The life coaching handbook curly martin pdf free download

Life coaching helps clients in every aspect of their lives. This includes business, career, health, social relationships, wealth and worth in contribution. When clients overachieve at work but underachieve in personal relationships, the negative effects of their personal relationships can adversely affect their performance at work. When clients exceed in business success, but ignore their health, they can develop ulcers or serious illnesses.

In the cyclical pattern of life, this means that they must take time away from the business and the business may suffer as a consequence. The life coach can advantageously use this effect when persuading high achievers to look to their health and the contribution areas of their lives. Conversely, if clients focus on their physical body to the extent that they miss or skip work in order to maintain the body beautiful, they may end up with financial problems.

Financial problems will cause them to worry and lose sleep. Life is wonderfully cyclical, which gives the life coach great areas of persuasion when finding compelling reasons for clients to follow through on actions that will lead to achievement of goals in all areas of their lives. Bringing balance and achievement into the lives of their clients produces rewards for the life coach, too. Life coaching is a relationship of interdependency between coach and client.

The business consultant defines problems, provides answers and helps to implement them within the business environment. It is your job as the life coach to help to identify the interference and remove it. It has nothing to do with giving advice or imposing knowledge on your clients. Life coaching is about removing the obstructions and not adding any new ones. Believe that your clients have all the resources they need to solve their own problems and that it is your job to help them remove the obstacles that prevent this happening.

It is your job as a life coach to help your client to identify the interference and remove it. Life coaching has absolutely nothing to do with giving advice, and this can be tough on you when you know the answer.

And, more often than not, you will know the answer. Your strength lies in allowing your clients to find the answers for themselves. This is good news for coaches because giving advice is not as easy as it seems.

The advice-giving route carries huge responsibilities. If you think you always have to supply an answer, you will become very stressed and burdened with unnecessary troubles. To ensure that you grasp the importance of this point, let me repeat: coaching is not about advising your clients. Many of the most outstanding coaches have little or no knowledge or experience in the areas where they coach their clients. Limiting beliefs are a main component of interference and are covered in Chapter Four.

Also, coaching is not about imposing knowledge or information on your clients. You must master your desire to tell your clients how they should do something. An outstanding coach elicits the answers from the clients as they guide them towards self-discovery. This may sound strange but, if you truly believe that your clients have all the resources they need, then all you have to do is to help them find the best pathway to successful results.

Your clients will always be more committed to ideas and plans that they propose for themselves. So life coaching is simple. All you have to do is to remove the obstructions without adding new ones as you concentrate on helping your clients to gain balance in all areas of their lives.

The obstructions are different for every client and also for every coach. It is these differences that make coaching such fun and such a challenge. An obstruction is anything that prevents your clients from achieving their potential for greatness. Chapter Four deals solely with matters of belief. Here are some common types of obstructions that you will encounter while coaching. No clear vision or mission. Successful coaching relies on your clients determining exactly what they want to achieve in your coaching sessions or in their life.

Outcomes obscured. Some clients may come to you with several goals or outcomes. If they do not sound committed to achieving one of the outcomes it is possible that it belongs to their partner or another family member and is not their own. You must help your clients identify what they want and how they will personally gain once their own outcomes are achieved.

Self last. My definition of selfless is less for the self. These clients are martyrs. You will have to work hard on reframing. Ask how their entire family will benefit when your client is healthy, wealthy, happy and whole. Giving precious time to develop and attain health and wealth goals to secure the future for the whole family is true selflessness.

Age barriers. Some clients say they would like to do something and then immediately dismiss the goal because of age.

They feel too old or too young to start. You need to understand that. Even so, they do still have dreams and goals. It is your job to encourage your clients to realise their dreams. Start by considering the more easily achieved objectives that they may attempt. Your intention is to get them weaned on success and ultimately hooked so that they continue to work on their original dream.

Today, as I write this chapter, a year-old man is running in the London Marathon. Financial problems. Clients may come to you for help in solving their financial problems. You must make it absolutely clear that you are not a financial adviser and that any action agreed between you and your clients is done without obligation or liability.

Ask your client to spend time identifying their outgoings and income without prejudice. The next step is for them to consult a qualified financial adviser.

Explain that you will be there to help them once they have clear actions, set by their financial adviser. Do not offer financial advice or recommend ways of solving their financial crisis or you could be leaving yourself open to risk of prosecution. A pioneer in the application of mindfulness. I realised that services for children were overwhelmed and did not have the capacity, reso urces and mechanisms to assist us adequately through the trauma.

