For many hiring a life coach for the first few times is fraught with fear. However, it’s natural to be anxious about life coaching especially if you have never worked with a life coach before. Here are the fears I hear most often from prospective life coaching clients.

I won’t do it right.

Good news! There is no right or wrong way to ‘do’ coaching. In fact, I often say that there are no mistakes only ‘creative opportunities.’ If you would like to get the most from being coached it is helpful to be open minded and willing to step out of your comfort zone at least a little bit.  In stretching your comfort zone, you grow, and in that growth, you begin to create the life you want.

I will be judged.

Well trained Life Coaches are impartial observers and hold space so that you the client can explore your options without judgment and come to conclusions that are true for you. A Life Coach focuses on the positive assets you bring to the session, and the here and now, and not the past. No one but you knows what is right for you, and that is why life coaching is beneficial. Life coaching may challenge you to take the next step if you are ready, but life coaches do not judge you for not being ready yet. Life coaching grounds you in your own truth, keeps you focused, and on track to creating what you want out of your life.

It won’t be confidential.

Life coaches typically hold coaching conversations as privileged, unless they ask your permission to share something that might be helpful to others. In your initial conversation with a life coach be clear about your desire for confidentiality. There may be limits to the amount of confidentiality that a coach is willing or able to maintain. This is something to get clear about up front especially if your coach is hired by your company for you. Generally, there is an agreement that your progress twill be reported but details you share with you coach will not be revealed. So be clear with the coach you work with about the limits of confidentiality, before you begin coaching with them.

It won’t help.

Coaching won’t work for me. My experience has been that individuals get out of coaching the amount that they put into coaching. Willingness and openness again makes a significant difference in outcome for most things in life, coaching is no different. If you approach coaching with a learner’s mind, and an open palm you will reap rewards. If you don’t your rewards may be more limited or slower in coming. However, individuals progress at their own rate and there is nothing wrong with that approach either.

Remember that fear and excitement share a great deal in common at the physiological level. In fact, the only difference is breathing. That’s right! If you want to turn your anxiety into excitement for your first coaching session just remember to breathe, and give it a go!

 

Life Coaching in the Digital Age

Not Most Folks!

 

 

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