So you you’re interested in becoming a coach? Click on the video to find out about the 3 major qualities and attributes you’ll need to be successful in this exciting profession!
Hope you find it useful.
Shaz
Monthly Archive for April, 2010
Because so many of you have been emailing me to find how I started out as a coach I thought I’d share some insight through this blog. About 8 years ago, I was at a real crossroads in my life, I felt frustrated and felt there was no where for me to go. Roll forward 9 years I now run the most successful Coaching School in Australia, pretty cool. But let me tell you, if I can do it so can you. Click on the video to find out how I started out.
Answering your questions will be a regular feature in this blog so email me your questions at action@thecoachinginstitute.com and I’ll be sure to answer them in the up coming weeks!
Speak soon,
Shaz
Ask anyone who trains car drivers on safety courses what happens if you tell a new driver to avoid the witch’s hat and they will say the same thing. The driver hits the witch’s hat.
The drivers move towards what they are looking at.
It can take five or more times for the driver to move their focus from what they don’t want to hit to where they want to drive.
These drivers are a great metaphor for what can happen in our lives. We can be going for a goal and then notice an obstacle or a challenge. Instead of remaining focused on the goal, we shift our focus to the obstacle. In life, like with the driving course, what you focus on is what you move towards.
Imagine you’re going for a goal, say to weigh your ideal weight. You’re doing the right things, making some progress, then you seem to plateau and no matter what you do, nothing seems to be shifting. The going gets tougher than it had been where you started, some of the fun of the new exercise regime is starting to fade and frankly it’s getting tough to say no to the dinner invitations.
You tell yourself you’ve done pretty well, or that its okay to carry some extra weight at your age or with your work load or with kids to look after.
You give up the dream because you rationalise your lack of success. You made it okay to settle again for the poor results you were getting.
We do this all the time. Think about a time you wanted a pay rise, a date with someone or a bigger savings account. We don’t get what we want in the time frame we’ve made up for ourselves and we’re often not even aware of it, we rationalise our lack of results.
And so it goes. We rationalise ourselves into mediocrity, until the next cycle of pain hits and we have to act. We take a few steps, get results, notice a plateau and the going gets a little tough… and the rationalisation starts again.
The problem with this strategy is each time we do it we shave a little more off our self-esteem. We trade in our self-belief for settling. We drop our standards because we don’t want to be disappointed the next time. This is what most people do in life…..BUT now that you are armed with the problems of this specific strategy and can recognise it…… you can implement plan B.
Plan B is simple. When you hit the plateau, you raise you standards. You ask more of yourself than you normally would and ask more of yourself than people around would. You don’t settle, you step up!
It sounds so ridiculously simple that you’re probably questioning if it is worth the investment or effort. Let me tell you it is!
Most people experience a sit back and give up. People who live their ultimate vision for life don’t give up. They keep going… even harder. They focus on where they are going and not on what is holding them back!
Designing Your Ideal Life- The Power of Questions
By Shazz P
To create an extraordinary life you must be able to paint a picture of what it looks like. Few people take the time to do this, preferring to stay in “reality” of their current situation. Building a picture of your life and ask yourself:
How you would like it to be?
What you would be doing?
What you would feel?
Who you would be (your attributes)?
What would you own?
How would you contribute?
How would you spend your leisure time?
This is one of the most valuable things you can do. Put aside the “doubter” in you…. the voice that tells us we can’t… and to just go for it as if your pen can’t stop. Write everything you would want to experience, and don’t stop for at least five minutes.
What is your primary focus? What do you consistently ask yourself in different situations? We are constantly processing, filtering and sorting out evidence that our world matches how we think it should like. We do this through 65,000 thoughts each day. Most of these thoughts are in the form of questions. Is this right for me? How do I do this? What if can’t? What will they think? Why? Why me?
Questions constantly shape our choices. We can’t stop the questions, but what we can do is choose what the questions are. What questions do you ask yourself most often that drives most of your behaviour and motivation?
If you ask yourself low quality questions, you will no doubt experience a corresponding quality of life. Imagine you make a mistake, and instead of asking “why me?” you ask yourself: “how can I turn this around?” or “what can I learn from this”.
Better questions? Absolutely!!! I’ve been training my mind to ask these questions and I experience less stress, overwhelm and anxiety as a result!!!
