Life coach support can be a sweet, gentle force that helps you move mountains. Having someone care about you and what you’re doing, having someone on your side, can give you the confidence and energy to accomplish things that seem too difficult on your own.
What holds us back is rarely something external or objective, like a lack of knowledge, money, or connections. When a person has a fire in his belly about something, he almost always can find the resources he needs.
In this article, we’ll look at how coaches can be a source of support to help you gently, gradually relax your fears and concerns and move naturally towards your dreams. Before I share the list of the coach support services with you, I’d like to answer some questions that come up about coach support.
Isn’t it kind of icky to pay someone to pretend she believes in me?
Absolutely. It’s creepy to pay someone to fake believing in you and caring about you. If you are interested in getting support from a coach, I suggest you find someone who actually believes in you and cares about you. Someone who gets you, thinks what you are doing is cool, and is excited to help you with it.
You’re paying her to devote an hour a week (or whatever) to helping and supporting you, not to fake caring about you.
How hard will it be to find someone who’ll sincerely support me?
Of course, I can’t give you a definitive answer to this. For one thing, it depends on the luck of which coaches you happen to run into in your search. Also, people who are creative, unusual, interesting, sensitive, and/or funky may need to look a bit to find a coach who understands them.
The good news is that many coaches are deeply caring people. Once you’re in their orbit, they care about you.
Some coaches keep themselves distant from clients (which some argue is healthier for everyone), but I’ve seen many touching examples of how much coaches care about their clients.
Life Coach Support Services
Without further ado, here’s the list of life coach support services.
Understanding you, believing in you, being on your side
Having a person who’s on your side, who believes in you, who listens to you and understands you, can make all the difference. It can free you to be more true to yourself, to have the courage to take risks and go for what you want.
Being with you on the journey
Having someone on your journey with you can keep you going when you want to give up. A grad student said that the real benefit of having a dissertation coach was the fact that someone cared about her dissertation besides her adviser and herself. When you have someone to talk to, the ups and downs of a project can be entertaining, even funny, when they may feel more tragic when you’re on your own.
Encouraging, cheerleading
In a project of any significance, you’ll probably reach a place several times where everything looks hopeless and you’re ready to quit. If you’re doing something that’s creative, original, or different, you may also find that you have a bunch of mini-freak-outs where you doubt yourself and your project.
Having someone who believes in you and your project can help you bounce back, to help you feel good about what you’re doing. And when you’re not having a tough time, it’s still nice to talk to someone regularly who’s supportive and encouraging.
Offering a shoulder to cry on
There are many places — like work — where it’s not really acceptable to get upset, discouraged, angry, or frustrated. We’re supposed to paint on happy faces. We’re supposed to have positive attitudes.
Fair enough.
Maybe having people cry and freak out in the workplace wouldn’t be such a great idea. But it can be helpful, cathartic, and affirming to have a safe space where you can get upset, share your fears, freak out, be angry, and complain.
Some coaches create that space for you. (Others want you to play the same positive attitude game you’re supposed to play at work.)
Celebrating the little and big things
Interestingly enough, it’s also not acceptable to be too happy with ourselves, once we’re adults. You can’t really go up to colleagues or even most friends and say, “Look what I just did. Yay, me!”
But this kind of celebration is so affirming, validating, encouraging, and fun. And it energizes and inspires you to do more.
Luckily, it’s completely socially acceptable to do this with your coach. She’ll celebrate the little triumphs in your life as well as big ones. She may even point out reasons to celebrate that you’ve glossed over. You think you only get to break out the virtual champagne when you make it to the New York Times Best Sellers list. Your coach trots out the virtual party hats and streamers when you get a small article published in an obscure journal.
When you do something wonderful, when something goes your way, even if it’s something small, your coach is there to do the happy dance with you.