This past week I began my life coaching class. While the classes were great, the life coaching style is a little different than I expected it to be. The purpose of a life coach is to help someone do the hard work for themselves opposed to giving them guidance, offering your opinion and sharing past experiences. You as a coach are tasked to ask the client questions in order for them to see for themselves the answers lie within them. This task is quite challenging as we’re encouraged not to “lead the witness”. We Are also encouraged to listen to understand opposed to listen to help, provide a solution or judge. It’s been quite a bit of learning already, but I’m embracing the experience.
The amazing part of the class is going through the work and answering many questions about your own life. By learning the material, I was able to clearly identify my strengths and opportunity areas. The two opportunity areas I identified for myself were perfectionism and fun/play. I’ll start with perfectionism. I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but after the third day of class I couldn’t deny it. I was bothered I hadn’t picked up on the concepts right away. Not being able to learn the skills to coaching very quickly, caused some anxiety and frustration. Once I moved into that space, I began to wonder “Is this really for me? Is it ever going to click?” I was simply putting myself into a negative mindset. The instructors told us on the first day, to give ourselves the permission to be messy, make mistakes, etc. And here I was doing the exact opposite. That’s when I noticed a clear pattern in my life that had been there for a while. I can remember being 15 years old, taking Driver’s Ed class. It took me some time to pick up on the skill of driving. I can remember worrying and asking myself how I was going to drive my kids to their basketball games. I was only 15! I didn’t even have any kids! How did I even know they would play basketball? Sigh…Lord help me:)
During these moments, I proceed to have a pity party for myself. Thankfully, it normally doesn’t last more than 24 hours, but still. I’m 40, I’ve got to learn this about myself and try to make some corrections. I’ve told myself, “Now that I’ve moved to the stage of life where my child out of the home, I’m going to try new things”! Guess what ? I won’t be able to pick up on everything quickly or accomplish goals in a day, so I need to learn to be at peace with not knowing and embrace the process.
The second thing I need to work on is incorporating more time for fun and play. During the quarantine, I made a vision board of the goals I’d like to accomplish within the next 3-5 years. I’m very dedicated to making these visions a reality, however, I’ve been so focused on completing the goals, that I often am missing out on the fun things of life. Setting a deadline to reach my goals is great, but there’s more to life than my to-do list. I truly believe God wants all of us to enjoy the life he gave us, not just work, work, work! Work is good, but it’s all about balance. There’s a time for everything. Ecclesiastes 3 talks about this. Verse one of the chapter 3 says, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven”. Therefore, I am making it a point to make time for the fun things of life along with spending more time with others in developing deeper relationships. Life is too short to simply be focusing solely on completing goals. I’m now excited about all the other things I thought of doing that I consider to be fun!
Taking this life coaching class has really been phenomenal for me. I’m stretching myself and continually becoming the person I was designed to be, which brings me to my last point and the key to the life coaching core questions which are:
- Who I was in the past?
- Who am I today?
- Who am I becoming?
These are powerful questions we should be asking ourselves at least a couple of times a year. My challenge for you today is to answer these questions for yourself. I’d ask you to be honest and answer truthfully. My hope is for you all to continue to grow, enjoy life and live out your purpose in Christ.
Have a great week everyone!
~Felicia
Happiness in the Truth 