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7 Killer Life Coaching Tips

Guest post by: Tim Brownson

Article Overview: 7 life coaching tips that if you adopt and maintain will improve the quality of your life exponentially.

7 Killer Life Coaching Tips

As a Life Coach I regularly get asked if I could offer just on piece of self-development advice, what would it be. The honest and rather obvious answer is there isn’t just one because if there were then life coaches wouldn’t exist and I’d probably be sleeping under a cardboard box somewhere.

However, I have trawled the nether regions of my mind to see if I could get it down to 7 and these are the ones I cam up with. If you adopt these 7 life coaching tips in your life I promise you they will make a huge beneficial impact.

1. You’re #1

Here’s a shocking start to kick things off with.

You’re the most important person in the world to you.

That’s right, it’s not your kids, your parents or even The Pope, it is you! Without you, everything else in your reality ceases to exist. So be kind to yourself, ALWAYS. You’re doing the best you can with the information you have to hand. You mess up, you make mistakes and you make stupid decisions, we all do.

Treat yourself with the kind of respect you would like from others at all times. If you don’t like other people hurling abuse or disrespecting you, don’t do it to yourself.. ever!

2. Mind Your Language

You communicate internally primarily through the pictures you make and the conversations (often at an unconscious level) you have with yourself. I know that because it’s what we all do. The language you use is absolutely critical in determining how you feel about your life.

Words and phrases like ‘Have to’, ‘Must do’ Got to’ ‘Need to’ and ‘Should’ are seldom useful. They stifle choice, make you feel bad and ultimately lower self-esteem if you then don’t follow through and do whatever it is you say you simply ‘have to do’.

Replace them with “Want to” Would like to’ and ‘Love to’ to change your perception. It may feel weird at first, but in time you’ll see a huge benefit. After all, saying “I need another piece of cake’ is rarely accurate in my experience.

3. Value Your Values

Do you know what your values are? In almost 6 years of life coaching I have NEVER had a client know what his or her core values were.

If you don’t, you don’t know yourself and you don’t truly know what motivates and drives you. Get to know your values because they dictate everything in your life and I do mean everything. They are at the core of your identity and dictate what job you do, who your friends are, what you like in a partner, whether you are a Church goer or not and even whether you like 24.

Ask yourself, “What is important to me?” then when you get an answer ask, “What does that give me?” Then ask it again and again and again. Eventually you will get stuck on a handful of words. THEY are your values.

4. Don’t Always Believe in Your Beliefs

Beliefs are opinions and nothing more. Ok, I suppose they can be facts too, but more often than not they aren’t. If you have a belief that you aren’t good enough, old enough, wealthy enough, attractive enough or clever enough, you want to lose it and lose it fast.

Beliefs like that will only hold you back and they want to be undermined on a regular basis. Look for contrary evidence and cast doubt and lots of it on that belief. You are good enough, as long as you believe you are.

5. Ask Better Questions

“Why am I such a loser?” is not a great question, trust me. “What can I do differently next time?” is though.

Drop the ‘why’s ’ that push you into defense mode and ask more ‘hows’, ‘who’s’ and ‘what’s’. “How can I improve?” “What can I learn from this?” “Who can help me?”



6. Not Yet

Never ever tell yourself you cannot do something if it’s something you’d like to achieve. If you want to lose weight but haven’t been able to, saying “I can’t lose weight” will make things worse.

It sends a signal to the unconscious that it’s a done deal and nothing can be done to change things because it is a statement of fact (even if it really isn’t one).

By using the ‘yet’ word you change the context and the emotion of the language. “I can’t lose weight” is a whole different ball game to “I haven’t managed to lose weight yet” The latter does two things. It pushes the problem into the past where it belongs and presupposes that things can and will change in the future.

7. Reframe It!

This is possibly the single most important skill you can use in changing your subjective experience, and one that the vast majority of highly successful people are good at.

Take a negative belief, situation, conversation etc and try and look at it from another point of view. Come up with as many positive scenarios as possible and don’t give up until you get at least one new perspective that makes you feel better about it.

The scenarios can be global i.e. by thinking "Oh well at least this is giving me some valuable experience" or they can be more local and specific when you look at just that particular event such as "Ok so the dog just threw up on the carpet, at least it's not a new one, or that gives me an opportunity to buy a new one etc.”

People sometimes tell me this is unrealistic and I laugh in their face, metaphorically speaking of course. Who cares about realism if you feel better? Isn’t life about feeling good and empowered? I know mine is.

You can reframe pretty much anything when you get good at it. Simply ask yourself the question “What else can this mean?

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Article Tags: beliefs, life coach, life coaching, reframing, values



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