What actually is life-coaching?

“life-changing”, “encouraging”, “nurturing”, “motivating”, “inspirational” – words my clients have used and, I would echo those from my own experience of working with a coach. Life-coaching is a way of helping people make change in their life – it helps change and transform mindsets and become aware of what may hold you back in getting to where you want in life. 

I used to blame everything on how I felt about my body and weight, BUT in reality that was not the case. Yes I lacked body confidence and spent 30 years + on the diet roller coaster and this obviously contributed to my lack of confidence and low self-esteem but other things had too.

2020 has been a year hasn’t it?  Global turmoil and uncertainty.  It’s certainly been a year of change and totally unexpected.  When we entered a new decade there was a lot of talk of 2020 being the year of 2020 vision and in many ways it has been – but I doubt in the way any of us envisaged. How are you feeling about moving towards 2021 or are you not wanting to look ahead yet?

Can you find the courage? Something a bit different from me for this post. I wrote this after coming off a phone call that involved me taking a big step, an investment in me. I hope the sentiment resonates for you too. When you take the step /the leap the knock on effects can be amazing.

.I used to compare myself a lot but through reaching a place of confidence and self-acceptance this had greatly diminished. However, over the last couple of months I found myself comparing to do with my coaching business. Not constantly but on a few occasions. Was I comparing myself to people at the same stage of business as me – no – but to people who have been doing this longer than me – even if only a year or 2.  .What does comparison actually achieve?

There is a lot written about the importance of self-love but the idea of loving yourself, loving your body can seem unreachable to some people.  If you feel you cannot love yourself yet, can you like yourself just a bit more?

Start with liking yourself a bit more.

Whilst love is the goal how about starting with appreciating yourself a bit more, accepting yourself a bit more, reaching a point of feeling neutral, if necessary just tolerating yourself a bit more – a first step.

So why do so many of us struggle with a lack of confidence?

Whether that be confidence with our bodies, Confidence over what other people think of us, how we’re perceived , meeting new people, showing up online. First off it’s not our business what other people think of us – so long as we’re not running around the world being a complete **** we have very little control over it.

You’ve done it – you’ve reached your ideal body weight – yay, congratulations! 🎉 But what happens once that initial euphoria wears off, once the congratulations stop. What, apart from the size of your body and the number on the scale has changed? Do you really feel more fulfilled, more satisfied in your life? Does the fact you are a certain body size change your value to the people who really matter in your life? You’ve put in an amazing effort to reach that number - now what?

Many of our actions or behaviours are formed from habit.  They’re just something we “always do”.  When we’re trying to change a habit or behaviour pattern it’s so easy to self-sabotage. “I always do that” – first off the language we use can reinforce our behaviours or actions.  By saying we always do it, it becomes what we expect ourselves to do and implies an acceptance of what we do.

So why you really don’t want to diet - dieting and restriction don’t work.  At least not in the long term.  For a while most of us seem able to follow a meal plan, cut out certain foods, limit other foods, count macros, count calories – until we can’t anymore and give up.

It may be that in this time of isolation & stay at home you are finding yourself reverting to old habits as regards eating. First off this is fine and not uncommon at times of uncertainty which we are facing at the moment world-wide.

Behind everything we do there is a reason.  A reason why.  But in the bigger scheme of what we do with our lives, goals we set, our success on reaching our goals, the reason why becomes more important. This is because it is what motivates us to keep showing up, to keep persevering and taking action.

So what is self-love? Self-love is when we take care ourselves in totality – our minds, bodies, health and emotions. Why bother? We start embracing and respecting ourselves as individuals, we grow in confidence and self-belief. We rely less on external factors to determine our self-worth and this all serves to improve our relationship with the world and people around us too.

I can’t remember who first introduced me to the idea of gratitude journalling, but it has been a real eye-opener. Just noting at least 3 things every day that I’m grateful for – I usually write them down but sometimes it’s in my head.

The problem with the stories we tell ourselves is that they can be restrictive.  They can have us believe things that aren’t necessarily true.  We always look for the evidence to back up what we believe, to support them rather than evidence that contradicts. 

Did you make any New Years Resolutions this year?  I don’t make them and haven’t for a while now.  Instead, I focus on setting intentions and goals for the year. This will involve a time of reflecting on what I achieved/completed last year and thinking where I want to be by the end of this year.