Is Your Family on the Same Team?
Posted on August 25, 2014 by Cindy Terebush, One of Thousands of Family Coaches on Noomii.
Individual personalities in a family can come together to reach common goals. Coaching can help make you a team.
I attended a wedding recently and the father of the bride said, “Your life will have happy times and difficult times. As long as you have each other, you have all that matters.” It is true. Life happens. The question is if we will just drift along waiting for events to take us from one place to another or if we will go forth with measurable purpose. Will you act or react?
When I told people that I wanted to enhance my career by taking clients for youth, parent and family coaching, they often seemed baffled. They understood that coaches are helpful when teens are picking colleges or students need help with study skills. They wondered aloud if families need coaches. One person joked, “Would we all have to wear the same t-shirt?” Yes – sort of. On a sports team, the t-shirt unites individuals as part of a whole. Each member of the team plays a different position but they work together to win. Similarly, a family coach can help the individuals in your family unite for a purpose. The job of a coach in sport or in life is to guide people, keep them stay on task and help them find a way to succeed. Succeeding as a family requires more than a vague desire for happiness and drifting from one event to another. When you drift, happiness often seems like that elusive thing that is just out of reach. Setting measurable, step by step goals offers families a way to feel success as they navigate their relationships and the events that seem like stumbling blocks.
Family coaches help people to take their dreams and make them real. They help family members to find the confidence to outline the steps that turn desire into action. Families can work on their relationships, school or career goals, communication skills, financial planning and more with someone who is impartial. Coaches don’t play the game themselves. They help you to find the ability within yourself and to use your strengths to improve. Family coaches help you to control what you can and let go of the events that you cannot.
Coaches are different from therapists in that coaches do not look at the past. They look at today and tomorrow. They help you to outline where you are now and where you want to go. You can get to that place with purpose and clarity. You can be coached to focus on action rather than abstract thoughts. Coaches can work with each person or the whole family to be the best you can be and to win.
