The Logistics of Life Coaching
If you’ve been reading these mind management articles, you might be wondering how to get your own life coach and what it even means to have a life coach. I want to take a moment here to explain some of the logistics of life coaching.
As I’ve mentioned before, life coaching is not a regulated industry. There is no specific training and no licensing required. Anyone can call themselves a life coach, so you don’t really know what you’ll get with any specific person.
That’s why I recommend finding a coach from The Life Coach School (LCS). Brooke Castillo started the school and has trained hundreds of people in her specific principles and methods. My coach is from LCS, and everything I’ve written about here is taught at LCS. They have a directory of coaches that lists each coach’s niche, so you can find one that relates to your specific situation.
Each life coach will have their own business model, but there are a few general ways to structure the coaching. One is with some kind of package. The coach might offer six or eight 20- or 30-minute sessions for a certain price. Sometimes there are online training modules that come with that bundle. In this arrangement, you have one-on-one time to speak with the coach about your problems. He or she will help you through your current challenge and also teach you tools for handling difficulties in the future. The price for this package is often around $500. Some coaches charge less and many charge a lot more than that.
The other style of coaching is offering a program to join. In this paradigm, you pay a monthly fee and have access to the coach for personal coaching, but you also get to listen to other people being coached, along with other various offerings (enrichment videos, classes, etc). The cost for these programs can range from $50/month to $500/month, depending on the coach.
My life coach runs her business as a pay-monthly program. I may be biased, but I believe this style of coaching is the best way to have consistent improvement over time. Her monthly cost is at the lower end of the price range, and I believe it is well worth every cent. I have been a member of her program since 2018 and don’t have any intention of quitting it anytime soon.
A coaching membership is like a gym membership for your mind. You don’t go to the gym six times and hope that your physical health with always be great. You have to exercise your physical body regularly, and it helps to have a fitness teacher or personal trainer helping you with correct form and giving you motivation. Likewise, you can make some improvement in your mental health in six or eight sessions with a coach, but your brain will make up stories again and again. It’s beneficial to be in a program where you constantly hear people get coached. This keeps the coaching concepts at the top of your mind and helps you apply them more frequently.
Here’s how my coach’s program works. For the monthly fee, she offers 1–2 coaching calls per week. You can sign up to be coached at a certain time, or you can join the zoom call and raise your hand when you want to be coached. All calls are recorded and available on the website for replay. In addition, she has a private feed podcast. Members can get set up to have the call replays come into their podcast app. She teaches one specific class each month (also available live on zoom or to watch/listen to the replay later) and has a page on the website where you can write in questions or problems (and check back later for the answer). The website also has orientation videos and some supplemental videos if you want more content.
Because I’ve been a member of this program since 2018, I know a lot about coaching and have gotten to be pretty good at self-coaching (this is the topic of the next article). So why do I stay a member year after year? It’s true that I know how to self-coach, but I like knowing I could sign up to be coached if I needed to. Also, I listen to all the classes and at least one coaching call a week. The variety of calls keeps the different principles fresh in my mind. My coach suggests and explores thoughts that aren’t natural or normal for our human brains to consider. We often have one way of thinking, and we don’t even realize there are options.
The variety of calls keeps the different principles fresh in my mind.
Sometimes as I listen to a call, I apply the concepts the coach suggests to a difficulty I am facing. I often have to pause the replay to ponder my situation and reframe my beliefs about it. From time to time, I have a bigger dilemma that I want to work on or feel better about. In this case, I’ll sit down and write out my thoughts, put one in a Model, and contemplate what my coach would tell me if I explained it to her.
I know if I stopped listening to calls and interacting with the material, then I would go back to my old patterns of thinking. I love hearing other people call in, listening to their particular challenge and seeing how my coach helps them. Sometimes I try to predict what she is going to say, and sometimes I wish I could be on the call and give the client some extra tips.
Here is an example of applying one caller’s coaching to my own problem. This client complained that her mom is critical of her husband. She tells her that her husband doesn’t work hard enough, doesn’t provide well for the family, and isn’t as interactive with the kids as he should be. The woman loves her mom but feels frustrated with these comments and wishes her mom could be nicer. This reminded me of a recent experience with a family member judging one of our children. My brother-in-law told my husband that he didn’t like how our child dyed their hair bright colors or how often the color changed. He didn’t think it looked good, and he thought it was rebellious and inappropriate.
When I heard this, I was offended (of course) and found myself ruminating on it. I was irritated that he would have such strong judgements of our child, and, like the client calling in, I wished he could be different. As I listened to my coach help the client, I applied the principles to my situation. Here is what I came up with.
*Instead of putting up defenses to shield you from criticisms, just lower all that and let them land. It’s not dangerous for other people to have opinions of us or our loved ones. (I reminded myself that when he says he doesn’t like the hair dye, I can have an attitude of, “I get it; it can be challenging to accept something unfamiliar. I sometimes struggle with that too.”)
*The fact is people can and will do whatever they want. When we label their behavior wrong or bad, we only hurt ourselves. We all get to live our lives however we want. They get to think what they want, and if I want to feel good, I can still love them.
*He has judgements about the hair color, and I have judgements about his disapproval. We have a lot in common here! No one is doing anything wrong. Humans are wired for judgement. It’s okay, we can move on.
*Instead of experiencing judgment, we can shift to curiosity. We can ask, “I wonder what’s going on with him. I wonder how he formed that opinion. I wonder if it comes from some kind of fear or pain.”
*Curiosity can lead to connection. Having opinions about someone is the opposite of connection. But curiosity opens us up. Curiosity says, “Tell me more,” and has an attitude of “I see you; I love you; I got you. You just be you and let me love you, whoever you are.”
*Resentment comes from wanting others to be different so that we can feel better. But it’s not their job to make us feel better. That’s our job. When we work on feeling confident and loving about ourselves and our life (and our children), other people’s comments will be more confusing than hurtful.
I had learned these concepts before and heard them in various calls. But only recently had I been frustrated with my brother-in-law. Listening to this particular client helped me recall the ideas that I needed to apply to my troubling situation. This is why I stay in the coaching program year after year. I love hearing others get coached. I never get tired of reflecting on the coaching theories and applying them to my life.
This is why I stay in the coaching program year after year.
I have one other tip for finding a coach. As you look through the Life Coach School directory and find some coaches who you might be interested in, see if they have a podcast. Many coaches have a free podcast that you can listen to and get a feel for their personality and coaching style. The actual coaching goes deeper than a podcast, but it’s a good way to get acquainted with the different options.
Hopefully this information helps you in your journey to finding a life coach. LCS-trained coaches have such a unique and powerful method for approaching life and its problems. This new perspective is well worth the price.
Try this on: “I always have the option to love someone, no matter what they do or say.”
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“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”
