A few months ago, I started a coaching collaboration with a new client. And as almost every client I had before, she wanted to make more money. That’s the goal of almost everyone who enters my coaching sessions.
“I want to make 30.000 more pounds by the end of summer so I can visit Dubai” is what she told me.
Little did she know, that wasn’t what she actually wanted.
It took us almost three hours, in one session and a half, to move from “I want to make more money” to “I want to better manage my emotions, understand them, and learn to live with them”.
On a scale from 1 to 10, she was at 2. From her point of view, she wasn’t doing a good job of managing her emotions.
Little by little, with every session, we started exploring what was going on. She learned more about the parts of herself that were sabotaging her. She got more clarity over what was blocking her (she went from 5 to 8, on a scale of 10, regarding her understanding of her setbacks).
Her biggest setback was that she couldn’t move past the hill. As soon as she was getting close to something important to her, she was self-sabotaging her journey, doubting her self-worth.
And we overcame that by reframing a part of herself. Instead of naming it ‘the destroyer’, as she put it, at the end of that session she named it ‘the protector’. That was her proof that coaching works.
Coaching works and it can unlock your highest potential
No matter how cliché it may sound, coaching is one of the ways through which you can unlock your highest potential.
But most people see coaching just as a conversation with no purpose or as something that promises a lot of things and delivers nothing. It’s probably because of the coaching experiences they had before.
If someone says they will change your life through a service (whatever that service is) and they don’t deliver, blame the person, not the method.
All personal development methods are bad in the hands of the wrong person. Just as you previously found a bad coach, you can find a bad therapist, a bad mentor, a bad consultant, and so on.
Yes, they’re everywhere.
So, I paid close attention to some of my sessions and here are 4 benefits that my clients had during and after these sessions:
1. Coaching is measurable
Coaching works because everything in coaching is measurable. But not everyone measures.
You can measure clarity, self-trust, confidence, anxiety, fear, doubt, and a lot of things.
Because I measure everything that matters, my clients always see results right away.
At the beginning of this year, after one session, I remember one client telling me “Woah! I totally understand why I wasn’t disciplined until now”. During that session, his clarity of what it meant, for him, to be disciplined, went from 3 to 8.
2. The transformation through coaching is radical
With the right coaching tools, you can help someone shift from being in conflict with parts of themselves to using these parts as protection or support.
Instead of avoiding important tasks, you learn how to embrace them.
Instead of obsessively chasing everything, you learn how to make priorities.
Instead of being afraid of pursuing your dreams, you learn to adjust your baselines for fear and excitement.
Transformation in coaching is radical and it doesn’t take too much time – usually around 2-3 months of constant deep inner work.
The most common situation I discover here is this: whenever money is involved and people can’t make money (either because they’re afraid to ask for it or they feel they don’t deserve it), it goes back to childhood.
A few years ago, I had one client who burst into tears as soon as she realized her money setback wasn’t about money.
3. Fast results, compared with other ways of development
While coaching needs 2-3 months to produce real transformation, you can get great value even from a 15-minute coaching session.
But if you look at other ways of development, more time is required.
While mentoring requires 4 to 6 months, therapy requires 6 to 12 months.
As a side note, don’t hate me, but I coach people all the time, even when they are not aware of it. That’s because coaching doesn’t have to be out on the table to happen. It can be a 2-minute conversation, where you tell me something and I share with you what I noticed.
The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
What I mean by that is that through the art of noticing, I observe your blind spots, and share them back to you. It can happen in a 2-minute conversation. Yes, coaching works even when time is limited to an extreme.
4. Coaching is VERY structured
You know where each session starts and where it ends. You have the same clarity for the entire coaching process. There’s no hidden agenda.
Coaching is so structured that you, as a coachee, are able to build your own process, step-by-step, exactly the way you want, in a way that is suitable for your deepest needs.
Because of this, coaching works and is never hit-and-miss.
Because of the structure it provides, coaching will always address exactly what you want to solve.
What surprises my clients most is the structure and the clarity that comes with the coaching process – I love structure and I bring that structure with me in every session.
Therefore, every session is measurable. Every shift is visible.
And because I have the Strategic Optimism Framework™ as a reference for my coaching programs, optimism isn’t a feeling I help people chase. It’s a pattern I help them build.
The Strategic Optimism Framework™
After 2 years of research on optimism, the framework surfaced and became alive.
As I said, I use this framework as a reference. By that I meant that both my coachees and I will keep it somewhere in the back of our minds and return to it every 2-3 sessions.
I work with founders, entrepreneurs, executives, and decision makers, helping them identify the parts of themselves that are sabotaging them. And instead of wasting energy being in constant conflict with those parts of themselves, I help them use the same energy to build their businesses and reach their goals.
With the help of the Strategic Optimism Framework™, I guide them rewrite the stories they tell themselves when facing setbacks.
Give coaching a chance
Having said this, give coaching a chance.
In my work, I help founders, entrepreneurs, executives and decision makers identify what sabotages them and, instead of wasting energy being in conflict with those parts of themselves, use the same energy to build their businesses.
If you feel stuck, let’s have a short chat. We’ll create a personalized action plan with specific methods that work for your operating system, to accelerate your results and live the life you desire.
Book your free discovery call today: https://davidtheoptimist.com/call/
With love and optimism,
David
