I was recently interviewed by a member of the Spanish Board of Psychology who was doing research to find out exactly what coaching is, and whether the Spanish government needs to regulate it through the Board of Psychology.

As we sat down together, over some snacks and a drink, it became very obvious to me that she had absolutely no idea what Life Coaching is, what it does, and how it is different from training, teaching, psychology, psycho-therapy and counseling, and where NLP fits into the picture.  This made me realize that most of you probably aren’t completely clear on this either.  So, in what follows, you’ll find as comprehensive a definition as I can muster.

Imagine your life as a line that goes from -10 to 0 to +10. On this line, 0 to -10 represents the past, 0 to +10 represents your future.  Coaching is completely focused on 0 to +10; taking you from where you are now in each area of life, towards a future that you design.  Coaching does this by getting you to focus 100% on your goals.

The moment you commit to your goals, you lock the obstacles that will block your achievement of them in place.  These obstacles may be mental, emotional or physical in nature.  Coaching supports you in overcoming these obstacles. Only 20% of coaching focuses on using the best strategies to move forward and improve your life; the other 80% focuses on the psychology of following through on the action you decided on during the coaching session.

The simple process of making these action commitments to someone who will question you if you don’t follow through is often reason enough to take action.  The fact that the coach is highly trained and skilled (see coaching tools) in supporting you in goal-achievement makes the process even more powerful. It’s very easy to lie to yourself, but very difficult to lie to your coach.

I know from experience that I probably would not have been able to complete the London Marathon in 2007 if I didn’t have my coach’s daily email accountability to keep me focused during the 3 months of training. Holding a limiting belief like ‘I can’t do it’ might be okay with your friends but it is simply not an option when talking with your coach – because they’ll challenge that belief and interrupt your limiting patterns of thought/emotions/actions.  When those patterns are interrupted enough times, they don’t replay – kind of like scratching a CD.

So, Life Coaching is future – oriented and action – focused.  The underpinning logic of Coaching is that you need to believe in yourself just enough to take the most intelligent action that will move you towards your goals.  Belief + Action = Success.  That’s the Coaching formula.  You need to believe you can run the marathon, and train everyday if you want that level of fitness.  You need to believe you’re worthy of finding your soul-mate and take action everyday if you want a loving, lasting relationship. You need to believe you can be the top sales person in your company, or achieve that first class degree, or whatever your secret life dreams are AND you need to take consistent action every day to achieve your version of success.

The final metaphor I’ll give you this week for Life Coaching is the old adage ‘Knowledge without Action is insane; Action without Knowledge is in vain.’

You already know how to improve every area of your life, and if you don’t, you have the resources to find out how – all that’s left now is following through with action.  That’s where Coaching comes in.

Needless to say, by the end of our 3 hour interview, the lady from the Spanish Board of Psychology was completely blown away with the simplicity and effectiveness of the process in improving one’s quality of life.  You will be too – your “Coaching Strategy Session” is free!  +44(0)2081334520

It’s been a while since I last blogged, and it was a while since I blogged before that.  Blogging regularly was, ironically enough, one of my New Years’ Resolutions.  Despite all the fancy NLP skills I learned, which helped me improve some areas of my life, and which I used to help clients with their goals, I wasn’t following through on one of my own goals.  So, in order to build up some integrity and get myself to follow through, I used the most sensible strategy I could think of: I called my Life Coach.

I mentioned to James that I started this blog but with finals, a dissertation, my new workout program, a long-distance relationship, providing a valuable service for my coaching clients, and all the rest of it, the blog had fallen to the bottom of the pile of ’stuff’ that was taking my attention.

James made two valuable observations.  First, by attempting to make my blog some kind of encyclopedia of NLP and Coaching, I wasn’t going to achieve my real goal (which we discovered in the coaching session) of communicating effectively with emotional impact and providing real value for people, helping them improve their worlds.  If you want information, you’ll go to Wikipedia, or read a text book (and I’ll recommend some NLP textbooks later).

The second observation he made was that  my old blogging strategy was having a negative effect relating to my own psychology, and perhaps you can learn from it too.  By essentially making this blog information about NLP Coaching, I was unwittingly making it boring – not only for the readers (some of whom may have found the information interesting), but more importantly, for me!  Funnily enough, one of the first things you learn when you read books on NLP and personal development is that you will only follow through on something if you associate more pleasure to taking action than pain.

This is true of all the actions you’re not taking which you need to take to achieve your personal goals too.  Why don’t you follow my coach’s advice and change your blog!  Why not figure out what’s stopping you from taking action towards your goals – maybe when you clearly define what your goal is and why you really want it on an emotional level, you’ll figure out other strategies that will make it easier for you to take action than the current strategy you’re determined to use, but is failing miserably – just like my rigid ’sensible’ blogging strategy that left this space empty for the last 3 months!

Now, I know some of you were looking forward to the ‘how to do goals/rapport/Swish patterns/NLP’ stuff, and I’ll still be throwing it in as time goes on, but I’ll contextualize all the ‘NLP stuff’ into real life examples of how I’ve used it to improve my life, so hopefully it will give you some great ideas and empower you to change yourself for the better too.