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Cancel anytime. Start your free 30 days Play sample. Released: Sep 20, ISBN: Format: Audiobook. Also available as This complete guide to life coaching reveals what life coaching IS, how to coach yourself and others effectively and how to create and sustain a successful coaching practice.

Leading you through a comprehensive programme of Advanced Life Coaching Skill The Life Coaching Handbook is the essential guide for life coaches, and a key sourcebook for NLP practitioners, human resources managers, training professionals, counsellors and the curious.

Coaching for more than twenty years, her clients include celebrities, CEOs, directors and doctors. About the author CM. Read more. Unlock Your Potential. Redefine Your Life. Related Podcast Episodes. How to Navigate Personal Paradigm Shifts in Flow with Stephanie Benedetto Padovani and Natalie Ross [episode ]: Stephanie Benedetto Padovani is a transformational business coach who works with entrepreneurs, teachers, and experts to light the world on fire with the power of resonant business.

Comments and reviews What are comments? Gandbook a lot of different ideas and suggestions. The Happiness Trap Russ Harris. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. I would consider this a beginners life coaching handbook however, but there are a lot of different ideas in it one can implement. Learn more about Amazon Prime. To download from the iTunes Store, get iTunes now. Words that Change Minds.

Please try again later. The how-to book for coaches wanting to build a successful 7-figure business. The therapist can then continue looking towards the past with the life coach dealing with the present and the future. Life coaching has absolutely no connections with psychiatry. Should a life coach suspect that a client might have a need for such specialist attention, they should not attempt a diagnosis.

They should firmly and gently tell the client to consult their doctor, who is trained to diagnose a problem and to recommend psychiatry or other treatment. NLP includes some very useful techniques for life coaching. The NLP section of this book identifies these, with the emphasis on the linguistic aspects. It also covers some of the neurological features 19 The Life Coaching Handbook the life coach can use. It deliberately excludes therapeutic interventions.

Life coaching is not about interventions. It is about goal setting and achievement. There are currently no formally recognised professional qualifications for life coaching. There are several good organisations that offer training leading to their own qualifications in life coaching. Training is delivered at day or residential courses, distance learning via the Internet or, in some instances, a combination of both. It is important for all life coaches to obtain some form of qualification, which clients can check and verify if they are so minded.

All coaches should advocate the importance of thorough training and qualifications and the adherence to a stringent code of ethics to protect the reputation of this still young, but fast growing, profession. This understanding ensures that we perform at our best and elicit the best performances from our clients.

Without this understanding you can waste precious time working on areas that are controlled by a client's fundamental belief. Use the "selftalk interrupt" process to help your clients. Using role models needs good questioning skills to determine the client's underlying beliefs.

Recommend a therapist for significant belief changes and concentrate on coaching. It is essential for every life coach to understand how beliefs are formed and the impact that they have on clients and coaches alike. This understanding will ensure that you perform at your best and elicit the best results from your clients. Without this understanding, you will waste precious time on areas that are controlled by a fundamental client belief. Your beliefs were being formed from the moment you entered this world.

People smiled or shouted at you when you were a baby. These, and all your subsequent interactions with other humans, formed the person that you are today. You have created, and continue to create, an image of yourself that is based on the attitudes of other people. It is an image that can either help or hinder the development of your potential and it changes with circumstances and situations.

At the beginning of your life, "experts" evaluated everything that you did. You accepted and recorded their opinions as the truth. Now that you are grown up you can evaluate whether these well-meaning souls really were experts concerning your abilities.

You can decide whether they added to or limited your development. They probably did both. You now operate within the limits of your self-image and it becomes real for you. Eventually it becomes your comfort zone, where you feel safe, secure and protected.

A comfort zone can be a negative place. You can feel safe and secure in prison but you would surely not want to stay incarcerated for ever. Many people, perhaps you too, choose to stay in the prison of selfimage, self-beliefs and self-talk. In the British penal system the authorities will release you as soon as you have served your sentence. All that it takes to escape from your mentally created prison is your decision to change.

As soon as you decide to change, you have the freedom to choose and to enjoy empowering beliefs and behaviours. The process is the same for your clients. They have their own imagined prisons and it is your job to provide the key that allows them to open the door and enjoy freedom. Remaining within an imagined prison - to retain beliefs and to repeat behaviours while expecting a different outcome - can be compared to a trapped wasp.

It will continue to fly into the windowpane, time and time again until it dies. It never looks for alternative escape routes. It just keeps flying at the glass. Performing the same task in the same way and expecting different results has been offered as a definition of madness.

With total self-honesty, you may admit that you have probably done just this and you are still getting the same results. Your self-image is an accumulation of every attitude and opinion that you have been told about yourself since birth.

