As part of my ILM Level 5 qualification in Coaching and Mentoring, I have completed over 18 hours of coaching with three clients. Its been an amazing experience and I learnt so much about myself and the practice of both Coaching and Mentoring. I have developed my own style over the last 8 months and am more than comfortable slipping between Coaching and Mentoring as and when it is appropriate. I have really seen the power of Coaching and Mentoring and have been delighted with the progress that my clients have made and I've really enjoyed hearing about their successes and seeing the genuine joy on their faces as they recall what they have achieved and how this has made them feel.
My clients all bought different challenges with them but they all shared one thing in common - they lacked confidence. I suspect that 99.9% of the population of the entire planet lack confidence somewhere in their lives but you wont necessarily ever see it! Robin Williams once said 'Everyone you walk past in the street will be fighting a battle you know nothing about'. That is so true!!
The first client was a recommendation to me via a friend of hers. We had never met or spoken before we had our first introductory chat. The woman explained that she felt her life was a failure - straight out. That was a huge statement and something that over the course of our time together we broke down and identified exactly what areas of her life she felt were a failure. The first thing to acknowledge was that not ALL her life was a failure - there were some areas where she had no problems at all. It boiled down to three particular areas of her life and it was all about perspective. During our time together we talked about what she perceived as the failures and talked about why she thought those things were failures. Much of this was about comparisons to other peoples lives and her misconceptions of other people. We talked about self confidence and self esteem and set mini challenges at the end of our sessions that we discussed and made sure that she was happy to try and tackle. Over the course of the coaching, we completed a number of exercises and explored some specific topics and each time we met up there were more and more positives to talk about. This particular lady had been through a really tough few years and just couldn't see the positives in her life. She had bounced back from a really low place and rebuilt her life but just couldn't see it because she had no other perspective through which to look at her life - that's where the coaching and mentoring helped!
By the end of our sessions, the feedback was fantastic:-
Coaching has helped me see even people that I see as really confident and not bothered by anything have their insecurities. Like going to the cinema by themselves even though they would happily jet off on holiday by themselves and have done, they would never go to the cinema by themselves.
Coaching has definitely changed the way I think and see people. I try to give things a go more than putting them off. I don’t beat myself up as much if exercise and food go out the window, like this morning I only managed half my run my legs just felt really heavy so I walked the rest of the way back and told myself I’ll try again Thursday.
I don’t feel like I’m such a failure at life anymore, I’ve overcome and achieved a lot of things in the last 2-3 years and I am a lot stronger for it. It may not be the expected 2.4 children scenario life but it is still a pretty good one to be proud of.