Here’s How a Personal Growth Coach Can Help Support You With Your Goals
Every Wednesday, I get an email from a Business Coach that tells me about her personal experience and how she can help me with my life if I joined her masterclass.
Every Monday, I get an email from a blog subscription that sends me 44 Ways how I can feel better about myself.
Every Friday, I get an email from one of my financial robo-advisor or personal budgeting app’s blog about how I can improve my credit score with just 3 simple steps.
I don’t think I am the only one here that is receiving constant emails from people, or automated robots that provides us advice on how we can be better at everything. From business to finance and to overall well being.
We are all attracted to being better. We want to be better at work, at home and at the things that matters to us most. The problem is, we often try to go at it alone. When it comes to personal stuff, like our money, our health and our career, we like to do it ourselves. We like to DIY our life. We would rather subscribe to a blog, listen to a podcast or pay a monthly subscription to an app that promises you will feel happier if you use it every day.
I have done all of that and I can tell you that … it works. But it works only if you include another secret ingredient:
Accountability
Accountability means someone or something that keeps you to your promise but also someone or something that encourages you to come back to it the next day. Accountability can get a bad rep, when we think about it too much. When we think too much about accountability, we may end up pressuring ourselves more by taking it too seriously, wanting it to be perfect which in the end … just stresses us out.
So I challenge you to try to look at accountability in a different way. Look at accountability as your capacity to do it again the next time around.
For example:
Goal: I want to exercise 3x a day for 30 minutes by the end of this week.
Your accountability plan could look like this:
I will run /bike outside on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every morning starting at 6am and I will record my route and my time on my phone. On my next exercise, I will try to do it better.
Or, it could look like this …
At the end of my first 30 minute workout, I will cross out “exercise” on the reminder on my phone. If by the end of 30 minutes, I feel like doing more, I will save it for my next session. If I didn’t get to 30 minutes today, then I will try better on the next time.
Whichever feels best for you in this current moment, is all about you. But I prefer the second one. There is a sense of freedom and a taste of creativity on how we decide to move things forward. And when it feels good, there is much more motivation for us to do it again. And again.
This is also how I feel about having personal coaches in my life.
Like most coaches out there, the coaches I hire has the same type of payment structure. They are paid by the hour / session and typically our arrangement is to meet every 2 weeks or once every month to “touch base” on the topic we wanted to talk about.
I used to approach the sessions with a sense of perfection. Before I meet with my coach, I will be prepared with all of the homework I need to do and be prepared to ask all the questions that I want to discuss. Just like the student that I was when I was at school. Except now … I am not in school. I actually don’t need to get a good grade with my coach because her job is to help me feel good about myself. In my career, in my finances and in my life.
Now I approach the sessions with a sense of discovery. We talk about how the past 2 weeks have been and I try to discover what I have learned by listening and answering the questions my coach asks me. The best part about having a personal growth coach is that he or she is always on your side. It doesn’t mean that he or she will agree with you all the time, but you will always have a sense that she wants the best for you.
Why is this important? Well … Sometimes I don’t always want the best for myself.
Sometimes I feel that I don’t deserve what I have or deserve what I want to achieve. Sometimes I want to go the tough route, the “hard work pays off” route, when in truth, the best route is the one that feels the best. And that route will be discovered when you take your self out of the way.
Here’s how I find my coaches and how they have helped me reach my goals
As a family man, there are 3 things that ends up on the top of my list. Me, my family and our quality of life. I learned this the hard way but throughout my experience being a married couple, being a married couple with kids and being a family with a business, I’ve learned that just being part of a family without a quality of life, can be a struggle.
I define quality of life as .. how well do you and your family live. Are we healthy, do we have a place to live, do we have food to eat and do we have opportunities to fill our lives with fulfilling work. Lots of times, quality of life is easily linked to money. And that is the easiest way to see it, but there are also aspects like health, happiness and belonging that money can’t buy.
