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Coaches believe that life doesn’t happen to you, you happen to it. Life is a constant series of decisions. Should I get up, or should I hit the snooze button? Should I drive in conditions I can’t handle, or should I find another way? You are making decisions all day long. The person you fight with, the person you ask, the person you ignore, and the person you listen to . . . they are all the same¾it is yourself. A coach wants to help you get out of your own way. Sometimes, while working with clients they say, “I know that!” That very well may be true. You will be amazed at what you already know. Often a coach is the one who gets you to act on what you already know. We have to un-teach all the years that you taught yourself not to do what you know you should. Coaches will get you to do the things you know you should and don’t. It was Freud who said, “There are no good answers, only good questions.” That is part of the foundation to Freudian psychology, that you already know your truth. Therapists are not there to give you magic answers. In therapy you look for your right answers, but this can fall short. In therapy it can take years to achieve goals. The ideas in coaching are to help you learn to take control of your life today. Regardless of the past, you can still make decisions every day to live a happier, healthier and better life. Coaches believe you can be in charge, be responsible and achieve results right now! We are not suggesting that dealing with the issues of your life are unimportant. However, you need to be told while you are dealing with those issues that you still need to live life! You need to be given some help and motivation to take action. Imagine you’ve brought a starving person, about to die, to the hospital, and you can call one of two doctors. One is a therapist who can find out how the patient got to the point of starving. The other is a doctor to who can put an I.V. in the patient and get the patient back to life. Whom would you call? A life-coach is there to tell you that regardless of the past you can re-create your life, take control and make your life whatever you want it to be. This is one of the definitions of life-coaching. You can change your mental life through examining your emotional experiences. Freud said, “We tend to re-create what we have not worked through.” The process in therapy is to lead an individual to have a “corrective emotional experience.” Often this correctional emotional experience allows individuals to forgive a past event, person, or themselves so that they can remove the blocks from their lives and move on to a better life. In life-coaching the approach is “correctional thinking.” In this method you establish how you want to think, how you should think to achieve the goals you want. Then we teach you methods to accomplish the desired shifts in your thinking and then apply your new behavior to an action plan. What’s important is realizing that we have choices and do not have to stay stuck in our old patterns. Therapy can accomplish the desired result of repair and construction of a person’s perception. However, the process can be time consuming, whereas life-coaching can be much faster and quicker in producing positive change. Each should be used in its proper place. You are in charge, and you can decide to live life positively every day regardless of the past. You will be amazed at the quality of your life the moment you decide to lead it and not let life lead you.
About The Author
As a life coach, Devlyn has made helping people find ways to improve their lives his personal mission and passion. He is a public consultant, a private counselor, an author and founder of Toolstolife.com the worlds first free self help group support website. He has hosted his own radio shows called "Tools To Life" and "Love beat" and has been a guest on over 350 various shows. You can read his articles and advice all over the Internet. Devlyn has often been referred to as "America's Leading Life-Coach." For Free E-books and more information visit: Toolstolife.com