Self Improvement Made Easy

A client recently told me that, to further his own Self Improvement, he had done a weekend life-coaching workshop. Another participant called him afterwards, pitching her life coaching services to him, proudly boasting that she had recently qualifed – the same weekend course that he’d attended himself! Twenty five years old, she’d got an inheritance from an aunt and was about to spend $25,000 on a franchise for a Life Coaching Program. She wanted him as her first client! He asked me:

“How can you advise anyone on what you’ve never experienced? How could a 25 year old contribute to the understanding of a 50 old who is on his second marriage, has seen one business fail, been through five high-powered jobs and is at a major turning point in his business and personal life? How can anybody be a life coach at twenty five?”

Nobody can! I’ve been working with clients since 1996, before that I headed up a bank, before that I was in senior management with a number of other financial institutions and I’ve been studying psychology (still studying and, I suspect will always be studying!) since 1992. I’ve often been ahead of the curve in my career but I’ve also made some dreadful mistakes. I’ve been living and learning!

But, I’m no “Life Coach”, whatever that actually is exactly – all I do is facilitate people’s understanding of how we all possess our own inner wisdom and an inner compass that will, if properly developed, lead us towards peace of mind, happiness and success – all we’ve got to do is untie the leash to which so-called normal people are unwittingly tied. Sadly though, it’s rarely explained to normal people that they live unwitting lives – automatic reactive lives, according to years of research. How many of your everyday repetitive tasks are done mindlessly – from brushing your teeth to greeting your loved one(s) each evening? Our actions are reactions. Psychology proves that this unwittingness stops us paying attention to what we’re doing – to the extent that we do everything mindlessly. Normal life’s just one long unwitting sorry-go-round created by a mindset that we’re completely unaware of. Break the chain-reaction and you’ll arrive in a foreign land! – a place where you’re focused and single-minded – the hallmarks of success.

On the other hand, many life coaches’ clients develop a dependence on the coach, without realizing that they have this wisdom within – if only they’d pay attention to what abnormally successful people call “gut instinct”. You can get in touch with your very own gut instinct if you break the habitual cycle of mindless repetitive behaviour. Why else does Harvard insist that their executive summer school students write with the “other” hand? Break a couple of little habits and you’ll end up breaking the biggest bad habit of your adult lifetime – reacting mindlessly. You’ll start paying attention to what you’re actually doing, regardless of how repetitive that task might be. You will actually experience that you do indeed possess your own internal wisdom and compass – discover this and you’re on the road to a place where a life coach is as superfluous as a typewriter ribbon on a PC!