Having said that, I seek for coaching from coaches in these areas that is aligned to my quality of life:
- Self (care)
- Career + Relationships
- Personal Finance
In my first consulting job, we had two senior managers assigned to us. Our job is to setup a 1:1 meeting with them on a monthly or quarterly basis. The first manager is our project lead that talks about how we are doing in our role and how we can deliver our services better to our clients. The second manager is a “career counselor” that helps us with our career progression as we move up in our consulting levels.
Now that I am working as a contractor, I no longer have a career counselor. So I decided to move forward on my own and hire a “career coach” with the extra money I make as a contractor. This move was proven to be very effective because she was able to help me not only in regards to how I can progress within my job, but also how I can maintain good and healthy relationships with my co-worker, my boss and with my family. My discussions with her range from finding new opportunities, checking in with old colleagues to how to become a better father to my children and a better husband to my wife.
With personal finance, it is even easier. Almost any investment firm will offer you a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) that can help you setup your investment in the right way to align with your goals. What you need to make sure is that your CFP sees your situation as a whole. Not just about your retirement, or just the investment fund, but as a whole, including your income, expenses, loans, debts, spending habits along with what you hope to be able to do for your children, your parents, or your community. My CFP taught me the 50/30/20 rule of personal budgeting that I still use till this day that successfully helped me pay off my debt, build my emergency fund, and purchase a home. It’s progress not perfection.
For self-care, I hire only for a specific goal. For example, if I wanted to pickup a meditation practice, then I could hire a meditation coach, or I could subscribe to a meditation app on my phone. Or when I wanted to lose weight, I could hire a nutrition and exercise coach to keep me accountable. Since self-care is about taking care of yourself and your priorities as a human being may change as your awareness changes, this is probably the area where there will be lots of movements. I suggest to keep your options open and keep looking for new areas in your life that you can explore. For example, I am looking into exploring to my creative side, which includes, writing, designing, and maybe even playing a musical instrument. So I may join a writing group, take a drawing class and guitar lessons.
Whatever you decide to do for your self and whoever you decide to hire or follow, we are not only wired to connect but we are also wired to support. Do not be afraid to reach out to ask for help. There has never been one person that is better than the other. We are all better at one thing and less better at another. Here’s where we can support each other. And here’s where we can keep each other accountable.
Ready to hire a coach for yourself?
Here are some steps you can take when you decide to hire a personal growth coach
- Look for a coach from the blogs or books that you read or the podcasts that you listen to. Any of those authors almost always started with a coaching gig, and most probably is still offering coaching sessions. If they don’t, they at least would have a website with an email address you can write to, to ask for a referral.
- Request a consult. There is nothing wrong with a consult. Most of it is free, and if it isn’t, then see if it’s worth your time and money. Don’t let a consult pressure you to start a session with him or her, but instead use the consult to find out if both of you are a good fit. How do you set it up? Establish it first in your first reach out. Typically I would say something like this: “Hello! On this first consult, I would like to find out if we are a good fit by discussing … and … “
- Do not take notes. Don’t even prepare questions. On your first consult, all you have to do is tell your story to the best of your ability. Then hear their responses and notice how you feel about it. If it feels comforting and it makes you feel good about yourself, then perhaps you have found the right coach for you. If you feel pressured, and tight in parts of your body, then it is okay for you to say no thanks.
- Do not negotiate. The coaching fee is not expensive. I have worked with coaches that costs $60 to $6000. And I worked with the latter when I didn’t have a job or any extra money. I spent that money because I knew that it would give me great returns in my character and positive outlook in my future. In which it did. My point is, the money they tagged their service to is based on how much they feel they can contribute to what you need. Do not make the mistake of thinking it is high or low, worth it or waste of money. Think of it as a level of energy they are in and consider how much you are willing to be part of it.
Good luck! If you have hired a personal growth coach and have found a positive experience (or have found a different experience altogether), please share it in the comments below. I’d like to know how it went for you. Thanks for reading and sharing.
