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Whole Life Coaching
Whether you are new to coaching or experienced, the Simply Self whole life coaching course will give you a new perspective on coaching at its best. Coaching can help a person to simply be more of who they truly are — with less effort, struggle, problems, suffering, or obstacles. But, rather than merely supporting a person's desires, in this approach we help them to get more in touch with what they truly want on a deeper level. We consider the whole person, body, mind, and spirit, affirming the true self, within.
Coaching is a way to develop a personal philosophy about life and live it, in the highest sense, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
This is the basic outline of the course:
Lesson 1: What is whole life coaching?
Lesson 2: Our coaching system
Lesson 3: Well-being, goals, and desires
Lesson 4: Dealing with common issues
Lesson 5: Creative change
Lesson 6: Belief systems
Lesson 7: High level functioning
Lesson 8: Best practices
Lesson 9: Other coaching approaches
Lesson 10: Review
The goals are to:
• learn what distinguishes this approach to whole life coaching from other approaches
• expand your awareness of life, its interrelated parts, patterns, and wholeness
• learn to deal with the most common things that keep people stuck where they are
• understand what releases a person from a place of limitation, hardship, or suffering
• master the resources to deal with the whole of life, calmly, clearly, and objectively.
Note: Certification in the Simply Self Coaching system requires completion of four prerequisite courses as well as this course: 1. The Course in Problem Solving, 2. Managing Your Self, 3. Personal Relationships, and 4. Spiritual Realization. The examination for certification tests understanding in all of these key areas.
(Those who do not wish to apply for certification can still take the Whole Life Coaching course by itself, but should know that the four courses referred to above provide insight and understanding as to how this approach differs from common approaches in the most important ways.)
Lesson 1: What is whole life coaching?
Introduction
1. Life Coaching
2. Contemporary Life
3. Everyday Problems
4. What Is Different About This Approach?
5. Philosophy of Life
6. Quality of Life
7. Who Is a Suitable Client?
8. Facilitating Change
9. How We Progress
10. Choosing Our Lives
11. Doing the Right Thing
Introduction
Welcome to the Simply Self course in Whole Life Coaching. People in all walks of life become life coaches, including psychologists, social workers, teachers, health-care providers, and everyday people who feel a calling. Coaching does not require a particular educational background, but a certain degree of maturity and understanding about life are very helpful.
It has been said that even a sick person can point the way to the hospital, to help another person. In coaching, we point the way. We do not need to know all fields of knowledge, but we do need to know how to get the information or understanding we need, within us. What a whole life coach brings to the coaching process is mainly: awareness, understanding, compassion, objectivity, perspective, and determination.
In this course we will learn what problems people face in their lives, what goals they have, and what they really want — whether they are aware of it or not. In coaching, we remain objective and nonjudgmental, so that clients have an opportunity to see the truth for themselves. Everyone has different perceptions, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, goals, and desires. What we do is to help a person to find that place in them which resonates with what is right, good, and true for them.
It takes practice to find that place within us, but once we become familiar with it, we may realize that we would like to help others to come from that place too. Whole life coaching is a great way to do this, as people from all walks of life have discovered.
Note: The purpose of the course is to make you think, to be more self-aware, to gain perspective, and to learn how to apply universally applicable principles to situations in your own life. What's different about Simply Self courses is that there is no "fluff" or stories about other people, no facts to memorize or "top ten" ways to make everything in your life perfect. Be aware, your comfort zone will be challenged. For some, the material may seem like common sense, something you already know but have yet to practice. For others, the realizations you make will be profoundly transformational. As in life, you decide what it means to you.
1. Life Coaching
Coaching is a relatively new approach to helping a person to be, do, or have what they want in their life. It usually takes the form of a regular interaction between coach and client, during which time the client presents their goals and seeks to be empowered to take the steps to accomplish them. Coaching is simply helping someone learn to help themselves.
It may be said that there is no such thing as "knowing" something unless it can be put into practice in the "real world" — and is. Of course, there is no guarantee that any activity or course of action will produce the desired results, and all people are different. But coaching allows for a process of learning and growth, unfolding the core strengths of the individual at their own pace, as they learn to reach their goals.
Coaching does not solve a person's problems for them. It teaches them ways to deal with their problems themselves, in a more creative, progressive, or effective way. Not all problems are solvable; and not every desire or goal will (or should) be satisfied. Ideally, coaching allows for or encourages a larger perspective and greater awareness in life. Some things that were once problems or issues may be resolved, others gotten past, and others simply let go of.
In more common forms of coaching, the coach merely tries to help the client reach whatever goal they set for themselves or in concert with the coach. But, that is a rather limited perspective, and only of limited benefit. It is better to help a person to realize what happiness really means, and how to find it within them, rather than to help them to get the fancy car they want, the paycheck they want, the house they want, the spouse they want, and so on ... only to wake up later in life and realize that their concept of a "perfect" home, a "perfect" education, "perfect" job, "perfect" spouse, "perfect" children, or "perfect" retirement did not bring them lasting or ultimate happiness.
Wouldn't it be a rather erroneous form of coaching to "help" a person to chase after illusions of happiness, or to "help" them to make the "source" of their happiness, or their love, or their peace, outside themselves? We believe so.
In other words, it is better to help a person to understand and experience happiness within themselves, than it is to help them to chase after endless illusions of happiness, desires, goals, and material objects — outside themselves. Otherwise they may "gain the world" without ever finding real happiness within themselves.
