How can a life coach help you change your life so you can discover the path to lasting joy, feel less stress, find purpose and meaning, live longer, be healthier and have the daily inspiration to become who you were meant to be?
Everyone can enormously benefit from having a coach. I have a coach. And you deserve to have one too.
I am thankful that I discovered coaching and made that investment in myself. I’ve had a lot of coaching, and it’s led me to some opportunities I never would have opened my eyes to had I not taken the leap. It’s really been life-changing for me.
Okay, I can hear you rolling your eyes, saying “Kortney, this is just a sales pitch for coaching. I don’t want a sales pitch!”.
To which I would say, it is a sales pitch for life coaching. But it is NOT a sales pitch for ME as a life coach.
I just want you to have coaching, whether it’s me or Sally Sue down the street. You need coaching. I need coaching. We all do.
Especially now.
You may be saying “But Kortney, isn’t life coaching is one of those fluffy, woo-woo things that doesn’t really help? If I really want results, I need to hire a therapist, don’t I?”
First of all, coaching is different than therapy, not a substitute. Coaching is more forward-focused. We work with people to create better versions of themselves and take their lives to the next level. Therapy is more process-oriented – a place for you to process feelings and deal with mental health disorders, which a coach is not qualified to do. There can be a lot of crossover, as therapists can be coaches too, but coaches are not therapists.
But I hear you. I once scoffed at the profession of life coaching, thinking it was hokey, woo-woo and didn’t really work. I can remember watching a show once, back before life coaching was widely known as a legitimate profession, being curious, but also thinking the people who hired a life coach must be really lost, or have a lot of extra money laying around to blow.
It seemed kind of frivolous. I mean, can’t people figure this out for themselves?
Yes, people can figure it out for themselves, or at least they have the capability to. But, so many people can’t actually make it happen on their own.
Why? When you are stuck, trying to reach a goal, create a new habit, find happiness, or feel better about your life, it’s like the old adage “can’t see the forest through the trees”. A coach has a bird’s eye view of what’s going on, and can point out the stories, patterns and limiting beliefs that you have – the things that are on autopilot in your subconscious and hold you back from feeling great. The thoughts that take an incredible amount of self-awareness to detect and take even more careful thought and consistent work over time to dismantle so you can change what isn’t working so you can live an amazing, fulfilling life.
Coaching changed my life, without a doubt.
Quite a few years ago, when I was still married, one of my friends from engineering school started a coaching business. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but I was happy for her that she was leaving her corporate job to do something she loved.
Several years later, after my divorce, I was in a position where I needed to go back to work, after being a stay-at-home-mom and part-time photographer for 12+ years. I knew one thing for sure – I did not want to go back to a corporate desk job.
By then, my friend’s coaching business had morphed into an incredibly successful company that coaches entrepreneurs. I called her to ask her if she could help me with the “what am I going to do when I grow up” question.
She was the first person who really opened my eyes to the possibility of becoming a coach.
I still needed help figuring it out, but I wasn’t really ready for entrepreneurial coaching, so my friend connected me with someone who could help me.
I was still unsure. I liked what this coach was telling me, but it was so expensive. I didn’t really have the money for it, even on a payment plan. What if it didn’t help me? What if I invested this money and I was just right back to square one? What if it takes me years and years to get results?
Something my friend said to me in our conversation stuck with me:
“Right now you’re making $25,000 a year, Kortney. It seems like $3,000 is a pretty small investment to gain clarity and direction, and ultimately help you start a new career that can support you and your kids – whether it’s as an entrepreneur or working for someone else.”
Yes, at the time, in addition to the support I was receiving from my ex-husband, I was working part-time for a small brewery getting paid next-to-nothing. It was a pittance, and she was right.
I am thankful to her for being honest.
The conversation opened my eyes to SO many limiting beliefs, thoughts and stories that I was carrying about money, careers, and life in general.
I decided to take the leap and hire the coach, and I have never once looked back.
Why am I telling you this?
It’s not to sell you coaching. It is to tell you what a difference that cleaning up the messy thoughts, beliefs and patterns in your life will make in your happiness and feeling of purpose.
Your brain can be like a garden full of weeds, or a messy house. It’s chaotic and messy and all tangled up. It feels stressful and overwhelming. But once you start to clean up those weeds (which are the thoughts/beliefs that aren’t helping you), you can start to let the flowers of your life blossom and grow into something beautiful.
You can try to do that on your own, or you can hire a coach. I can personally attest to the fact it will go faster with a coach.
I’ve talked enough about why I believe so strongly in coaching, but how I was transformed by working with a coach is even more important.
Here are ten ways I changed my life by making the investment to work with a coach. The risk felt scary, but the rewards were so incredibly worth it.
1 – A coach provides a safe space for you to figure stuff out
There is nothing you can say that a coach will judge you on. Coaches provide a safe “container” of support for you to bring whatever is coming up for you in your life at the time. It’s almost like a sandbox for you to get to know your thoughts, beliefs, patterns, and stories, and play around with changing them.
It’s a place to work on things like treating yourself with compassion and kindness, working on how to feel less stress and overwhelm in your life, and experience joy in your life.
It’s a safe place to work on figuring your shit out. Period.
2 – A coach will help you get out of your own way
Back to the “I can’t see the forest through the trees” adage above. When you’re in the thick of it, it’s likely that you tend to overanalyze things and have a hard time trusting yourself and your intuition. You can’t see the easy solutions, even if they are smack-dab in front of you.
A coach can see the path much easier than you can. Not necessarily the answers, because you are the only one who truly has those – but your coach can help you open your eyes to possibilities you haven’t even considered. She can help you know what’s important to you – your values – and guide you down the path choosing what is right and true for you.