You have perpetuated and reinforced this by repetition until, eventually, it has formed the subconscious picture of your self-image. This has become who you believe that you are, it determines how you respond to life and what you believe you are capable of doing.

It has become your comfort zone. It could even be full of pain, poverty and drudgery. People remain in these situations because their self-image and belief systems support them there. They feel secure and comfortable in the knowledge that this is what they deserve or are worthy of. You are within a closed loop. Your self-image is created by your belief system what you believe to be true about yourself. You build and nourish these beliefs and feel comfortable with them. They become who you believe you are.

You know and trust them because you can prove that they are right and, therefore, they must be true. Think of a belief as an empty suitcase. Once you have a suitcase you can find clothes to pack into it. Everything that has been said to you, about you, becomes a piece of clothing.

Everything that has been done to you becomes another piece of clothing - a reference for you to put into the suitcase. All the references that you can find in your life become the clothes to pack.

Soon, you have a very strong and very full suitcase. The more clothes references that you cram into the suitcase belief , the more certain you become about your belief life. More references equal stronger beliefs, which you continue to nurture because they make you sure about who you are. Your beliefs can be changed.

Your clients' beliefs can be changed. You can start right now to change any limiting or disabling beliefs that are holding you back from becoming who you were created to be. The following practical, simple exercise will allow you to prove this for yourself. Do it now. For example, you may believe, "I am too old," "I am too young," "I don't have a university degree," "I am too fat.

Think of these in the context of situations that make you feel helpless, unsure, inadequate, lacking in confidence. Now select just one of these limiting beliefs. Find all the references that support it the clothes in your suitcase. Find as many references as you can and list them all. Here is where the fun begins. This should be the opposite view. For example, if you had the limiting belief that, "I am bad at remembering names," just decide that, from now on, your belief will be, "I am good at remembering names.

This constant repetition will enhance your self-image and will break into the closed loop of your belief systems. It may have taken you all your life to acquire your old, limiting belief. So be prepared for it to take some time for the new liberating belief to cut in. You may need to repeat this sentence frequently and even repeat the whole process. Whenever you find yourself thinking your old belief, repeat your new positive version to yourself.

Your positive sentences must contain three essential components. Make them personal by using the word "I. They do not need to be true just yet - they are statements that you would like to be true about you and that could become true. As before, you must use the present tense, as if they were already true. Use these statements to replace the equivalent, old, limiting belief. Add the references to support these new, positive and empowering beliefs. Create a mental image of yourself actually doing and enjoying this new behaviour.

This will gradually create your new self-image. This is the new vision of how you really are. The next time that you find yourself behaving in the old limiting way, or even thinking in that way, you must stop that voice in your head and replace it immediately with your new sentence - even if it is not yet true.

What you are doing here is recognising the old pattern, interrupting and breaking it, and then replacing it with your empowering belief. This is called the "self-talk interrupt" process. Replace it with your new sentence even if it is not yet true. See, feel and experience the rewards of your new belief. Enjoy these rewards as if you already had them. You really do have a choice. You can give up and carryon reinforcing your old limiting beliefs or you can play your new, empowering sentence and work on changing your beliefs.

Find something that you already do well and praise yourself for that skill. Then build on that praise by adding your new sentence. Concentrate on repeating the new belief about yourself. You choose to believe your own beliefs, therefore you can choose to change them. The motivational speaker Anthony Robbins of Robbins Research International says, "It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

Here is a very powerful and easy way to change old habits and beliefs. Think of a person whom you consider to be very skilful in what it is that you want to be able to do. Now model that person. Stand in front of a mirror in private and mimic the ways they hold their body, talk, laugh, breathe, move and anything else you can think of.

Consider how they get what they want, how they stand, sit, walk, gesticulate. Think about what they do that you currently do not do. Then ask this question, "What would I need to believe in order to behave in this same way? Use this technique to help you to develop yourself and your clients. When your clients name a person they wish to emulate, you must examine the underlying reasons behind their choice of this model.

What is the skill that they wish to acquire and does the model have it in abundance? Is it truly the skill that they desire or simply their model's lifestyle? Ask them to think of others who have the desired skill, as this opens up their possibilities and allows them really to explore their desire for it.

The crucial question that must always be answered is, "What does the model have to believe in order to have success in that skill?

Once you believe in the success of a technique you 26 Essential Coaching Beliefs are able to make it available to your client with sincerity and assurances that it really is effective. Some of your clients may have attended personal development courses or seminars and will have heard about limiting beliefs. When this happens you can simply weave belief-changing suggestions into your normal coaching sessions. Clients who have no prior knowledge will need to be very carefully guided through the whole subject of belief changing, as it can be difficult to grasp when it is first heard.

