Alice Hart-Davis is on week four of her online life coaching with Jacqueline Hurst to help her achieve her goals – this week she discovered the power of coaching others …
Here’s a strange thing…
Last week, I was down in the dumps about this whole learn-to-be-a-life-coach lark. I began this course just wanting to discover how to manage my own brain and find new ways of setting goals and motivating myself to get on with a book idea that has been sitting on the back burner in my mind for months. I had no wish to do any coaching. But last week it became clear that if I didn’t engage with the coaching aspect of the course, I’d only be learning a part of what the Lifeclass had to offer, if I could just summon the courage to dive in.
Being talked through the coaching process by one of my fellow students was like having teeth pulled
It didn’t help that I have made zero progress with my goal – my book. Wedging the course-work and the group call into each week has taken up all the wiggle-room in my schedule and I’m falling behind with normal work, so my progress with my synopsis and chapter-lists is nil.
And yet this week I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough and somehow that has had the knock-on result of making the whole week completely exhilarating.
coached in return has been beyond rewarding
It wasn’t the week-four Lifeclass module that did it (though that was, as ever, fascinating – it was all about feelings and what generates them).
What has, as The Lifeclass founder Jacqueline Hurst would say, ‘bust things open’ has been plunging into the practise coaching. I notched up three hour-long sessions, coaching others in the group and being coached in return, and it has been beyond rewarding. Even though we all feel that we haven’t by any means mastered the techniques (and of course we haven’t, we only started this course four weeks ago and it’s a huge learning curve), we have been able to help each other with small but genuine breakthroughs. The changes may be small, but the feeling of achievement is huge.
And then during the weekly group call I volunteered to be coached on something that drives me mad: my three otherwise-entirely-delightful teenagers are appallingly messy. I know what the parenting books say: to leave well alone, because it is their space. That’s all very well, but this mess prompts many cross thoughts: that they have no respect for their possessions, that they expect me to pick up after them, that I’m a bad parent and have taught them nothing about civilized behaviour, if this is how they choose to keep their living-space. Those thoughts make me feel angry, helpless and frustrated and it ends up with me making sporadic tidying raids and cross words being spoken, all of which is unsatisfactory.
Being talked through the coaching process by one of my fellow students was like having teeth pulled. I felt entirely justified in my thoughts and was unwilling to swap them for any others. Yet by the end of it, my coach had prompted me towards the realisation that this was only a problem for me because I was making it matter. Hadn’t I just said that my teens are lovely? Easygoing, well behaved, and fully engaged with family life as well as their studies? Did it really matter that their rooms weren’t tidy? Once I had admitted the truth of this to myself, I found the problem simply shifted itself. I haven’t been on a tidying raid in the six days since then.
Being talked through the coaching process by one of my fellow students was like having teeth pulled.
This might not sound massively exciting to you, but I can’t tell you what a big thing it is for me. And I know what I need to work on in the next practise session. That neglected goal, and that book.
What I’ve learned this week:
- Jump in: Sometimes you just have to take a running jump into the blue and see what happens
- Helping other people helps you: Learning how to help other people with their problems is really exciting
- It is not easy to change your thinking: it is always tempting, and possible, to hang onto the original thoughts, the ones that are causing you stress and pain – but even a small change is a good change.
Jacqueline Hurst is a life and body coach. She believes everything is possible and that all women can become do-ers. Hurst’s new The Life Class is an online life-coaching course that takes you on your own personal journey of self-development and teaches you how to be a life coach in eight weeks. How? By providing you with a sharp, strategic syllabus which uses exceptional tools, techniques and concepts allowing you to truly understand what it means to become a life coach. Expect to gain knowledge, insider information, support and confidence. The Life Class prides itself on its high level of support throughout the course and encourages students to communicate via the Community platform. The Life Class believes that sharing knowledge, ideas and experiences is integral to becoming a great coach. thelifeclass.com | jacquelinehurst.com
Follow Jaqueline on Twitter at @jhurstcoaching.
Alice Hart-Davis is a freelance beauty journalist and the creator of Good Things skincare. She has written a beauty book 100 Ways for Every Girl to Look and Feel Fantastic and blogs on innovation in beauty on her own website. Follow her on Twitter.
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