I often think how amazing Life Coaching can be. Solid, liberating and life enhancing results can be achieved with this relatively simple process of discovery.
As an example, my experience with Post-Graduate students at the Royal College of Arts in Kensington shows how Life Coaching brought about real tangible results.
My sessions with these clients were full of hope, ideas, determination, fear, worries, uncertainty, doubt, courage, hesitancy, tears and smiles.
Over a period of 6 sessions, the effectiveness of my Life-Coaching was that my clients began to change the way they looked at their big picture. Coaching enabled them to understand and define what each challenge, goals and dreams truly meant to them. Then to place each of these on their priority scale of importance and of timings, to detail how each topic in reality slotted into their grand scheme of life.
The space created by Life-Coaching allowed the unpacking of the drive, the inspirations, the ambitions (short and long term), the visions, the difficulties, frustrations and in some cases real unhappiness. For my clients, these different emotions were creating intellectual and practical conflicts. For example, each course project (typically 2 a year) had a loosely defined set of requirements and expectations laid out by the course curriculum. Then, as it often turned out, my clients would augment these parameters to create a larger and more ambitious project, “the best”. The open-ended nature of this caused the conflict, the overwhelm.
The goal now defined by the sum of these conflicting requirements of quality was much more stringent than actually necessary for the purposes of the project and for the purpose of the MA; this “Ahaa!” moment released this stress and once realised and defined it could then be managed; this awareness could also bring up a realisation that the mix included an exaggerated version of a parent’s expectations of greatness.
The drive as an artist to produce the “perfect” piece of art, or the best project as if it was the last one ever, could now be put in perspective. The reality was that the College did not expect a perfect piece of art because actually, students are on a learning path of discovery and not yet masters of the art or skill or particular field, if that is even ever achieved in one life-time.
Perfection as an ambition, a powerful driver and energy is of course legitimate but it needed to be placed in the context of managing a variety of goals, projects etc spread over a combination of scholastic, social, family and in some cases professional timetables. Life-Coaching calmed the frenetic, used the creative energy to fully understand each stage, what was needed for them and all the steps to get there.
The result was a planned-out future for the immediate purpose of these clients who instead of living in a blur with a fuzzy future, were able to go on and plan and complete coherent, achievable and successful degree projects.
As an example of Life-Coaching, many aspects of this experience were particular to the context the sessions took place in, in a learning institution but Life-Coaching in other contexts is equally as effective and well worth the investment. The learning from being coached can be used repeatedly at times of career dilemmas or to deal with a general wish to change a current state of affairs; changing the status-quo in one’s life comes around repeatedly and Life-Coaching helps to bring about the change.
Credits to the Student Support Team at the RCA and of course my clients for giving me the opportunity to coach them. Also thanks to The Coaching Academy with whom I trained to become a life-coach.
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