You may wish to write out the belief-changing exercise and ask such clients to complete it for discussion at a later session. A more beneficial approach would be to suggest that your client consult an NLP practitioner or therapist for help in belief changing.

Remember that you are employed as a coach, not as a therapist. You must not confuse the boundaries, because this will weaken your coaching sessions and damage your reputation as an outstanding results-oriented life coach.

Remember that coaching is only about results. Good listening supplies the building blocks of good understanding. Open questions encourage clients to think positively for themselves and to give an original, genuine answer. Restrict your use of closed questions to times when you have facts and details to check. An open question is often more useful. The ability to listen to, observe and interpret all forms of language is essential for life coaching. Several different studies on how we communicate show that, if both people are totally congruent at the time of communicating, some 55 per cent of their communication will be by body language, approximately 38 per cent will be based on tonality of voice and only 7 per cent will derive from the words themselves.

However, when you are coaching, it is important to make sure that your words, body language and tonality are congruent. Congruency means that they are all aligned and sending the same message. This means that, if you say yes when your head is moving from side to side, even the slightest movement will be interpreted from your body language as meaning no. We have all experienced conversations where we have come away thinking, "I'm not so sure that they meant what they said.

It is also important that you maintain eye contact when you are talking to your clients, as this is a natural expression of your interest in their message. Avoid closing your eyes in conversation as this breaks the eye contact and distracts the client's attention.

It may even cause them to think that you are not to be trusted. Similarly, if you consistently look away while either of you is speaking, the client may interpret, rightly or wrongly, that you are shifty, deceitful, untrustworthy or just plain rude.

Your body language tells your clients what you are thinking about them and you must send a message of openness, honesty and trust. This can be achieved only by open body language, with your arms either open and relaxed at your side or resting comfortably on your lap. Do not cross your arms or legs during a conversation with a client. They could interpret this posture as meaning that you are not interested in what they have to say or that you feel insecure and nonassertive.

No client will feel reassured or confident with your coaching abilities when they have these thoughts. Remember, you have no control over how your client interprets your body language. If your practice is in an area with a high proportion and mix of eth- nic residents, you should undertake some personal research on 30 Essential Communication Skills any particular body-language gestures that are especially respectful, acceptable or downright rude in other cultures.

The nineteenth-century American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "What you are doing speaks so loudly I can't hear what you say. Sometimes your coaching sessions with your clients will be conducted over the telephone. At such times you need to be particularly aware of your tonality, which will transmit a major portion of your message. Engage the services of a speech therapist or a voice coach if you need to. If you speak too softly, your clients may interpret it as lack of confidence or drive.

Be aware of any changes that you need to make to the volume of your voice to convey the messages you want to convey.

You will find it useful to listen regularly to interviews on speech radio. Unlike television encounters, where the images may distract you, radio interviews will help you to identify what makes a voice "boring" or "interesting.

You will find a small tape recorder very useful for this. Good breathing will help you to control volume and tonality.

If you breathe deeply when you are speaking, you can actually give yourself more voice power. You can gradually - or, for effect, suddenly - increase the speed, then speak quickly, and then slow down again, all within a few sentences. Your tone can even change the meaning of a simple statement. For example, if your voice stays level all the way through a sentence it will imply to your clients that this is a statement.

If you raise your voice at the end of a statement, it will be heard as a question. If, instead, you drop your voice at the end, it gives the impression of a command. If you are listening actively, you are receiving these tonality differences, too. Be conscious of what your voice tone is conveying and make sure you are congruent. Trust your inner voice and your instinct when you are speaking. If you are unsure, start by saying, "I am unsure whether this is the right thing to say.

Is that all right with you? Perhaps it even implies that it does not matter if you don't succeed because you didn't make a firm commitment to do something: you merely said you would try. Listen to your own language. If you are using the word "try," you are setting yourself up for failure. Not just failure when dealing with clients but failure in dealing with yourself. You are giving your subconscious mind the message that it is acceptable to fail.

It is not acceptable to fail. Exchange "try" for a more powerful word, one that will empower you and yield better results. If you replace the word "try" with "will" you may still fail, but at least you have given yourself a greater chance of success. By saying "I will," you are giving your subconscious mind the instruction to succeed in this venture instead of merely to try, which is the instruction or excuse to fail.

Use "will" and your subconscious will provide you with the resources needed for success, simply because you have flagged that outcome as important. Listen for the use of "try" by your clients, because this tells you that their commitment level is not high enough to complete the task.

