As a professional coach, I have been helping people feel better about the lives they are living -- and the lives they are creating -- for over a decade now.
Spurred by the desire to clarify what they want, navigate transitions, make changes, or simply become more of the person that they've always wanted to be, coaching has brought peace, satisfaction, and fulfillment to my clients.
This milestone is a great time to look back at how it started, how it's been going, and where it's headed next.
You may be surprised by what I've discovered along the way. I know I sure am!
HOW IT STARTED...
My interest in coaching actually began over 20 years ago. While working as a research chemist at Carnegie Mellon University, I often mentored the graduate and undergraduate students who were working in the lab. Some of them playfully referred to me as their "life coach." I was glad that I could help someone find their way through mentoring but I didn't think of coaching beyond that. At the time, I was focused on Massage Therapy as my main side quest!
Years later, in 2012, I attended the first-ever International Gay Coaches Conference at Easton Mountain, despite my not actually being a coach! It was the session, "The Body as a Path to Deeper Coaching," that intrigued me enough to attend. I was curious about coaching because, in my work as a massage therapist, I often "coached" people in discovering their own ways to dismantle stress through the body awareness that massage brings.
This conference introduced me to two core coaching concepts – creating awareness and taking action. And, it planted the seed of my becoming a coach!
Four years later, the announcement came for the first-ever professional life coach training program that focused on LGBT. This really spoke to me because I wanted to make changes in my primary career and the training was held at Easton Mountain, where I had positive experiences at their retreats as a spiritually-seeking gay man. As part of the training program, I received professional coaching. This resulted in me transforming my own life in very specific ways. Shortly after completing the program in October 2016, I quit my full-time job as a chemist and began yoga teacher training so that I could fully dedicate myself to elevating others through massage, yoga and coaching. In the process, I expanded my company, Centered Presence, Ltd., to fully support me financially.
That was life-changing!
HOW IT’S BEEN GOING...
Over the past decade, as a Certified Professional Coach and International Coaching Federation member, I've had the honor of working with over 50 people as their personal coach. Initially, I worked with clients who could easily relate to me through shared experiences, ways of being, or culture: scientists, engineers and college professors, gay men, working professionals, and other coaches. But I was not limited. I also worked with straight men and women, moms, dads, seniors, and even artists and performers. What I learned through this is that coaching is coaching: the topics and resulting expansions are universal no matter who the client may be.
People came to me for coaching for at least one of three primary reasons: (1) To clarify what they want, (2) to make changes and transitions, or (3) to expand and become more of who they wanted to be.
For those seeking clarity, some specific topics were
Deciding to stay in job/current role, look for another job, or go into free-lance work and self-employment
Deciding to relocate to a better-suited work/life environment in a new city
Deciding when to retire
Deciding to stay with partner in home city or pursue career in different city, and how to maintain the relationship either way
Refining the decision-making process
For those making changes or transitions, some specific topics were
Pursuing coaching as a new career
Starting a coaching practice
Creating a new emotional story for self and business
Transitioning from Post-Doc to full career
Leaving an educator role for a researcher role
Changing research institutions internationally
Changing academic research collaborators
Re-entering the workforce after raising small children
Leaving a dead relationship to create a new relationship with life itself
Working towards new dreams while living current life
For those who wanted to perform better in their lives, some specific topics were
Thriving in current job for growth and promotion
Being more direct in communication
Experiencing the power of self-validation in career role
Clearing emotional blockages related to home, family, or work
Getting unstuck in marriage and in life
Being more authentic in relationships and interactions
Establishing better relationships with family members
Being more confident within themselves when dating
Many coaching clients experienced "far transfer" in their lives as a result of coaching. This means that the ways that they grew and changed in one area of life also applied to other unrelated areas because they fundamentally changed how they were being in their lives.
Ultimately, as a result of my coaching, clients felt better about the lives they were living -- and the ones they were creating.
A PATHWAY OF PERSONAL GROWTH…
Some of my clients utilized my Pathway of Personal Growth assessment to gain clarity about their immediate, short-term, and long-term focus.
They prioritized the sequence of how they would improve their lives on multiple fronts.
Personal growth patterns were mainly focused on connection: connection with the authentic self, parts of themselves they neglected; the physical self. Connections with others and nature. Connection to emotional stability and personal growth. Related to this were career changes, retirement plans, spiritual practices, and aging gracefully.
Because I was already a massage therapist, and simultaneously trained to be a Kripalu Yoga teacher, I was able to bring the whole person into coaching discussions. Not surprisingly, many of the aims that people had were to feel better in their bodies, whether that was alleviating aches and pains, or to become more somatically aware. And, overwhelmingly, to feel more grounded and secure emotionally.
It has been a wonderful experience for me as a coach to witness these expansions!
WHERE IT’S HEADED NEXT...
In addition to all of this, over the past decade, I have grown personally because of my own broader life experience: I have been fully self-employed for 10 years. I (unexpectedly) became a caregiver for an elderly family member; my spouse retired, and I have begun to experience transition of becoming an elder myself.
All of this experience informs how I relate to clients and the perspective that I bring to coaching sessions that I was not able to bring a decade ago.
As a result, I have become more interested in coaching topics related to maturing, such as deciding when to retire and what retirement life might look like. Or, navigating transitions in care for self and loved ones. Or, becoming more fully actualized as a human being and being more deliberate about cultivating legacy.
In each of these topics, coaching can bring new clarity and focus, which ultimately brings peace, satisfaction, and fulfillment.
Coaching has been a fantastic journey and one that I am very proud to have been a facilitator of for the past ten years. I'm exited to see how it all unfolds next!
If you've read something here that interests you, please contact me and we can have a conversation to see how you might benefit from coaching with me.
Not sure where to start? Take the Pathway of Personal Growth assessment and I guarantee you'll find a way to get going!