By Shazza P
I’ve come to learn that what may seem of little consequence to one person can literally turn someone else’s life inside out. I experienced the power of this when I was coaching a client recently. They share with me how a teacher had made fun of one of the students when they had been in school. This event had happened over 30 years ago, but my client remembered that event as being hugely significant in their life. Because of the teacher’s seemingly thoughtlessness, my client had become a teacher….. they wanted to show the world that teachers can be kind.
One event, an entire future shaped!
We all have significant events in our past that have shaped who we have become and the choices we make. If it is important to you, then its important! These are our defining moments. They can be positive, and influence our choices in ways that empower us. They can inspire us and show us what we are truly capable of. Some events are of course going to be clearly negative. However, the meaning we give to these events is entirely up to us.
Memory gives us the ability to recall these events, but our ability to recall the events accurately is difficult. What we always keep, however is our feelings associated with the event. Recall a moment of exquisite joy in your life, and notice how the feeling is close by. Recall an event that caused you great sorrow and the pain is there.
Defining moments anchor our reactions to the world today. These significant events determine the feelings we have to the inevitable stresses and strains of our lives. This makes them essential to uncover and explore. Until we do this, we are separate from who we truly are. How can we understand what motivates our choices unless we understand what created these choices in the first place?
Life is nothing more than a series of choices that we make for ourselves to meet our needs. Even not choosing is a choice. Every choice we make has consequences, and these consequences can be empowering or disempowering. The important thing isn’t to blame ourselves if we’ve made a poor choice, but to become aware of the choice, the thinking behind the choice, and to notice any patterns in our choices.
Once we’ve done that, we can see a blueprint for how we shape our life.
If we don’t like the blueprint, then we need to learn how to make different, more empowering choices.
What are the choices you have made?
Take time right now to write down the positive choices in your life today. What choices have made you happy, proud, joyful? What are the great things in your life because of these choices?
Now write down the choices you have made in the past in your life that you perhaps don’t like or didn’t make you happy. What choices are you unhappy about? What are the consequences you have noticed because of these negative choices? What have they cost you?
Have you tried to or succeeded in turning around these choices and what have you noticed within yourself as a result of this effort? What are the positive learnings you have made or could make as a result of these choices?
Its now time to make new, empowering choices…….. so finally write down some new choices that will empower you, lead to new learnings, allow you to get rid of some things you have been tolerating, give you the freedom to explore, to love, to learn, to grow and to give.
Shazza P
MY FIRST MONTH AS A COACH
By David O’Connor – MakingLeaders.com.au
When I left my safe and comfortable job of 9 years at the end of February 2010, I had a few options but no firm plan heading forward. I decided to look into coaching because it seemed like a natural fit for me – I’d worked in key leadership positions in the not-for-profit sector in which my main priority was developing leaders, both staff and volunteer to oversee large scale youth and young adult events.
I’ve never been so full of vision for what the future holds! Within a few short weeks I’d enrolled in a Certificate IV in Life Coaching at The Coaching Institute, completed my Starter Kit for Coaches, registered 2 business names, purchased multiple domain names, designed a website, decided on a coaching niche, begun developing coaching programs for my niche, fully articulated my dreams for the next 10 years and so on.
What a wild ride! I’m writing this to share a few things that have helped me in making those first few steps towards running a huge leadership coaching business, and hope that they might inspire you to do the same if you’re up for a change as well.
- Get coached! The thing that has helped me the most is positioning myself to have a few great coaches speak into my life. It’s reaffirmed my decision to step into coaching and my coaches have helped and supported my decisions in so many ways already.
- Get knowledge! Start digesting as many coaching resources (books, downloads, audio, free stuff) as possible. The rabbit hole is deep my friends, and knowledge truly is power to make change.
- 3. Get about it! You’ve got nothing to lose by backing yourself. I’ve had to confront so many limiting beliefs in my journey already, but at the end of the day I could either choose to just get about it, or wallow on the couch while there’s a great business waiting to be built.
My dad was a little unconventional in his fatherhood and I’m told that he taught me to swim by throwing me in a pool as a toddler and grabbing me after a few seconds. Maybe I was built to do things in the deep end, but I want to encourage you to act and learn to swim in whatever pools you want to.
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