Coaching for Skeptics

This blog post is for you if you are curious and skeptical about coaching.
Having experienced a personal transformation myself that changed my perception of the coaching industry, I want to share what hiring a coach did for me, and the positive experience I had, so much that it made me become a coach myself. But I’m not here to preach to you about why you need one, because both statements stand true — you’re right if you do, and you’re right if you don’t. Coaching only works for those who believe they need it.

Maybe you are reading this post purely out of curiosity, or you are on the fence about deciding to work with one and haven’t quite made the leap of faith — either way, you’re already here. As the title suggests, I wrote this post specifically for you who are skeptical about coaching, because you may be in my exact position where I first started my journey. But I’ll tell you this much is true — people who believe in coaching are 100% sold, and the people who don’t will tell you it’s a waste of money. Who then can you trust?

This is why I want to share my 3 biggest takeaways after hiring multiple coaches in different areas. I personally went through a journey that led me to discover a whole new understanding of what creates long-term transformation. Since then I’ve become more open to making a personal change from a fundamental level. I’ve also developed more sensitivity around establishing trust, rapport, and communication to help my clients with transformation in a bigger magnitude.

What got you here won’t get you there

Don’t waste your money on a coach if you are resistant to change. No magic potion or formula can help you if you are trying to get new results doing exactly the same things. Same goes to success, we cannot expect new breakthroughs if we keep thinking in the same mentality.

Our ego is a funny thing. We were confident enough to get us from where we were to where we are now — without it, we would not have come this far. However, there comes a time where we’ll need to leave our old beliefs behind for a new set of keys to unlock the next door. It takes humility to admit you could use coaching, that you can’t solve this all on your own so that we can gain a new perspective for the next level.

You can’t help yourself if you are the problem

Do you ever wonder why it’s so easy to give advice to others but somehow we can never come up with our own advice for the challenges we face? Or that we doubt our abilities to follow through the solutions we prescribe ourselves?

The reason we find it so hard to see our situations objectively is that our minds are what created the problems in the first place; essentially we are the problem itself. Emotion also plays a huge role in lowering our abilities to make fair decisions, so the only way to get an instant new perspective is from an external resource that has no emotional attachment to your problem. In this case, you can most definitely benefit from someone who is trained in looking into problems objectively that steer clear from judgment and bias.

A coach is so much more than a book or Youtube

For the longest time, I was scrimping every free resource I could find online so that I could “DIY”. My mentality was that “everything is free, and there is nothing I cannot learn online”. Fair enough. In this digital age, we have more information than we could possibly consume in our lifetime, so a lack of information was never the problem.

I still remember clicking through all the “How to” videos on Youtube I could find on career, success, money, business etcetera. To my credit, I learned how to build a beautiful website, start an email campaign, and put together a few blog posts; but they all led me nowhere. I was moving at 500 mph with no direction.

After having seen (and possibly stalked) a few entrepreneurs that started to get results online, I figured that I was burning all my energy in the wrong places, and was working very hard with no clear strategy. I was doing everything and achieved nothing at the same time. You can have all the greatest answers to the wrong questions if you don’t know the right questions to ask.

Being a skeptic (I’m on the extreme side of the spectrum), it took me much longer than I wanted to admit that I could benefit from the help of a coach. From questioning the coach’s credentials to doubting the testimonials’ credibility — I finally made the decision to bite the bullet and acknowledge “I don’t know what I don’t know”, so that I could finally get the guidance I needed to take me to the next level before I burn all my fuel in the wrong engines. If your coach did not match your expectations, what’s the worst that could happen?

Sure, if a coach did not match your expectations, you could lose some time, money, energy… but nothing will cost you as much as not living up to your biggest potential. Know that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear — we can only increase our capacity to learn and grow when we open up ourselves to the possibility of change.

I believe you can live a life of freedom and abundance by shifting your mindset so that you can be unstoppable in embracing new opportunities without being held back by limiting beliefs. Find me at www.chaneunice.com and create your desired lifestyle now!

Originally published at www.chaneunice.com on October 29, 2018.