What is Coaching?

Let’s first clarify that coaching IS NOT advice, therapy, counseling, or telling others what to do.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

In this partnership, the coach helps the client focus, achieve mutually identified goals, generate solutions to their problems, break down tasks into actionable items, find clarity and confidence in themselves, identify their passion and purpose in life, work more creatively and effectively, and live a more fulfilling life.

What is Emotional Wellness and Personal Growth Coaching?

Emotional wellness coaching involves self-care, relaxation, stress reduction, and the development of inner strength. Emotional wellness also involves being aware of and accepting of one's feelings, rather than denying or avoiding them, having an optimistic approach to life, and enjoying life with all its ups and downs.

Personal growth coaching involves addressing specific personal and professional challenges as well as difficult circumstances and transitions in one’s life. By increasing self-confidence, communication skills and assertiveness, and by improving relationships with family, staff, colleagues, and oneself we uncover obstacles and limitations, and choose a course of action to accomplish one’s goals and dreams.

What is a coaching session like?

Before we start working together, my client and I schedule a 20-minute discovery session to get to know each other, discuss expectations, and ensure coaching is their best option.

Following this, I meet with each client on a weekly basis for an hour and we have a conversation over the phone or virtually (i.e., FaceTime, Skype, Google Hangout) . The content of the conversation will vary depending on each client’s specific needs and goals. Sessions are 100% confidential.

The client decides the focus for each session and the goal they want to accomplish. As we work on those, we may explore areas such as:

• Identifying your values and who you really are at your core
• Identifying your strengths and priorities in life
• Articulating your personal vision and mission
• Establishing renewal mechanisms for stress management and burnout prevention
• Learning and growing from past experiences
• Developing a self-care and self-love practice
• Identifying fears, self-doubt, worries, and guilt that interfere with the changes you want to make in your life
• Identifying negative thoughts, patterns of behavior, and limiting beliefs that undermine you
• Opening your mind to different perspectives and options
• Stretching your comfort zone and trying new approaches
• Establishing goals and breaking them down into small, actionable items that will help you move forward
• Determining the best way to stay motivated and accountable for your progress

As your coach it is my job to listen deeply, ask questions, serve as an objective sounding board, and keep you focused and on track. I help you break through old barriers and develop new practices so you can accomplish your desired goals.

By the end of each session, we usually develop a list of action items or a homework assignment in preparation for the next session that is aligned with the client’s goal.

What are the benefits of coaching?

Coaching provides a trusting, non-judgmental space and time where you can share your dreams, fears, insecurities, hopes, and desires with your coach. This sacred space will allow you to

• Become more self-aware
• Release guilt, shame, and self-doubt, and celebrate successes
• Conquer the impostor syndrome
• Become more focused, energetic, engaged, and productive at work
• Discover your inner wisdom and trust your intuition
• Enhance communication and strengthen relationships
• Improve your health and wellbeing, and add fun to your life
• Take charge and confront what you want to overcome
• Discover your best self (and surprise yourself)
• Make sustainable changes and enjoy life to the fullest

Who needs coaching?

People who choose coaching are motivated to make sustainable changes in their lives and/or work. They may feel stuck and unsure about making decisions, are experiencing health issues, or are living a situation that has become chaotic or unbearable, and they want help.

By choosing coaching, these individuals have make a commitment to themselves to live a healthy, balanced, and more purposeful life.

How long does coaching take?

In order for a client to achieve lasting results and depending on each individual case, the average number of coaching sessions is between 6 and 12 (in some cases the process may be longer). It is the client’s choice to schedule additional sessions, add one or more follow-up sessions, or discontinue.

Deciding how to handle personal issues, incorporating coaching into areas of need, and implementing choices are the client’s sole responsibility.

How does coaching work?

We think an average of 60,000 thoughts per day and 90% of those thoughts are usually the same. The way we think generates certain emotions, emotions make us act a certain way, and our actions produce the results we get.

Negative thoughts create negative results, so if we want to obtain different results, the starting point needs to be at the root of the chain -the thought in our mind. The thoughts we generate in our neocortex trigger our sympathetic or parasympathetic system, causing important neurological and physiological changes in the body. This is why thinking differently makes us feel differently. Feeling better helps us generate a healing, constructive, inspiring type of energy.