What IS Coaching?
Ever since I started my coach-in-training, I feel myself having to explain more than ever what IS coaching ( and in particular Life Coaching )?
The familiar concept of coaching is counselling, advising or mentoring. While there may be overlapping similarities in these aspects of self-development, they are not the same. I am not here though to define and go in-depth on what each of these aspects entails. My purpose today is to write what IS coaching, in my own words, based on my own experiences.
Some call it self-help, some call it self-development and I call it transformation. Before I started receiving coaching from my life coaches back in 2015, I was lost, depressed, in constant anxiety and never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. I had no purpose, no meaning and every day was a drag. I had lived 28 years of repetitive patterns and making choices that I wasn’t conscious nor proud of ( had a failed marriage, disappointed my parents & friends, lost my dream when I realised that I am unable to finance myself any further into Med school ). All these were weighing on me, and I felt like quitting life, I was near suicidal, and I told almost no one because I didn’t want to face judgements. Feeling that I am going nowhere in life impacted my self-confidence very much and I can recall telling Michelle (my life coach) that I wanted to be coached on my self-esteem.
No change comes easy. Change first begins with the realisation and acceptance that I am a flawed being. Thinking to be coached on self-confidence, I expected tips and pieces of advice. I was hoping for some answers, guidance from “someone more experienced” or a life manual on “How-to-blah blah blah”. Michelle provided me with NO answers, and every session was a series of questioning that led me to open up my self-awareness and creating my own insights.
These series of questioning was the start of my self-transformation exploration. While on the surface I wanted to work on my self-confidence, hidden underneath me were a mass of limiting beliefs and patterns that unravelled one by one. It was honestly painful and shocking to realise that before working on my self-confidence, I had to work on accepting that I have been playing victim my whole life and blaming the people around me. I was scared to speak my truth, I was making choices out of fear, always wanting to please others, self-sacrificing by being dishonest with myself and others. I avoided my problems rather than faced it, wanting to appear that I am right, thinking I knew better, living an inauthentic life and having no courage to stand up for my beliefs.
These were the uncomfortable things that came up for me and trust me, it was not easy to swallow these concepts of myself, it was not easy for me to admit that I can be this flawed. How can I be? That is not how the people around me will perceive me as I am, this is definitely not how I have carved myself out to be. I had an image ( stylish, smart, caring, somewhat rebellious, Instagram-perfect life, happy, confident ) that I wish to uphold.
My turning point then happens when I realised:
“The pain in failing to change has become greater than the pain to change itself.”
Life coaching is not an overnight miracle nor an end goal, even after months & sessions of it, and even until today. When I started as a coachee, naive me thought that perhaps after 8 diligent sessions of working on myself, I can walk out feeling like “Ok, I have confidence now.” Of course, my level of confidence has improved for me over the years, and I have gone on to do things I never imagined that I could have achieved, and if I compared it to my ideal level of confidence, I know I am not there yet, and this is ok. It has come to my understanding that life coaching is a JOURNEY. This path towards understanding my inner self never ends. As I continue to share about my life quest, it is also my intention to inspire courage in those who wish to find a deeper meaning within themselves and to live a life of authenticity and vulnerability.
“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”
― Ramana Maharshi
