What is life coaching?

Sometimes in life, our focus is on our next level. What’s the next step? What’s your next goal or desire? This is where the beauty of coaching comes in.

Other times, the question is simply, how do I survive? Is coaching the appropriate solution here? It can be, especially if there is a healing component to the coaching process. We are always healing, our relationships, our businesses, our lives.

Coaching (life coaching, business coaching, leadership coaching, or any other niche you can think of!) is a quickly growing industry, a modern alternative to therapy and the key to removing the blocks between A and B.

Over the past two years, I dealt with so much illness, loss and grief, I couldn’t figure out how to show up as a responsible coaching client. I was deep in my grief, and although I had clear goals and intentions, they were muddied by my growing need to process my grief.

Sometimes we need to move forward and sometimes we must stand still. Coaching or therapy? Personal development or healing?

I say, both at once.

So many clients I see are standing still, stuck in between their future and their past. What is the present if you refuse to BE present?

So many of us are still looking back at the past, regretting, wishing, shaming ourselves and others. Others cannot get their eyes off the future – the next relationship, promotion, opportunity, move.

In coach training, we are taught to meet our clients where they are.

So, where are you?

If you’re standing still (in bills, illness, divorce, an overflowing email inbox) it’s okay. Take time out for you. Volunteer for the clean up crew of your life. Start to get organized. Create new measures for success. In more difficult times, we cannot hold ourselves to the same standards as before, but we still need to see ourselves moving forward. Success is progress. Happiness is progress too.

If you’ve picked up on the momentum and are moving forward, thank your lucky stars and the friends, family and mentors who have helped move you forward. Yes, there is more to do but Tony Robbins made a good point when he said, “Most people underestimate what they can do in 2-3 decades and overestimate what they can do in a year.” If you can start to map out the next two decades, you might realize you actually do have time to work less, heal more, not move right into the next relationship. What do you see yourself creating in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond? Start mapping it out now.

You’ve got this. And believe it or not, life’s got you.