How has coaching impacted my *own* life?
Posted on March 11, 2024 by Diana Liminovic, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Imagine what one can accomplish by making coaching a consistent—or even permanent—part of their life?
I was one of those many people who said, “I don’t need a coach; I can figure everything out on my own, and everything is already good enough.” Well, life was—and is—good, but it could certainly have been even better. After having gone through a few coaching sessions, I could feel how my initial resistance started to fade, allowing myself to drop my guard and trust the process.
So, what did I learn, and how has coaching impacted my life?
I have become my own coach
One of the most significant outcomes of coaching is that I have become my own coach, enabling me to “be there for myself” whenever I am navigating difficult moments. Sometimes, I succeed; other times, less so (I am still a work in progress and always will be.) Occasionally, I end up in a situation where my thoughts spin like a tornado. These days, however, I am able to break free from the strong force pulling at me through the application of specific tools and methods I will share in future posts.
I learnt to embrace empathy and overcome judgment
My father passed away when I was a teenager, leaving me to become a second parent to my sister, who at the time was just a toddler. Even though I was a mere child myself, I did the best I could to take care of her, however feeble my “parenting skills” were at that age. Despite some “interesting” parenting methods, my sister and I have remained close and are best friends. As we both become adults, however, it became increasingly clear something was missing in our relationship. We talked, but there was never a genuine safe space for open and honest communication. Whenever she would reach out to solicit my advice on something, I would be very quick at responding with a strong opinion, an opinion that most of the time involved a heavy dose of disagreement or even outright criticism—something, perhaps, a parent would do, not a sibling. While I came from a good place, she would feel undermined and defensive—and, I must admit, justifiably so—and I noticed how she gradually became less open with me, increasingly unwilling to express her genuine feelings and emotions. Unwilling to be her true self. Instead of listening, instead of just being there for her, I was casting judgment on her—and judgment, as I have come to learn, is one of the biggest obstacles preventing us from maintaining and creating genuine relationships, whether new or old.
Only when I was able to become more empathetic and understanding towards other people’s life choices and behaviors was I able to open the door to honest and real communication. Thankfully, this has brought my sister and I even closer, and we are now able to truly express ourselves as we are—not how we wish the other person would be—helping us to form an even deeper bond. And this goes for any relationship: parents and children, husband and wife, friends, colleagues—the list goes on and on.
Remember: there is no single right way to live life. There are many paths, and all of them are “right,” as long as people are happy with their own choices and live their lives just as they were meant to.
I learnt to embrace failure
Let’s be realistic. Life is tough; it’s full of disappointment and hurt. Even those we look up to have experienced their fair share of, well, failure. However, what separates individuals who dwell on negative events for a prolonged period and those who can move forward is the ability to shift one’s mindset. The ability to start seeing opportunities and areas of growth where before only obstacles and dead ends were once in front of one’s eyes.
Even though I have always been a rather positive person, coaching has helped me to create an ability to reframe challenges, allowing me to turn setbacks into valuable lessons. And valuable lessons open doors to new opportunities.
I must be honest with you and myself, though. The effects of coaching do not materialize overnight and require dedicated effort and strong willingness for change. I view myself as an ongoing and endless “work in progress,” because the moment we stop evolving, that is the moment when we cease to grow.
The above is just a handful of examples where I have experienced an instant shift through the craft of coaching. Imagine what one can accomplish by making coaching a consistent—or even permanent—part of one’s life?
