About You: My New Client
Photo by me.
If you're someone looking to hire a coach, you probably ask your friends or co-workers for referrals or maybe do some research online. You choose a few coaches and reach out to them — most of us do a free initial consultation — and during that first chat, you get a feel for their coaching style and their personality. Maybe they're buttoned-up and all business. Maybe they're letting their freak flag fly. Maybe they're somewhere in between.
As the coach on the other end of the phone, I am also getting a feel for you, for our chemistry. If you're a super-serious, by-the-book kind of person, I'm probably not the coach for you. If you sound like you expect me to have all the answers, then coaching will not be satisfying for you. But if you're some or all of the things in the list below, then we'd probably make one hell of a team!
About You
You are a little weird.
I love weirdos. We can be weird together.
You laugh.
Your sense of humor is in good working order. In my experience, coaching can be quite fun.
You have some life experience under your belt.
You've been around the block a few times. You've accumulated wisdom from your triumphs and disappointments, your joys and heartaches. And according to my super scientific life-experience calculator, that puts you somewhere in your mid-thirties on up. You may be younger than that, and that's cool — it's that life-experience I love.
You basically have your shit together already.
You're an adult and most days you act like one. You know yourself and are in touch with your thoughts and feelings. You're resourceful. You might be stuck right now or feeling off track and wanting to find direction. Or you might know exactly where you're heading and want a partner to help navigate while you drive.
You are creative.
Maybe you are on a creative journey of some kind. Maybe you don't know exactly how to begin and maybe it feels hard, but you are ready to play and experiment, to tap into that part of you that feels like it has to express something. You are ready to find your way.
You are ready to stop being a zombie.
You are ready to stop zombie-walking through life, letting it, or waiting for it happen to you. You are ready to wake up and step purposefully onto a path of your choosing. (yeah, I know that's not how zombies work, but go with it!)
You are ready to rewrite the tired old stories.
You are ready to look at your limiting beliefs and create new, more helpful and supportive ones. You are not a victim, you are ready to take responsibility for where you are right now and where you are wanting to go. You are ready to look at how you sabotage yourself and finally get out of your own way.
You can't wait to throw your whole self into the coaching process.
You are willing to make time and space for coaching. You are present to the magic of it (yes, it can feel like magic sometimes!). You want to shake shit up! You are motivated and ready to rock.
You are not afraid to be a little afraid.
You are also not uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. You are likely going to do some things you haven't done before. You are going to call bullshit on some things. You are going to get to know yourself in a deeper way. Fear and discomfort come with the territory and are a sign you are headed in the right direction.
You see coaching as an investment.
You view coaching as an investment of your funds, your time, and your energy — you know it will pay big dividends.
You get that coaching is not therapy.
While coaching can feel therapeutic and we definitely hike around in the emotional terrain, you understand that I am not a therapist. You are not coming to coaching to treat conditions like depression or anxiety, or to unknot the tangles of past trauma or lingering issues that hold you back. That is not what I am trained to do. We may talk about how these things impact you in the here and now, but coaching is all about forward motion and some of these issues may require therapy so that you can, eventually, move forward. Some of my clients do coaching and therapy simultaneously. Double dose of awesome!
You get that coaching is not advice-giving.
Even though I was labeled 'bossy' on my kindergarten report card, I don't tell you what to do. We look at each situation together and from that exploration the thing to do will be uncovered.
You are ready.
You want to make shit happen. To say no to what's not working, and yes to what might work better. You are ready to find out what makes you tick, what you want, what you're afraid of, to get curious about it all. You are ready to roll, so let's roll!