LIFE COACHING

Hi, Colin here. The concise Oxford Dictionary defines coaching, which is to:

‘tutor, train, give hints to, prime with facts’.

This barely skims the surface of the role of a life coach. Coaching is a way of providing you with all the information and tools that you will need for your success and personal development.

Life coaching supports and encourages you through the process in the same way as a rugby coach or a tennis coach enables you to perform at your optimum before and during the game. More importantly, life coaching is about helping you to commit to your happiness and success and enjoy the process of self-transformation.

Throughout my career I have benefitted from working under many fabulous coaches including:

1. Earle Kirton, one of the most capped All Black No 10’s of all time who I was fortunate to spend four years working with at Harlequins RFC before he eventually became coach of the All Blacks.

2. Rodney Whittaker, a partner at Donaldsons Chartered Surveyors who on one visit to his office with a management problem merely smiled and said “Don’t come to me with the problem unless you you have a list of solutions”.

3. Jeremy Pfeffer, a Consultant Psychiatrist who first convinced me I wasn’t insane considering a career in helping others and secondly gave me some wonderful insights into the world of therapy and psychiatry. The only thing I couldn’t understand about Jeremy was his love of Manchester United.

 

4. Mahasatvaa Ma Ananda Sarita PhD, whom Kerry & I met six years ago. She runs the School of Awakening and holds residential weeks at Croyden Hall in Somerset. Sarita has brough me many wonderful insights, much learning and had me cry with both laughter and pain. She is an enlightened goddess.

4. My wife Kerry who has kept my feet firmly on the ground and after thirty two years of marriage is still my best friend, lover and confidante.

5. The rest of my family and friends, who prod, poke, cajole, pull me down when I am climbing too high and lift me up when I feel too low.

I therefore feel very fortunate to have received the support and guidance of so many wonderful coaches who have also encouraged me to pass on the insights and learning to others.

So how can I help you?

I am mindful of a quote by a Tibetan Buddhist practioner Lama Thubten Yeshe:

“Each one of us in a union of all universal energy. Everything that we need in order to be complete is within us right at this very moment. It is simply a matter of being able to recognise it.”

 

My job as a life coach is to help you to:

• Recognise that you have everything within you to live a fulfilled life

• Live a more balanced life

• Feel confident about who you are and excited about your future

• Set goals and deal effectively with life’s challenges

• Be willing to change

One of my favorite saying is:

‘the difference between nought and one is greater that the difference between one and a million.’

In my rugby playing days I found many excuses not to train but discovered that the hardest part of training was actually taking off my everyday clothes and putting my tracksuit on. Once I had my tracksuit and gear on, I never missed a single training session. It is always the first step that's the hardest. The remaining 999,999 are time consuming but easy.

So as the Nike strapline goes 'just do it'.