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Life and Business Coach

Written by: Stewart Gordan

Article Overview: As a life and business coach, I have something to confess to you. I have been in the industry for over ten years. In the beginning, I was shocked by the things I heard from some of my clients. A wealthy CEO who didn’t see the point of living? How could this man, with more money than he knew what to do with, not love his life? Money, I quickly learned, was not the be all and end all I had grown up thinking it was. But nothing saddened me more than hearing businesspeople – however wealthy they might have been – compare themselves to others who they thought were more successful than them.

Life and Business Coach

As a life and business coach, I have something to confess to you. I have been in the industry for over ten years. In the beginning, I was shocked by the things I heard from some of my clients. A wealthy CEO who didn’t see the point of living? How could this man, with more money than he knew what to do with, not love his life? Money, I quickly learned, was not the be all and end all I had grown up thinking it was. But nothing saddened me more than hearing businesspeople – however wealthy they might have been – compare themselves to others who they thought were more successful than them.

As a teenager, I drove a Ford pickup truck. It was a hand-me-down from my father. When I first got it, I loved it more than anything else I owned. I drove it around town even when I had nowhere to go. I loved it so much I even started offering to do my mother’s errands for her just so I could go out and drive my new truck. It was my pride and joy. That is, until my best friend bought a Corvette.

Ok, so Corvettes nowadays might not be what the cool kids are driving. But at the time, it was all I could do not to want to switch cars with my friend. My pickup truck drove just fine and I seemed to have lots of friends even though I didn’t have the coolest car on the block. The problem was all in my mind.

That, however, was when I was a boy. I have since grown up and learned that comparing myself to others not only does little good, but can actually do harm to myself. As a life and business coach, one of the number one complaints I hear is that my client is not as happy or not as wealthy or not as successful as so-and-so. My response? So what?

When you compare yourselves to other people, you are not only putting yourself down and being unnecessarily hard on yourself, but you’re stopping yourself from becoming the person you actually want to be, from achieving the goals you criticize others for having achieved.

Think about it: how much time do you spend each week thinking about all the things that you don’t have, all the things you wish you had, and all of the people who have what you do not. Think about all that time wasted. You could instead be using that time to actually go out and achieve those things!

As a life and business coach, I’m not easy on people. I don’t tell my clients to be happy with what they have and don’t worry about the rest. I encourage people to be hard on themselves, to push themselves to their limits and achieve their dreams. But you can’t push yourself forward if you’re too busy putting other people down. Focus on yourself and the life you want and let others do the same.

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Article Tags: business coach, business coach, Ford pickup truck, pickup truck



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