You have probably heard the term LIFE COACHING, and think that behind the rather pretentious title lurks something airy-fairy, fluffy, light and not too serious. Well, think again. Life Coaching is useful, practical, and relevant to you.

You may have had associations in your mind about life coaching and peak performance gained from magazines that suggest life coaching is all about imitating others personalities and completing check lists on a continual basis. Life coaching has nothing to do with pop-psychology.

You may feel that Life Coaches are gurus who have found the holy grail to personal success and life management, who know more about everything than you do. Not true. Life Coaching is based on the belief that you are an expert about you. Coaching is a way of discovering and unfolding your own personal genius, a way of bringing out the best in yourself.

You may feel that life coaching is another type of counselling and that it seems too hard. Coaching is not counselling, therapy, mentoring or giving advice. Coaching is not about fixing people or working out what went wrong. Coaching works from a perspective that you are fundamentally OK and capable of meeting challenges. Coaches draw on your own inner resources and facilitates progress, enhancing the voice of your own inner coach making it speak out to you.

You may think that coaching is just a collection of motivational sessions and takes up a lot of time. In fact, coaching is concerned with practical guidance and inspiration, and coaches believe you have values and beliefs that can propel you forward in a positive direction. Coaches help you build your own stock of powerful tools and strategies to help you on the heroic journey. Coaches help you set goals and create processes to see your plan through from present state to desired state.

Coaching focuses on the different areas of your current life that you think may need the most attention, and helps you create options for yourself in the challenges posed by different areas. These areas are referred to as the TEN AREAS OF HEALTH AND WELLNESS. Coaching aims for life balance and educational health in a holistic way.

Life Coaching is not new. It has been around for over 2000 years. The Greek Philosopher Plato described many of the elements that we think of today as Life Coaching. Modern coaching emerged from the American Sports scene and the modern world-wide business world – encouraging performance and outcomes and building resources, talent and skills. Recently, Life Coaching entered the world of the workplace and the life of private individuals. Managers and employees alike realize that productivity and outcomes are related to happiness. Coaches in business, sporting life, relationships, communication, and educational fields support people to achieve life balance and excellence, and in doing so take a holistic perspective about human fulfillment.

Life Coaching will help you develop your own unique philosophy of life – creative and innovative. Wherever your inspiration comes from doesn’t matter – it just serves to develop resources for your coaching journey. So the first thing to realize is:

Your life is like a heroic journey – and the journey is itself a reward. SO:

Look at movies like The Shawshank Redemption and see how fear can make you a prisoner while hope and setting goals can liberate you.
Imagine your own magic carpet ride to growth and development.
The heroic journey develops a generative state so that you can engage with your demons and deal with them in a way that transforms them into a key resource.
Coaching is a creative activity that is generative and made for thinking outside the square for meeting challenges and generating multiple possibilities.
Coaching is a whole brain process, and a whole mind, body, whole experience.
The coaching journey is about unfolding motion, energy and discovery.
Coaching is an heroic journey of awareness, growth and success.
The heroic journey is inspirational and purposeful
The heroic journey defines your own meaning of success.

To get your own personal handle on life coaching, watch your favourite movie, for an understanding of the heroic journey.

At first the hero is in ordinary time dashing with something new, facing a challenge, and receiving the call to meet this challenge. At first they are reluctant, and may refuse the call due to fear, but the coach appears to get them past the turning point of fear.
Then the first threshold is crossed, and the relationship of coach and hero develops and the consequences of the challenges are faced.
Now, new challenges emerge and transactions occur to learn new skills and rules and information. The object of the quest is pursued, and fears and doubts are encountered, plans prepared and objectives met as new thresholds are crossed.
An ordeal is faced and demons are faced. The hero is in the belly of the beast.
But the hero survives, the beast and demons are slain and there is a celebration due. The sword is pulled from the stone. A reward is accepted – knowledge and experience leads to greater understanding and reconciliation with demons so they become resources.
Reconciliation begins as ecological forces that have been disturbed pursue the hero, trying to reclaim and prevent change. There are tests ahead as the hero is back in ordinary time.
What has been changed and dealt with and cast aside, makes one last desperate bid before the heroic triumph. This is the hero’s final exam – their final test to establish their learning.

This pattern exists in quite a variety of movies, but in particular, you might like to watch An Officer and a Gentleman, any of the Star Wars trilogy, Field of Dreams, Casablanca, Trading Places and many others, to see the same heroic coaching journey, spawned into popular film and video. It is a journey you can also make for yourself.