As soon as a client says "I will try," immediately question the commitment by repeating, with a questioning inflection and a raised voice, the word "try?

If they continue to use "try," ask, "On a scale of a hundred per cent, where's your commitment to this task at the moment? Ask, "What would you need to do in order to increase your commitment to a hundred per cent?

Ask yourself how good you feel when you have said something and received the "but" or "however" response. This is not the feeling that you want to give your clients. Replace "but" with another three-letter word that is incredibly empowering.

Your clients will feel that you have considered their viewpoint. Replace "but" with "and. The client feels comfortable and picks up the impression that you had an interest in what they said. Indeed, they were so interesting that it inspired you to build on their comments with your own point of view. Do Not Think of a Red Boat! Now that you've read the above heading, what do you now have in your mind? It will be a picture of a red boat! The reason for this is the English language.

The mind cannot take a negative verb at the beginning until it knows what the actual object of the sentence is; then, by the time you get to the object, you have had to create it in order not to create it! If you want people to do something, or if you want them to stop doing something, be very clear with your instructions. For example, tell someone, "Don't forget my book when you come to work tomorrow," and you are planting the suggestion and instruction to forget your book.

To increase the chances of the book's arriving, just simply tell them what you want them to do. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. Tolkien This extract shows that even a simple greeting like good morning," can be taken in four different ways. In fact, good morning" can also be used to say that you want to get rid of someone.

Use a sharper, deeper tone of voice and it means that you want them to go. So, if words have several different interpretations, you need to take great care with the ones that you use during coaching sessions. II II Listening is probably the most underrated communication skill. It is a critical element of any successful interaction with your clients. You should listen to help you build a picture of your client's world, its information and its substance, and their experience of it.

Listen for their potential and their obstacles. This involves listening to and interpreting what your clients are saying - and noting what is not being said.

Recognise both verbal and nonverbal messages. Listening is an active process involving: ears - for verbal communications eyes - for nonverbal communications body - for physically showing that you are listening Always practise active listening when you are coaching. At a faceto-face coaching session, sit square to and directly opposite your client. Turning at an angle from them will lessen your involvement.

Adopt an open posture with your arms open and your 34 Essential Communication Skills palms upwards. Lean slightly forwards to show that you are very interested in them and what they are saying. The client must see that you are relaxed and in control of the situation. Allow your client to confirm that you are listening by using encouraging noises such as, "I see," "Mmm," "Yes," and" Aha. During face-to-face sessions, use these noises in conjunction with nonverbal signals, such as nodding the head and looking expectant.

Well-timed pauses give time for explanation, evaluation and development of thought. Be sensitive to facial expressions to tell the difference between a pregnant pause and an embarrassed silence.

Pauses on the telephone need to be constantly monitored so that your clients do not feel that they have to ask if you are still listening. Using active listening techniques will encourage your clients to confide in you and this will allow you to develop them further than they ever thought possible. It is claimed by some researchers that over 2 million pieces of information reach our senses every minute.

How this can be measured is a mystery to me but the reason I am mentioning this is because we filter information received so that it makes sense in our personal model of the world. We add, distort, assume and delete all of the time. For example, as you are reading these sentences your filters have deleted most of the environment around you to enable you to concentrate. These filters protect your mind and in doing so they sometimes hinder your abilities and progress.

About 80 per cent of readers will assume Pat is a male and about 60 per cent will also assume Les is male. There is nothing in the sentence to indicate the sex of either Pat or Les. What sex are your Pat and Les?

Did you assume any of the following? Summarising is an essential active coaching skill that serves to clarify the particular area under discussion and clearly demonstrates that you are listening. It involves reviewing the topic or theme you are considering by briefly restating the key elements.

Regular summarising, including checking understanding, helps to reduce the impact of assuming meaning. State what you believe was expressed by saying, "My understanding of what you've just said is Summarising allows you to take stock of the main points already covered.

It demonstrates understanding and separates what has been covered into "goals still under discussion" and "goals that remain unexplored. When you use a summary to confirm your client's commitment to actions it increases the leverage for results.

Once a client has agreed to take action, ask them to set a date by which it will be accomplished. Listen for hesitation, a weak voice or lack of certainty, as these are indicators that your client is not fully committed to this action and will probably not do it.

Whenever you hear hesitation you must confront your client to reestablish the outcomes or the purpose. It is futile to let hesitation pass in the hope that your clients will complete the task simply because they said they would. Challenge your client: "I'm not convinced you're committed to doing [the agreed assignment].

On a scale of one to five, five meaning you're fully committed to making this happen, where would you say you are at the moment? When clients do not achieve their agreed tasks it reflects badly on you. You are responsible for their results.