.
It is a collection of short, easy articles which are a distillation of powerful insights and techniques used in my coaching practice.
By all means read it cover-to-cover; you'll enjoy it and you'll feel better, but nothing much will change in your life. The real benefits are to be had - not by reading, but by doing. So I urge you to come back and read one article a day, and during that day, look for ways to apply the lessons in the article. Bring a fun-loving, creative, positive mental attitude to your reading. If you can, work with a friend on this. Each of you will have an external perspective on the other's life, and this will be invaluable in seeing past your "life blinkers" and into the land of change.
I also recommend you re-read the book often. As your world and your outlook changes, you'll see new meanings and new ways to apply the techniques.
Coaching is really best done one-on-one, whereby the coach can challenge client thinking, helping them to see the reasoning errors and hidden beliefs which divert most of us from success. In a book, none of that is available to us, so I'll just urge you to try to switch off the intellectual, knowing part of your brain for a while, and see things afresh. Watch your thinking, and if you find yourself dismissing something as daft or not applicable in your case, pause and think again. All of these lessons are available and applicable to you in your life, today, but you have to be open to seeing them.
Looking honestly at life, acknowledging shortfalls and dreams, and walking a path towards them is just plain difficult - intellectually, and emotionally. Many folks decide never to do it. I congratulate you on setting about that work, and I wish you wonderful life-enhancing successes on your journey.
Chris Wesley, January 2010
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What is Life Coaching?
Life coaching is a CBT - a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - talking therapy, aimed at increasing human happiness.
Through conversation, clients are helped to understand why they find themselves in their current situation and then to find strategies, motivations and focus to design and move towards new, better situations.
Different life coaches work in different ways, but pure life coaching is not mystical, it's down-to-earth. It's primarily cognitive - in that it's main tool is the client's own thinking mind. But it is also informed by the un-conscious and emotional components of the human psyche.
Life coaching differs from counselling in that it is primarily focused on the present and the future. It may be necessary to look back to find the route causes of some unhelpful thinking patterns, and then untie some knots, but then we come back to the "where are we now?" and the "where do we want to go?"
Who is Life Coaching for?
You! It's for anyone who wants to improve some aspect of their life. You might want a new job or career, or promotion in the one you have. You might want to write your novel, or find your perfect partner, or find new self confidence, or get rid of a destructive habit. You might want to get more balance between your working and private lives. Maybe you want to start your own business, or find the focus necessary to pass important exams. You might just be unhappy without knowing why.
Whatever you want to change, coaching can probably help, with just a couple of notable exceptions. If you have a mental illness or a hard drug problem, then coaching is probably not the best option for you - you're more likely to get the help you need from a therapist specifically qualified in those specialisms.
How does Life Coaching work?
Most is done by phone (or internet telephony), in sessions running from between 30 minutes to an hour. Sessions usually happen weekly, but they can run less frequently. Clients may have just one session, or they may work with their life coach for many months. Every case is unique, but as a rule of thumb, major change happens between session 4 and session 8.
What you pay varies widely - my own menu of services and prices can be found on my website at www.uklifecoaching.org/services.htm.
So what happens in the session? Well, again, every case is unique. Exactly what we do depends on the client, the issue being worked on, and where we are in the process, but here are some things which are almost always true:
The sessions are relaxed, friendly, fun and positive experiences
The sessions are completely confidential
Clients remain in charge at all times - you can set any boundaries you need
Life coaches do not tell clients what to do
Professional life coaches have a raft of techniques available to them. Through listening in special ways and by asking careful questions, coaches encourage clients to find understanding in their lives, and the answers they need
Many coaches, including me, also use a branch of psychology called NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). This provides a range of tools to help clients change their behaviour and the underlying thinking which drives it. For example, a technique called “anchoring” helps you to call up useful mental states (like confident happiness) easily. “Re-framing” allows you to take a situation you cannot change and see it in a radically different way.
You can explore my extensive website to find a great deal of information; www.uklifecoaching.org. There are many free life coaching resources, there too, including some videos. But perhaps, the fastest and easiest way to learn first-hand what life coaching is about and to see how it can help you personally, is via an initial 20 minute session, which I offer to clients at £10. If you are interested feel free to contact me via my website.
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How Coaching Helps Real People
This book is a collection of insights and techniques from coaching practice, and I thought it would be useful to show you those insights in the context of the clients that they are applied to. So here are some case studies, with details changed to protect client privacy. I hope you can see how you can apply the lessons from these cases in your own life.
Debbie
Debbie has had a difficult relationship with her mother, now 74, for many years. Now Debbie is pregnant with her first child and is conscious of her mother’s age and failing health. She wants to mend bridges and grow a better relationship with her mum, but her efforts so far have failed and she’s struggling to stay positive. In a hectic personal and professional life, she doesn't seem to find the time to work on this. She’s all set to let matters coast until it’s too late.