To be a whole life coach and truly help someone, it is necessary to help them to:
- place their "needs," desires, and goals in a larger context, to gain perspective on what it is they truly want — or want to experience, within themselves
- develop the tools to be, do, and have what they truly want — in an increasingly self-reliant, self-directed way
- learn to discern the difference between their real needs and artificial needs, illusory needs, desires, social conditioning, and popular programming
- realize their true purposes, their higher purposes in living
- learn to find a place to stand, within themselves, from which they can deal with things around them calmly, clearly, creatively, and effectively
- discern illusions and false teachings, so that they do not spend a lifetime imagining they will get what they want, only to realize that they were on the wrong track all along.
In the simplest terms, a whole life coach's goal is to help a person to make a difference in their own life, and, perhaps, in the lives of others. It is not a process of catering to a person's selfishness, blind ambition, egotism, or willful desire, which doesn't really help anyone.
When a person seeks to benefit from personal coaching, we can assume that they are seeking something more than what they might say outwardly, or think inwardly. They may not want a fancy new car as much as they really want to feel the happiness within them, which they feel they will have as a result of getting the car. What if they could learn to find the source of happiness, peace, love, joy, and good within themselves? This is the main goal of whole life coaching.
The essence of our coaching practice is: we believe a person needs to find that place within themselves where they are more in touch with what is right, good, and true for them. All we can do is help them to become more familiar with that place, and that experience, and help to validate it. We cannot stand in that place for anyone else. We cannot be or become their conscience, their source of wisdom, or their source of peace. We can only point out how those vitally important things are to be found in them.
4. What Is Different About This Approach?
In the Simply Self approach, our purpose is not to help anyone fit into — to conform, adjust to, or adopt — the social conditioning, enculturation, or programming of our times, but to step out of it. To be who we truly are. In our approach, we acknowledge the role of spirit, because that is who we ultimately are. We know that a person is not merely trying to find their way in the world; they are trying to find their way, in a higher sense. We seek a larger perspective on life as a whole.
Ours is an inherently spiritual approach, but it does not require the belief in any particular spiritual or religious tradition. What we mean by spiritual is: that which deals with the whole being, the whole person, body, mind, and consciousness or spirit. It is unfortunate, but most of the beliefs and understandings that people commonly have today, even those characterized as spiritual or religious, do not seem to spare them from suffering in life; they have most if not all the problems that everyone else experiences, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
It is extremely uncommon in our everyday world, to have someone we relate to who is objective, who is not trying to get something from us, who is not emotionally reactive to us, who does not cater to our ego, and who tells us the truth.
This is what we seek as a whole life coach in the Simply Self approach, to be a clear and consistent reflector of truth. It is not our role to be the source of anyone's truth, or to declare what we say to be some sort of absolute truth, or to force anyone to believe anything. It is simply our role to be as clear as possible in ourselves, so that the client has as clear as possible reflection of themselves, and is able to see the truth for themselves, perhaps for the first time.
We question everything — including the client's agenda. In other coaching approaches the client's agenda is never questioned; the coach merely helps them to enact it. That simply isn't good enough for us. People's agendas generally reflect their materialism, egotism, selfish desires, social conditioning, programming, indoctrination, pressures and expectations of others, habitual or self-limiting behavior, and lack of awareness. We believe it is more important to help a person to be aware of something beyond their agenda, something more — including who they really are, and what their authentic self might want and need. That is seldom on a person's agenda.
In the Simply Self approach, we have no interest in serving people's illusions, or being "enablers." We do not see the acquisition of material goods, or monetary profit, as the be-all and end-all of human life. We do not see worldly success as any measure of spiritual success. And, no matter what feels good, we are only interested in what is good, in reality. We only seek to feel good by doing what is right, good, and true for us — which is the opposite of declaring what feels good to be good.
Other coaching approaches, including those that consider themselves to be "holistic," are happy with the fact that they never ask a client about their beliefs, their values, or the nature of their goals — they just help them to reach whatever goal they might have. We do not agree with that approach. We believe it is necessary to understand not only what a person wants, but why — and that they need to understand that, too. We consider that an integral part of the whole life coaching process. We often need to challenge self-limiting beliefs.
Other coaching approaches avoid acknowledgment of a client's suffering, problems, past or present issues. In the Simply Self approach, we observe that their whole life is interrelated: mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, socially, and spiritually, past, present, and future. We do not accept any artificial distinction between these areas of life, or the suffering, problems, or issues which manifest in — or shift from — one area to another. In this approach we look at the whole person. Rather than focusing entirely on how they can get something "positive" — what behaviorists refer to as positive reinforcement — we also consider how they may be experiencing, allowing, accepting, or perpetuating something that is not in their own best interests, something negative or self-negating. And we deal with that, too. We don't ignore it.
We choose not to support behavior which caters to illusions, egotism, emotionalism, materialism, addiction, lust, self-destructiveness, or negation of the true inner being. All of these things cause or lead to greater suffering. We support the authentic self, the true inner being, conscience, and what is for the highest good of all. That is a choice that we can make, regardless of whether or not a client is willing or able to make that choice for themselves. Why? Because that is the only choice we can make and remain true to ourselves.
The Simply Self approach is to help a person to come to a place of greater awareness of their inner being, true self, soul, or spirit — a place of wholeness of life — and learn to act from there. We seek the most whole, complete, and true vision of those who seek our assistance.
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