Empowered Wellness
Bronwyn Radcliffe, FNP | Behavior Change Expert | Mind-Body Medicine | Functional Medicine Certified

Coaches help you find the answers within yourself by asking a lot of powerful questions. A coach would be someone who would train your mindset, and make your resources available to you, help you lift the fog on the next steps, all for you to make a successful transition.

Therapy is to heal wounds of the past, to work through mental health issues, and to learn strategies to go through your life unhindered.

Coaching, however, focuses on getting clarity, working through mental blocks, planning toward the future, and expanding your impact by pushing you to grow beyond your comfort zone. It inevitably touches on some mindset and behavioral topics that therapy(especially Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, aka CBT) also does, but the approach towards those topics differs in both practices.

• Coaches ask questions that no one in your life usually would ask you. That’s what unlocks a lot of insights for a client — getting asked those questions and then having a safe space to share their thoughts.
• Additionally, people usually don’t get this 100% focused listener who is unafraid to say out loud the difficult things, to challenge them so directly while holding their agenda so firmly.
• Coaches believe in their clients so strongly, their strengths and resourcefulness, and their ability to achieve their goals, however big they feel to the clients. That is really powerful. Think about instances in your life where someone believed in you, and you managed to move mountains just because of that belief someone else put in you.
• Coaches keep you accountable, and that accountability works wonders! Do you remember the last time you managed to keep a streak for your gym/sports session, just because your buddy signed up for it with you, and now you both drag each other out to the gym — exactly! Since the coach is unafraid to challenge you and ask you difficult questions, they WILL hold you accountable for the necessary action items to make progress on your goals!

Coaches help bring more clarity and reduce the volume of the noise around you so as to help you reach your goals either faster or with a bigger impact, or both!

Coaches can help you find your blind spots, provide different perspectives, approach topics with an open mind, and push you to do the same. They can work with you to create value-aligned decision-making frameworks, structures, and accountability to help you stay consistent in your efforts toward your goals!

When you feel stuck.

The long answer is: When you find yourself running in circles, not able to find clarity on the next steps, feel directionless, or simply want to tap into your full potential and want to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone. I have seen people usually come to coaching:

• When they are planning to or going through some changes: career transitions, habit formation, performance improvement, starting something new(e.g., business, leadership roles)
• Or they are trying to improve something (drastically): business, health and fitness, productivity, job performance, interpersonal relationships, skills(e.g., communication, negotiations)

It is important to note that if you are feeling symptoms of mental health issues, you should seek therapy instead — coaches are usually not trained to provide the needed support in that case. It’s unethical even to try.

To be successful…

• Coachability: Open-mindedness to participate in the coaching conversations, face many powerful questions, readiness to discover insights that come up as a consequence, and willingness to bring in your whole self to the session.
• Commitment: Most of the work of coaching happens in between the sessions. Coaches help guide the clients to discover insights and commit to actions and inquiries to think about in their own time. The clients must show commitment to the work required to get the best out of the coaching relationship.
• Safe space: The client needs to have access to a distraction-free environment where they can express themselves fully, a safe space to open up and be in the moment with the coach.

Your coach can make a lot of difference in your life, giving you incredible ROI on your coaching fees — if the coach you pick is a right fit for you! So have a “chemistry” or “discovery” session with a few coaches and see how they click with you before putting your money on it. Most coaches usually offer the first session for free or at a very low cost — that’s where you both can figure out if you can connect well, communicate openly, and build trust as the relationship progresses.

You can, of course, consider finding a coach who specializes in the topics you are looking for or has some experience working with people like yours in terms of background. However, I think it’s more important that you click with your coach than they are the best coaches in your topic.