I know, life coaching has a bit of an image problem. When I try to explain it to some people they say things like '.....but what do you DO?' They may think it all sounds a bit 'airy fairy' or 'New Age' or even (gasp) Ame-ri-can! After all, us Brits are so hard-nosed and down-to-earth right? Meat and potatoes, none of that fancy stuff for us. The stoicism that got us great! And I have to say; all that is true. There is a stoicism in the UK and it has served us well in past times. So, is that it? Should we all just grit our teeth and knuckle down with that Bulldog Spirit? Just get the job done eh Monty? Perhaps, and as a coach I would agree that there are times when this approach is extremely effective because we don't want to all be whimpering wrecks running for help at the first sign of trouble.
But the reality; the reality is that we are complex beings full of feelings and we live in a world that can also be overwhelmingly hard to navigate. True, you might not hire a life coach if you're living on the breadline or struggling to feed your kids, but you might. It's no accident that life coaching has emerged at this time in human history, in western culture. People are looking for more than just life-in-survival-mode. Not surprisingly they are interested in more abstract and elusive goals such as fulfillment, happiness and achievement.
For the last few thousand years, and particularly in the last few hundred, we have lived with the urgent need to provide, for families and for ourselves. Principally this has come to be expected through an exchange of work for money. This was an exchange that worked quite well for a long time. Employees were grateful to have the security to bring up families and feel certain about the future. But things are changing. Actually they have already changed. In reality people are no longer satisfied with the deal of the industrial age under which the majority still labour. Organisations may thrive, individuals get worn out. They know they are missing out on something, and they're right.
The media works (inadvertently) in the service of companies, corporations and governments by instilling fear through relentlessly sensationalised reporting which engenders a non-stop sense of crisis so that employees are sent scurrying back to the grindstone with their heads down.
But now so many people are beginning to ask awkward questions, such as: Am I happy? Can I be happy and what will it take?
Artificial Intelligence and other technological phenomena will no doubt transform our society beyond recognition in the next decade, probably in ways that we don't even know yet. But one thing is for certain: people will have more options and more leisure time than ever before and life coaches, counsellors and psychologists will be required to help them adapt and manage the onslaught of change.
We need a way to navigate through all of this. You are not a machine. You ARE a complex, feeling individual and somewhere, somehow there is fulfillment waiting for you. You do not have to passively accept things the way they are. But as long as you are scurrying, as long as you buy into the scary looking version of the world and put your aspirations on hold, you are unlikely to be able to clear a space to really get to know who you are and why you are here, let alone do something about it.
Life coaching is a service that is perfectly suited to the existential dilemmas that are already looming for post-industrial societies.It is probably THE best and most effective way to get focused and set a course that YOU have chosen rather than feeling it has been thrust upon you. So what is it that you want to do? What will it take to get you to the place of feeling ownership of your daily activities, tuning into your purpose with a clear understanding of what's important?
Life coaching CAN be about exploring feelings, about discovering who you are and what you want. It CAN be about setting definite goals for higher achievement, success and recognition. Life coaches are interested, for the most part in supporting you in getting where you want to go, as long as it aligns with your values. Life coaching is as multi-faceted and many-layered as individuals and what happens in life coaching will depend uniquely on the person that you are.
