The Life Coach Workbook: Teach Yourself

Jeremy Raymond

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473600393
• eBook ISBN: 9781473600416
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Miglioramento personale

Are you at a crossroads in life?
Do you want to make a career change or other transformation?
Would you like lasting strategies to help you set achievable goals and targets?
This workbook uses a holistic and whole-life approach to life coaching along with self-assessment and interactive tasks to help you set and achieve new goals. It doesn't just tell you how to change your life; by using diagnostic tests, practical exercises, and thought challenges, it will show you how to identify the areas of your life which are making you feel less than satisfied, and achievable plans for change. The contents help you identify your own life-coaching needs, allowing you to pick a path through the book that works for you, while giving you practical support for managing change and long-term planning for a happier future.

In which a meeting occurs

In this chapter you will:

• consider what a better life might look like for you

• think about your preliminary goals for life coaching

• assess how you feel about setting yourself goals.

‘Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is aiming for, no wind is the right wind.’

Seneca, Roman philosopher and statesman (4 BCE–65 CE)

Why have you picked out this book? Perhaps you have decided that you need some support to be able to make some of the many choices which life throws at us. Perhaps you have to make a difficult decision about achieving a balance of work and time for others in your life. Perhaps you feel undervalued at work or at home. Or perhaps you are just curious, wondering whether, somehow, you are missing out.

The popularity of list-titled books (such as One Thousand Places to Visit before You Die) suggests that many people want suggestions for a fuller life. On average, we will each be on this planet for about 30,000 days and, at some points in our lives, we will inevitably consider whether we are spending our allotted share as well as we could. Such desires and notions come into sharper focus at times in our lives where we feel particularly challenged. These transitional moments may not always be of our making – an illness, a birth or death in the family, for example – but they provoke us to ‘think again’ and review the pattern of our life. Often, it is the whisper of our own death, however it appears, which energizes us to become more proactive and to reconsider our assumptions, the way we are living and our future.

The following exercise will help you in your journey towards making your ‘good life’.

Exercise 2

LIVING A GOOD LIFE

Imagine you have just walked into your chosen life coach’s office. Why have you come? What are you looking for?

You can begin to answer these questions by creating a list of the seven things by which you would know you were living a good life. Write your list here:

Which of these are currently present in your life and which are missing? Consider what might have to change for those that are missing to be present. Write them in the spaces below.

When your life coach asks you why you have come, you can build on these initial thoughts and frame the help you need as a series of ‘How tos’:

How to… _____________________________________________

How to… _____________________________________________

How to… _____________________________________________

How to… _____________________________________________

How to… _____________________________________________

Compared to our grandparents’ generation, we have all become used to the idea that we have choices – advertising has seen to that – and we want to exercise them as well as we can. But choice can seem bewildering and fraught with risk. Social structures in the past restricted this idea of limitless options: geographically constrained communities, religious observance and the extended family. Today, about 30 per cent of people live on their own in the UK and the US and this proportion is growing all over the developed world. In the last 15 years alone this figure has increased by 80 per cent, a staggering change, linked to the urbanization of life in general. It is possibly harder to make decisions when the choices are diverse and we are more often on our own.

To many of us, a life without any challenge might not really feel like living at all. We need to experience difficulties and adversity in framing our thinking about ourselves as we try to achieve our goals. Whether you view your current situation as a spur to improvement or a crisis will depend on the severity of...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents 
• How to use this book
• Introduction
• 1 What is motivation?
• 2 In which the hero reflects on the past
• 3 In which the hero is weighed in the balance
• 4 In which the hero stands at a crossroads
• 5 In which the hero is invited to take part in an adventure
• 6 In which the hero is challenged by the world
• 7 In which the hero is subjected to the trials of work
• 8 In which the hero’s strengths and beliefs are tested
• 9 In which the hero has to rely on others
• 10 In which the hero returns and a plan is created
• 11 In which the hero fights a great battle
• 12 In which the hero reflects on how life has changed
• References and resources
• Copyright