What happens in a coaching session?

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A coaching session is a confidential, safe space that is all about you and your needs. The structure of the session depends on your needs. Sometimes when you have a clear goal of what you want, the session becomes a time period of making that goal a reality. Although there is some common element of what happens in a coaching session such as powerful questions, listening with all the senses, challenging limiting beliefs, and identifying a way to move forward, it is often unique to the needs of clients. Sometimes what a client needs is a solution-focused approach, other times what a client needs is a way to reflect and gain self-awareness.

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Coaching sounds good but I don’t always know what to talk about. My problems aren’t always so clear to me. Where do I go from there?

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Coaching is a platform created with your needs in mind. It is a safe place created for you to freely explore the confusion on your mind. Although having a set goal for coaching can be helpful, it is completely okay to not have a set goal. Throughout the session, we explore your thoughts, story, and unique experiences to allow you to reach a place where you feel at peace. Coaching is generated to create a space that is all about you, where your well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness is of the uttermost priority.

 

I don’t know if I could benefit from a self-compassionate approach to coaching. I think the problem is sometimes that I am too self-compassionate. The motivation aspect, I could definitely benefit from but I think that contradicts self-compassion. So how does that work?

 

There is a lot of misconceptions about self-compassion, one of which is that self-compassion means taking it easy or being too kind to yourself. In reality, self-compassion is about having an inner relationship where you love and support yourself like a loving parent would a child. It is about having genuine love and kindness towards the self. When the person you love fails a test, do you tell her to give up? Alternatively, do you tell the person to just eat lots of ice cream, binge watch things, and sleep endlessly? It is a fine balance of giving yourself a break and gently urging the self to try again, to see it in a more positive manner. Self-compassion is an approach that is especially useful during hardship. Rather than being critical, hard on yourself, or negative about failure, it is about coming to a positive understanding and giving yourself what you need.

 

Self-criticism has often been used as a motivational drive to achieve goals and ‘move forward.’ The ‘move forward’ aspect is actually only on the outside because every minute that you spend criticizing yourself is a moment that you are spending unhappy inside. Throughout our life, the minutes spend criticizing the self accumulates into hours; hours turn to days, days to weeks, to months, and years. That is when self-loathing takes place internally and the relationship with the self becomes nasty, negative, detrimental, and unhealthy. So, yes it is possible to be highly successful by criticizing yourself, but success is a temporary satisfaction at best. The goal becomes to move on to the next part in the pursuit of happiness and yet no true happiness is ever attained. When the self is the enemy, you are living with the enemy. The outside world can look satisfying, yet the internal world is in shambles.

 

The self-compassionate approach is about learning to be there for yourself in hardship and choosing the path of meaningful success and joy. Rather than waiting to feel good, it is about choosing to feel good now. It is about holding yourself with mindfulness, love, and compassion while being aware of the element of common humanity that binds us all together. It is ultimately about creating a secure attachment for yourself. The motivation then comes from a place of feeling good and inner and outer satisfaction.

 

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