Why Work with a Life Coach?
Written By Monica Bhardwaj, Certified Life Coach
I’ve been on a “self-help” journey for over 20 years (thanks Oprah!). I read all the books by the great spiritual thinkers of our time: Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Pema Chödrön, Louise Hay, Abraham Hicks, to name a few. I also saw numerous therapists: psychotherapists, social workers, cognitive based psychologists and took courses in mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. I even became a certified yoga instructor to try to feel more at peace.
The accountant in me gawks at the amount of money I must have spent, but I don’t regret any of it. It helped me function through some very tough times by giving me a safe space to release and gain incredible insight about myself.
After becoming a mother and turning 40, even with all my self-awareness, I still felt stuck. I was tired of functioning with so much worry, insecurity, not being able to make decisions and take action and numbing my feelings to cope. It was also taking a toll on me physically. I didn’t want my son to inherit all my limiting beliefs and I desperately wanted to be better and feel better.
Luckily, I stumbled across an amazing life coach and working with her was mind-blowing and life changing. This is what I learned from being coached and coaching clients:
Life Coaching is not Therapy
Therapy focuses on the past and provides insight about your feelings, childhood and relationships. It’s very helpful for people who need to heal past trauma or get to a place of functioning. The coaching work that I do focuses on the future and helps you gain perspective about your thoughts, how they stem from socialization and family patterns and how they create your feelings and results in your life. It’s is helpful for people who are functioning, but still suffering and lacking mental and emotional freedom.
All my clients have told me how amazed they are that coaching has changed their life in weeks or months compared to years of therapy. I believe this is because coaching helps to reprogram the brain to create a different result in the future rather than re-thinking and re-creating from the past. It’s also more effective because it’s time limited. A good coach will help solve your problems, get your life to the place you want it and teach you skills to manage your mental and emotional life so you can coach yourself for life.
Application is Everything
Having insight means you understand your thought and behavior patterns and the results that they are creating in your life. This awareness is necessary, but it’s not enough for true change. The only way to create lasting change is to apply this insight and knowledge to process your feelings and change your thought and behavior patterns. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s a new skill which takes coaching, commitment to yourself and a daily practice to rewire your brain, for good.
It’s not enough to read self-help books or listen to self-help podcasts, you need an objective, skilled person to help get the perspective that you’re not able to see from within your own mind. If you have an unmanaged mind that is creating overwhelming feelings that keep you stuck, a coach can help uncover the thoughts that are not serving you and help you choose more helpful thoughts to create the life, relationships, careers and experiences that you want to feel fulfilled. From there, you can create permanent change with consistent practice and application.
Mental Health is Priority
Your mental health determines how you feel, how you behave and how you perceive your life experiences. Prioritizing your mental health ensures that you will create and actually feel good while experiencing your other investments such as your family, house, vacations and retirement.
The human experience is both pain and pleasure. So, if you think you feel good most of the time and don’t need to invest in your mental health, chances are you’re avoiding your negative emotions with things like food, alcohol, over-working, binging on Netflix or shopping.
This work isn’t for "self-help" or “spiritual people” It’s for every human who feels stuck and is done resisting, avoiding and creating negative results in their life. It’s for people who want to awaken from unconsciousness and deliberately create their life. If you’re someone that wants to grow and evolve, managing your mind needs to be your priority.
If you’d like to move from insight to application to feel better and create different results in your life, I can help. Join me for a FREE Webinar on Thursday November 26th @ 8:30pm on How to Feel Better Better During the Holidays.
Or reach out to set up a FREE coaching session and start feeling better today.
