Lessons From a Health Coach?

 When I became a health coach, no one knew what it meant. Now, eight years later, many of us will have heard of them but it still brings a lot of confusion as to what it really means and what a health coach can offer you.

Health coaches help you with any difficulty in your life – whether it be your mental health, your career or your relationships – and try to get you back on track. As a generalization, health coaches tend to focus more on your future whereas traditional psychology tends to focus on your past. A psychologist or therapist may ask ‘how do you feel about that?’ whilst a life coach will ask ‘how do you want to feel instead?’.

Do you feel that you want to make changes, that you’re stuck in a rut or forever going round on a hamster wheel? Here are my secrets for moving forwards towards the life you want…

1. Feel your feelings

One of the best places to start is to understand your emotions. Health coaches tend to term emotions as ‘energy-in-motion’ and believe that emotions are physical energy that sits within your body. This may be you feeling sadness in your heart or anger in your throat. To pinpoint how you are feeling, find time when you are alone and locate those emotions in your physical body. Put your attention on that emotion. You may want to breathe into it to release the emotion or you might want to have a conversation with that emotion, asking it what it is trying to tell you.

The reason people don’t tend to feel their emotions is because when you put your focus on it, the sensation will intensify and sometimes can get more painful. Sit through it, and keep breathing. After it gets more intense, it will release. Emotions are designed to be temporary – the only reason they stick around longer than they should is that we don’t have the courage to process them completely.

2. Create some time alone

Most people have such full social calendars that the idea of alone time is a luxury. Alone time can be so important for building a relationship with ourselves and finding time to wind down. Being able to enjoy your own company is such a life skill and since you can’t get away from yourself, it’s worth investing time in yourself.

Alone time rarely happens by accident, mainly because alone time brings up our noisy thoughts and uncomfortable feelings – so unless you create the time for it, it won’t happen by itself. One way to do this is before automatically saying ‘yes’ because you have an empty space in the diary, actually ask yourself whether you want to go. You don’t have to say yes simply because you don’t have other plans. We need to validate that alone time is as important as social time.

3. Build a relationship with your inner child

We all have an inner child within us and that inner child has wounds from moments that happened in childhood that haven’t been healed. If you have ever found yourself having an intense amount of emotion suddenly, often some of that emotion will be due to the past. It would have pressed on an old wound. One saying used in health coaching a lot is ‘if it’s hysterical, it’s historical’.

For example, if you are rejected for a job, some of the rejection will be about the present situation, but some could also be from childhood – perhaps when a parent rejected your bid for attention. Going back to that child at that age in your mind and comforting them and telling them what they need to hear is a good way to learn how to distinguish between what’s coming from the present situation and what’s coming from the past.

4. Figure out your values

Life can be overwhelming and if you try to focus on all areas of your life at the same time, you will find it difficult to make any progress. This is why it’s important to figure out what your values are – both the values within your life but also the values within each sector of your life.

If you were to divide your life into a pie chart, it might include relationships, social life, career, joy, spirituality, creativity, health, physical activity, education and finances. Within each of these areas, your goals will differ. Once you elicit your values, you will find making decisions a lot easier because you can look at your values and see if the choice you are about to make aligns.

5. Focus on what you can control

Where we put our attention is really important. When we focus on what we can’t control, we are left feeling powerless and helpless. As a result, we can become apathetic because it all seems too much.

Instead, when you are faced with a difficult task or problem, separate out what you can do about the situation and what you can’t and let the latter go. If the only thing you can control is what you think about, then do that. Instead of forcing your brain to stop thinking about it, give your brain a new task to do like visualizing an event you’re planning, or even something mundane like emptying the dishwasher.

6. Set boundaries

Having boundaries is essential to allocate your time and energy effectively. If we live our lives putting everyone else first, it’s no wonder we are burnt out and exhausted. The best place to start is by using the word ‘no’ more often.

‘No’ is the first boundary we ever learn and if we don’t learn to use it appropriately, then our ‘yes’ has no power as well. If we are so busy living our lives for everyone else and not setting our boundaries, we end up living in resentment and anger. These emotions are signs our boundaries are being crossed and therefore, in order to do something about it, we need to understand that our needs should be a higher priority than anyone else’s opinions.

7. Ask instead of assuming

One of the guiding principles when it comes to relationships or communication in general is to ask instead of assuming. This is especially important during moments of conflict. When we have an incomplete story in our mind, our brains feel unsettled and therefore work overtime to fill in the gap.

Unfortunately, the story we make up is often a story designed to hurt ourselves. Remember that if you have chosen to be in a relationship with someone, they are owed a little benefit of the doubt to hear their side of the story. So instead of assuming the worst, ask a question.

For example, if a friend has not been in touch for a while, instead of assuming they don’t care about you or that they are angry with you, instead ask if they are OK. You never know what’s going on in someone else’s life and it’s important that we remember that other people’s lives don’t revolve around us.

8. Doing the same thing won’t result in change

As humans, we tend to repeat patterns – it’s in our nature. But to keep repeating the same cycle and expecting a different outcome is unrealistic, therefore if you find yourself in a rut try something different. Perhaps you are forever moaning about the same romantic partner who keeps entering and exiting your life. Your friends may have grown tired of hearing about it and the more you talk about it, the more you give yourself the illusion that you are doing something proactive. You aren’t.

Make a decision that is different to the previous times. That could be deleting their number to set a boundary, or it could be giving it a chance but no longer complaining about it. When we make decisions about our life, we need to stand behind those decisions. One of the greatest moments in anyone’s life is when they get bored of their own nonsense and decide to do something different.

9. Start single tasking

With so many areas of life requiring our attention, it’s understandable that we have become a multi-tasking society, but what isn’t discussed is how multi-tasking makes us perform worse and take longer to complete things. Without the ability to concentrate on one thing at a time, our brains really struggle to keep up. Research has shown that multitasking is not efficient or productive and we waste a lot of time switching tasks.

Have you ever tried doing your work while also checking your emails? Your work never gets done. Instead, set an allocated time for email checking, even if it is two or three times a day. In between, reserve those chunks of time so that you can slow down and the work you want to get done actually gets your full focus.

10. Do it scared

If you wait your whole life to be ready, you will never get started. Many of us don’t like uncertainty, but there is always an element of that in life. We aren’t taught how to handle our emotions, but we’re also not taught that our emotions don’t need to control us. Our emotions can exist, we can validate them and comfort them, but we can also use our conscious minds to make a decision to do what we really want to do – even if it’s scary at first.

Press Pause

When we take time out to do inner work, we can really move forwards into a happier, healthier relationship with ourselves and those around us, as well as enjoy a calmer life.

Try this quick activity. Make a list of your values – do they include affection, fun, excitement, power, strength, or emotional awareness? Taking one area of your life – such as family life, for example ask yourself the question ‘what do I value in this area of my life?’. Write down as many values as you can think of and then when you have a collection of at least 20 values, start ranking them.

Find your top eight values and this will illuminate why you make the decisions that you do and help you to make the right decisions going forward.