Good Wednesday morning. Today I was looking at many videos on YouTube about coaching verses counseling. As I watched all 49 videos, most of them showed coaches like myself explaining the difference – how counseling deals with the past, and coaching deals with your plans for the future.
The purpose of this week is to give you an understanding of how coaching works, an understanding of what we really are doing to help people. Today I wanted to bring up three points as to how the coaching works for you and does not work for you.
1. Coaching is not counseling. Counseling is dealing with the past. When you are seeking counseling you are dealing with an unresolved issue that is holding you back. This includes areas in life where something happened to you as a child and you still live around that problem. I heard it explained a few years ago as this: it’s like addressing a problem you swept under the carpet, sometimes a long time ago. Over time, you sweep these issues and others like them under the carpet but as you walk through life you trip on those issues because they now have become lumps in your carpeting and affect many areas of life. They keep you from growing in life because you are always falling back down. If you are at a point in life that you know something from your past is holding you back, you need to get the help to heal from that process. Seek out a counselor or counseling program that will help you solve this issue and clean out those dirt piles from under your carpet to allow you to walk without tripping over your past.
2. Coaching is building your future from where you are. No matter where you are, a coach is someone who gives you the help to solve those problems to make your future a better place. Every coach and coaching program includes a goal process to deal with were you are going from here. No matter what the program is it will include goals and accountability for growth in the area you are being coached in. The main part about the coaching process, or the problem-solving process is the coach has the best skills to bring out the best in you. Your coach knows the problem most times and can see the result to get you there, the work to help you push forward to get that result you desire, to solve that problem and walk to victory on the other side of it. As a coach I must say not all those things we bring you through are going to work on the first try. Imagine a football coach. He cannot make the team win the game every time. He can look from the sidelines and help by putting in the plays that will get you past the other team. As a coach we are doing that for you, pushing you and getting you to move forward past the problem (the opposing team). In life, a coach is the one asking the questions not to get an answer from you, but to get you to think.
3. A coach helps you help yourself. This is the most important thing in the coaching process. It’s all about self help. As a coach or even a counselor it is not our job to do the work to help you. It is your job to work on improvement. We are on the sidelines asking the questions to get you to think; those questions are just like the football coach giving the plays to the move past the other team. You have to be willing to move yourself forward if you want to succeed at anything in life. In many cases coaches offer self-help programs that come in workbook, video or audio form, but they are built on the topic of self-help. These programs only work if you are a strong-willed person willing to push yourself past any issue that must come up. If you are not that strong I suggest you find a coach to push you, and to keep you accountable as you move forward.
Take these three things today, take an assessment of your life. What is it you need? Have you dealt with the past? In my life, I had to deal with issues in my past based on a small abusive situation that happened to me. It kept me from trusting my grandfather for years. That was healed in me, but I could not do it myself. I got the help of someone who could counsel me so I got to a point of trusting those who are family again. My life was able to be built again; I no longer hit the lumps in the carpet of trust of a family member.
Do you have a idea where you want to move forward from here? Are you a person who reads my blogs daily because you have or are now starting over in life? Are you dealing with the affects of change in your life? These are areas that I help people with in coaching. There are many other areas other coaches help with also. Are you willing to do the work it takes to move past the problems that have kept you from success in the past? The industry of motivation and inspiration is here to help, but we are on the outside; you must help yourself, letting us help keep you moving. We can’t steer your parked car.
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time for you to live a life you always wanted, learn to love what you do and those you share life with. How can we help you become the RockStar in your world?
