Don't you know how to live?

 

   The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can." Notice he said "chief want" and not "passing fancy" or side interest. It's what we want more than anything else. Is there any wonder, then, that coaching has bloomed and blossomed?

     A lot of people laugh at the very idea of my having a life coach. Why do you need a coach for your life? Don't you know how to live?

     Apparently not! Because without my coach, I was living differently than I live right now. I was underachieving but I didn't know why. I had talents I was unaware of. I had courage and willpower I had no idea about. I could go on for many pages about all the things I found in me through the coaching process.

     But is that really so mysterious? Is it a big puzzle that if something works for improving the way you play a game like golf it might also work for the game of life?

     I've known men who have hired golf coaches to improve their game. Their games improved, sometimes quite dramatically. They did this because golf had become important to them. They reached a point in their progress where they felt stuck. Yet they were passionately curious about how good they could be if they could somehow take their game to another level. That's why they hired their coach.

 

     What if they became as passionate about their lives as they were about their golf game? What if they felt stuck there, too and wondered what life might feel like if it were taken to a whole new level of effectiveness and self-expression? A truly creative life fully lived. Would they not get a coach for that too?

     Not if they had a lot of pride in their existing permanent egoic identity. Not if they were afraid to let go of their well-rehearsed self. They would laugh at the idea of a coach.

     What if you had never painted anything but were hired to paint a mural on the front wall of a new museum in your community. Would you take some art lessons? Most people would say an emphatic YES! So, if that is so, why is it so hard to see your life as a creative work of art?

     One of the greatest sports coaches of all time was John Wooden. He coached basketball for UCLA and won more national championships than any coach before or since. His motto was, "Make each day your masterpiece." And although Wooden was a basketball coach by profession, his former players all talk about the life lessons he taught. 

     Wooden was a life coach.  

      And the fact that his team won all those championships was related to that. Something happens when you coach the whole person. The whole life. Other more narrow, strictly-basketball coaches tended to lose games and eventually get fired.

     Corporations have hired me to come in and train their managers on how to coach their people.  They understand that coaching is different than managing.

     Managing is most often an attempt to control other people, while coaching's intention is to empower other people.

     Coaching empowers you. It finds and develops the power in you.  When you are finished with your coaching session you have more power than you had before.  Whereas, when you are finished being managed you have no more power, you've just been controlled.

     When managers learn to coach instead of control, they bring out the best in their people.  I wrote a book with Duane Black (The Hands-Off Manager) on how much more productive and innovative organizations are when the old management style of military bossing is replaced with coaching.

     Which brings up the question of whether coaching is soft.  Many people just assume "life coaching" is a soft, new-agey, California woo-woo fad that will fade from the scene.  It's not and it won't.  Because coaching is proven to immediately boost productivity, it won't go away, and neither is it soft.

     In fact, a good coach is going to move you quickly into higher levels of responsibility and accountability.  While a manager just kind of bosses you around.

 

Comments

[chloe bags]

i know! In fact, a good coach is going to move you quickly into higher levels of responsibility and accountability. While a manager just kind of bosses you around.