When you’re in a place in life where you feel stuck and don’t know how to take the next step, it’s pretty common to spin your wheels. A coach can help you get on track in a fraction of the time.
3 – A coach will help you get over your guilt
You may not realize you have guilt.
We all have it.
Mommy guilt, guilt for wanting more in life, guilt for wanting to take time for ourselves, etc, etc.
Everyone deserves a life that is full of joy, meaning, peace and freedom. Everyone deserves to love their life. And we all deserve time to ourselves and things to call our own. A coach will help you work through where your guilt is coming from, attack the root of the problem, and then work on letting it go.
A lot of it boils down to worthiness. And a coach can help you truly believe that it is possible for you to have a life that you are excited about. A life where you take time to be yourself, and simultaneously show up for the people in your life how you are needed.
4 – A coach will help you reach your goals and create new habits
How many times have you set New Year’s resolutions and forgotten about them by February?
Or, maybe you’ve set a goal to lose 10 pounds and find yourself at the same weight 8 months later.
The point is, you have trouble setting a goal or creating new habits and actually taking action steps to get there. So many people have a hard time with this, and a coach will get you on track and help you stay there by teaching you how to set goals (yes, there is a trick) and how to create a plan to reach them.
A coach also provides accountability, which is incredibly helpful to your success.
5 – A coach will help you get out of the “gray” zone
Have you ever felt like you’re just going through the motions – everything is same ol’, same ol’? Like you’re existing as a blah shade of gray? You might have found yourself thinking “is this all there is to life? I thought it would be more amazing than this.”
A coach will work with you to help you see that it CAN be more amazing than this. That you CAN create a life you’re crazy about. A coach will help you go from feeling “just fine” to “life is good, really good!”.
6 – A coach will teach you how to manage your thoughts
Yes, you can think on purpose. Thoughts pop into your head randomly, but you have the choice to believe them and run with them or to choose something different to believe.
Once you realize this, it’s a game changer.
Thought work is actually kind of fun. You learn to become aware of the thoughts you have and practice just observing them. When you can just observe them, you gain so many insights, plus it can be very entertaining to watch your “monkey mind” go crazy.
A coach is going to help you zero in on the thoughts that are keeping you stuck and push you to create thoughts that would be more helpful to you instead.
Once you change your thoughts, your feelings will change. And when your thoughts and feelings change, your actions and results will change too.
So exciting, right?
7 – A coach will make sure you know you are not alone
Sometimes, when we are feeling down, or things in our life aren’t how we’d like them to be, we feel like we’re the only ones.
When I was going through my divorce, I felt so alone. I felt like I was the only one who was in the depths of despair like I was. I felt like no one knew how I was feeling or what I was going through.
The truth is, you are not uniquely fucked up.
Everyone is in some way… everyone. Even once you work out your stuff, you still are going to have stuff pop up in your life that is challenging. We keep growing, and then challenges present themselves again. We’re always growing and improving as humans.
A coach will help you learn to embrace vulnerability (or at least tolerate it) and reach out and share your story with others that are safe to share it with. Through sharing your story and showing up authentically, you are going to realize very quickly that you are anything but alone.
It’s nice to know we’re all a little fucked up, isn’t it? 🙂
8 – A coach will help you find inner peace, practice self-love and tame your inner critic
Those are all really “coach-y” words!
A coach will get you some quick wins to feel better, but we’re also going for the long haul in teaching you how to be centered, grounded and live in the moment. We’re going to teach you how to be compassionate toward yourself so you can develop self-love, and we’re going to help you rein in your inner mean girl – you know the “BFF” that you stay friends with because she’s popular, but she is always putting you down?
There are tons of techniques and exercises to work on these things, but ultimately a coach will help you be able to stay present and live in the moment so you don’t attach to external thoughts, circumstances and things. When you can be present with yourself and just be, you can start to notice when you are not nice to yourself and practice being kinder. You’ll be practicing self-compassion, which will lead to self-love!
9 – A coach will guide you toward knowing your worth
This is one of the most important things I ever learned from coaching.
I learned that I am worthy of success, of positive things in my life, of abundance. I don’t need anything other than what’s inside of me to live a happy life, and I deserve, or am worthy, of a happy life.
That also means that I am worthy of taking time for myself, taking care of myself, investing money on myself, and doing things for myself – without guilt.
You are too.
10 – A coach will help you create a better version of yourself
Everything I just wrote about points to this.
A better version of who you are today.
It is our purpose in this life to grow and learn. Our very existence puts us on a path to affect others in our lives, and by continually making the most of everything our lives put in front of us, we are making an impact.
We are making an impact on ourselves and the people in our lives.
A better version of yourself, for you, might be to feel less stress in your life. There are many benefits to YOU for feeling less stress in your life – getting fewer headaches, less tension in your shoulders, you’re overall healthier, you snap less at people, you enjoy life more, etc.
But, these benefits also spill out into other areas of your life.
For example, feeling less stress may enable you to be a better parent, partner or friend. Maybe you snap at your kids less, so you become closer and enjoy spending time together more.
Feeling less stress might enable you to really take a look at the things you are saying “yes” to in your life and to evaluate whether or not they’re serving you. You may choose to do other things that serve you better, and those things may not only have a positive impact on you, but also on other people.
You just never know.
Do you have questions about coaching? I believe so strongly in coaching and I love to talk to everyone I can about it.
You deserve to transform your life into exactly what you want it to be!
To learn more about how you can transform your life, head on over to my web site: www.kortneyrivard.com
OR, I invite you to schedule a 30-minute virtual chat with me so I can talk your ear off about it. 🙂
