Coaching Articles

‘My coaching journey’

In her Third column about her Life Coaching training, Christina Neal Managing Editor of Womens's Fitness Magazine, reports on her progress training to be an accredited life coach and learning to overcome beliefs that hold us back

Click here to read Christina's first column 'My Life Coaching Journey'.

Click here to read Christina's second column 'My Coaching Journey'.

I’ve settled into a regular pattern with my coaching training. I now have three practice clients whom I’ve been coaching once a week. All have different goals, which makes the sessions varied and interesting. I’m learning the coaching model… the structure is all about helping people state their own goals, look at the reality of their current situation and then identify options to help them achieve their aims. These coaching sessions has proved to be a fantastic learning curve as it has encouraged me to read some motivation books, which has, in turn, made me more positive.

I have just been reading about our belief systems, as one of my practice clients identified a negative belief that was holding her back. She knew that this belief was preventing her from achieving her full potential – yet she didn’t know how to overcome her negativity. This encouraged me to read up on the subject.

Motivational speaker Anthony Robbins talks extensively about beliefs in his best-selling book, Awaken The Giant Within (Simon & Schuster, £10.99). He says: ’We all have answers but often our lack of belief causes us not to be able to use the capacity that resides in us.’

Supportive Legs

Robbins explains how to turn an idea into a belief. He says that a belief must ‘have legs’, then uses a tabletop metaphor. Imagine a table with no legs. Without any legs, the table won’t stand up by itself. With legs, it will be fully supported. Imagine a belief as a tabletop – it needs legs to be fully supported. Robbins gives the example of being told that you’re sexy. He explains: ‘Maybe men and women have told you you’re sexy, or maybe strangers call out to you. These instances mean nothing until you organise them under the idea that you’re sexy. As you do this, the legs of a table will feel solid about the idea and cause you to begin to believe it. Your idea feels certain and this is now a belief.’

Robbins adds: ‘We can develop beliefs about anything if we find enough legs – enough reference experiences – to build it up. The emotional intensity we feel about any of those references will definitely affect the strength and width of the (table) leg. The strongest and most solid legs are formed by personal experiences that we have a lot of emotion attached to because they were painful or pleasurable. The other factor is the number of references we have, obviously the more reference experiences supporting an idea, the stronger your belief will be in it.’

Pushing Ahead

I referred my practice client to Robbins’ book. She has already made progress. She has begun to ignore her limiting belief, pushing ahead anyway to achieve her aims. She’s no longer letting the belief hold her back.

If you have a limiting belief, try talking to people who have achieved what you would like to achieve. Find role models and ask them how they achieved their aims. Robbins also suggests associating massive pain to the negative belief. ‘You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, it’s costing you in the present and ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. If we associate enough pain to anything, we will change.’

If someone had told me six months ago that my coaching skills would make a difference to the lives of other people, I would have laughed. Training to be a coach is not only enlightening, it’s more rewarding than I ever thought possible.

Catalyst Coaching runs free introductory coaching seminars in London and surrounding areas. Visit www.catalystcoaching.biz or call 0800 953 0387.

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