As I wrote under Leadership Coaching, I use a questioning, facilitative, challenging approach in all coaching, including personal coaching.
Personal Coaching Means Flexibility.
Depending on the client’s needs, I may use a non-interventionist, “counselling” approach with one client and a more directive approach with another. This is important when personal coaching – using a mixture of approaches to fit with the client’s needs.
Personal Coaching for Success
One starting point is to think about success – what does that mean for you? Some people find the question really scary, thinking they may have to give up things they hold dear. That’s the very last thing I would recommend! What I have discovered is that as you align your life with the purpose you were born to fulfill, you will experience success at a level you had never previously dreamed of!
Success does not have to mean something related to your job or career. A key element of personal coaching is to help you to identify what success means for you.
Another element of personal coaching and success is to understand that your success is yours. Don’t let anyone else deflect you from it or tell you that your success is wrong, as long as what you are doing is legal, ethical and comes from the heart.
Personal Coaching and the Four Quadrants
A key concept in effective personal coaching is balancing the four quadrants – physical (meaning your body and your interaction with the physical world), psychological (your thoughts and thought patterns), emotional (your feelings, especially confronting your fears), and spiritual (your highest values, founded on unconditional love and awe/gratitude for our existence).
Most people are most familiar with the physical and mental. They are not always aware of the origins of their thoughts, often re-running their story. They confuse their story with their identity. Important Personal Coaching Point: You are not your story!
Even more people are out of touch with their feelings – they suppress them, often to avoid pain.
Few people have done any spiritual self-discovery. In many ways, it’s a journey of re-discovery.
We were born as pure potential and our lives reflected our awesomeness. We had no integrity gap, we were congruent. We were innocent, we knew what we wanted, we could focus with intensity, we knew what we wanted and we loved and trusted unconditionally. We were highly creative and our dreams were massive, with limitless possibilities.
Personal coaching is about helping you to reconnect with that childhood philosophy, hence the picture at the top of the page!