I explored the problem with Debbie, and we turned the problem into a desired solution – or goal. We drew a mental picture of how Debbie wanted her new life with her mother to be. Debbie was happy with that, but was totally unable to come up with any ways she might move herself to that new goal state. She was wearing her “life blinkers”, and they were preventing her from seeing all of her options.
I re-framed the problem for Debbie, and asked her to imagine how she would build a relationship with a 74 year old lady that she didn't know. This new perspective allowed Debbie to see around the bitterness and resentment which filled this area of her life. Now she could think of a thousand ways to build a loving relationship.
Of course, that wasn't the end of it, but it WAS the start of it – and a start she would not have made without coaching. Coaching also allowed Debbie to discover that giving love without receiving it was a real, practical option for her. Over time, this would turn things around. But the road would not be easy, and the weekly support from her coach would be a big asset in keeping her positive, focused and reasonably chirpy, until the benefits of her investment began to pay big dividends.
Insights
Turn problems into desired outcomes
De-personalise situations and find new insights by changing the name and faces involved
When you're stuck, ask what can you afford to lose in order to find new freedom and new options
Find a way to maintain focus and effort over time - few things worth fixing are fixed quickly
Claire
Claire likes her job and she’s good at it, yet career progression isn't happening for her. Everyone likes her, but they don’t seem to see her as promotion material. Claire is embarrassed to talk about this with anyone at work – she doesn't like trumpet blowing, and it’s a delicate topic. Although she loves the place, she’s thinking of leaving as a way to move forward, which makes her sad and a little afraid.
We confirmed that Claire’s preference was to stay employed where she was and to gain promotion. We explored her world at work and did not find a reason for her lack of promotion. So we stayed solution-focused and forward-looking. We also found and removed her belief that it isn't nice to draw attention to your accomplishments.
This allowed Claire to find and select a winning option.
She approached her boss and discussed this head-on. She discovered that her boss felt her outgoing, bubbly manner was a sign of placing popularity over accomplishment, and did not make her look like a potential supervisor. Claire disagreed! Again, exploring options, we noted that fixing Claire’s boss was not a good option to pick. Claire chose a raft of imperfect options from those available: she would build a relationship with her boss, presenting her serious side and emphasising her solid accomplishments.
Claire also felt it was a good idea to gain exposure above the level of her immediate boss, and volunteered to do some extra work which would allow this. Finally, Claire documented her career aspirations in her performance review, from where it would be seen higher up. Needless to say, Claire got her promotion.
Insights
When you're stuck, question your beliefs with an open mind
When your personal style doesn't serve your needs, be prepared to change it
When there is missing information, don't fill in the gaps with guesswork - find the real answers - even when doing so is scary
Disagreements are not the end - they are the beginning, and they need to be aggressive or difficult
Imperfect partial solutions are always worth having, and often all that there is - don't be too proud to compromise
When you can't get through, don't give up - go around
Here are some more, shorter examples to show the kinds of problems we tackle with coaching and the kinds of approaches which are likely to give benefit:
Stephanie
Stephanie loves to dance, and teaches salsa part-time at a local club for pocket money. Her “real job” is in fleet administration, which she finds boring, but hey – it pays the bills. Stephanie has recently come to realise that – if she does nothing – things will go on this way, and – at 28 - she feels the clock is ticking. She realises that her dream is to teach dancing for a living, but she doesn't know how to start. The local scene is already catered to. There’s little money in it, and she has no idea how to set up in business. She doesn't know what to do.
Real Life is not on a different planet from your dreams, but you'll have to travel to get to them
Richard
Richard has a high pressure job in advertising, which he finds both stimulating and exhausting. He works long hours and commutes to London each day. Through lack of time and energy outside work, his social set has been neglected and his family is not happy at having so little quality time with him. Richard wants to re-balance his life, but feels he has no options.
Recognise that you can probably have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want. Make explicit choices
When you feel you have no options, recognise that that is always incorrect. Widen your perspective then think again.
When's a good time to start? Whatever the subject, the answer's usually the same - it's "now".
Lucy
Lucy has what most people would think is a wonderful existence - with no pressures and no problems. Yet she has an un-focused feeling of unhappiness. She’s wondering if this is this all there is to life.
I love this quote:"I always wanted to be someone, but I should have been more specific"
- Lily Tomlin
John
John is 53 and divorced and wants to find a new life partner. He’s tried a few local events, but is self-conscious about the whole process and doesn't do well. He’s stopped going, but doesn't have an alternative strategy to find him a new love. He’s all but given up.
Attitudes to failure are generally self-destructive, self-limiting and just plain wrong. I love these three quotes: