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hey it's Leo for actualised org and I'm outside today it's a beautiful day in Las Vegas and today I wanted to talk to you about life coaching and really I'm trying I've been you know you know and that I'm a life coach and I work with people on self-development issues and one of the things that is curious for me as I was going through coaching training I did about oh like 200 to 300 hours of coaching training through Ipek and just my own study and that's on top of all the self-development stuff that I study so I've been doing that and then I did about another ninety to a hundred hours now of one-on-one live coaching with with friends and and various colleagues and clients and so you know as I was doing that I was it was curious to me I was going through that whole process as to you know whether coaching even works because I was skeptical and I first started like what is this coaching stuff does it really work can it really help you just can talk in with somebody really help and this whole idea of just asking questions because one of the one of the distinctions between being a coach we're working with a coach and working with let's say a therapist or a consultant or a mentor is that the coach really takes a different approach to how to how he helps you get results so the way coaching is supposed to work is that coaches are not supposed to give you advice coaches are supposed to just ask you questions and so at first this idea seems a little bit fishy especially to a skeptic like myself I started thinking like you know well there's so much value in getting you know specific advice like you know if you go and you talk to a consultant or a mentor the consultant mentor will tell you exactly what you need to do to get some part of your life handled or to get some sort of success in some area or domain that you want to get it in so if let's say you want to start a business and you're looking for some help with that well you can go to a two you know business consultant that will tell you how to get your finances set up how to get your corporation set up and all this other stuff how to be successful specifically in your type of niche if you find that kind of consultant so so their consulting can be great also you know a mentor mentor is usually someone who's gone through the same kind of stuff that you've gone through so he has a lot of experience and learning from that experience makes a lot of right if someone has experience has been successful in some part of their life then modeling that person or getting direct advice from them what seem like it would be very useful and and all that is true you know from what I found that can be really good and then with therapy you know therapy is more about working with with dysfunctional people or people that have you know more serious mental issues whereas coaching is more about taking someone who's already functional and taking them to an optimal level but I think the biggest difference between coaching and all those others other fields is that coaching is about asking a lot of questions and not giving any advice and just relying and trusting that the client or you whoever's being coached has the resources within themselves to kind of figure it out and so as I was going through this whole process I was just you know curious for myself you know how does coaching really generate that value for people especially because you know coaches can charge quite a bit and that needs to be justified with a return on investment it's not just about mental masturbation at least I didn't want to become a coach unless I thought that there was a real value that I could add to people's lives and so if I'm asking people questions I want to know you know how is that asking a simple question can give a big return on investment and you know as I was being coach because I've gone through maybe 50 hours of coaching myself where I was being coached by somebody else by another coach I've been coached by professional coaches I've been coached by people going through the program with me it's been a great experience and I'm you know some of those sessions have been awesome some of them have been still good but not given the same results so different sessions can give you different results of different coaches are at different levels of efficiency and how they coach and you know as I was being coached and as I was coaching others I started looking at the different results so here's some of the findings that I came up with at least for myself and I'm still trying to figure this out because it's really fascinating to me and there's more to learn basically the way I see it is that coaching really makes you think so and it what's the power in that you would tell me that well I can think on my own I don't need a coach to help me with that and you know I'd be the first to say that because I love to think I think I spend more time introspecting than most people do I'm tend to be a naturally introspective kind of guy so if you're if you're that way you might be thinking like well I already have that part handled here's the difference though a couple of differences number one is that simply a lot of times you're just caught in your own story you're caught in your own you're caught in your own ways of thinking you're caught in your own belief systems in the way you were raised up in your experience you're caught in the experience of your friends your society everything that's around you keeps feeding you with the same information you just kind of get stuck or you start going down the same path the same Road you just keep going down the same Road and sometimes that's good sometimes if you feel like you're stuck and you want to do a you know a change in your life or if you feel that the roads are down going down is not the healthiest or most fulfilling for you then sometimes it helps to get some external external forces to kind of nudge you off nod you off into a different direction so that's what coaching can be good for it's a little bit more objective the problem is that a lot of times you're just so caught in your own story the way that you're interpreting events and you don't even realize it consciously until you have someone else come in there and give you a good kick in the ass and send you in a different direction or just get you to start to think about a situation in a different way that you haven't thought about before because otherwise you'll just be stuck and you'll think that that's the way it is and that's usually what keeps you stuck is it's not that just that you're stuck but then you start to really think like oh well there could be no other way this is how it has to be for reasons abcdefg and you're really good at coming up with reasons we all are as to why you can't change the situation why it has to suck why you're a victim etc etc etc why you can't make changes but a good coach can help you see stuff from a different angle and that can be really really powerful sometimes it just takes one shift one question that will send you thinking about something that you would have never really thought about on your own and so that challenging aspect is really important and is a great is a great function of coaching and it can happen really fast you don't need a bunch of sessions to get it sometimes it might take many sessions sometimes it can happen within five minutes in session it just kind of all depends on what the issue is we're coming from and how much blockage you have around it so that's one thing I found I've definitely found that happening on myself I found myself being able to make those kind of changes with the people that I've coached with clients another reason that I think coaching works well is that it really starts to make you think and process more consciously and more deliberately a lot of times we get lazy with our thinking we introspect but what happens is while you're introspecting you're not very rigorous about it so you're not very deliberate about setting up your goals you're not very deliberate about telling yourself what you want and what you don't want and so you're not deliberate about thinking through strategies and so what happens is that a lot there's a lot of assumptions in your thinking whenever you're approaching something and again most of stuff is unconscious so you don't even realize it until later when you get coached and then something suddenly sparks or triggers in you and you're like oh oh my god I have this assumption the whole time and that assumption was actually limiting me in the following ways and once you start to realize it a little bit of awareness around it it becomes easier to start making changes you know one of the most difficult things for me as a coach starting coaching was not to give advice because you know I've let I've read a lot of self-help the literature I'm kind of follow the industry I follow the field I kind of a experiment the stuff on myself so it's easy to for me to come at a lot of people's issues with my own base of experience and knowledge so someone comes to me with like a fitness goal or you know they don't like their career something like that they want changes it's easy for me to start spouting advice at them or stuff that I would do or stuff that I know that other people have done but see the trick is this is that what keeps you blocked is not the fact that you don't have enough knowledge or awareness of how to do stuff it's usually just simply the fact that you have that you have your own like inner issues that are there so you have beliefs you have experiences that I've all led you up to the point where you're at right now and have led you to the way that you think and they've created some some pros in your life so they've opened up opportunities for you the ways that you're thinking but the ways that you think you have also have some some some negatives to them and also some limitations and a lot of times you don't you don't realize what those are until you start to kind of work through them and the thing is that if I just give you a piece of advice and tell you oh you got to start going to the gym if you want to lose weight that might be great for some people who's you know whose inner mind is able to wrap around that for other people it's not it's not going to really have an effect because what they really need usually when someone is overweight and they're not going to the gym it's not because they don't know that they need to go to the gym is because they don't have the motivation to do it so that means that somewhere in their mind they're not getting triggered and getting excited about the idea of going to the gym whereas someone like a bodybuilder for example doesn't have that problem a bodybuilders go to the gym and he's excited all the time so now the question is what is the difference in thinking between a bodybuilder and then someone who is overweight who wants to start going to the gym well it's how they think about the gym it's all the beliefs that they have so maybe the reason the overweight person is not going to the gym and this might be different for every single individual it might be something like well the fact that they think that by going to the gym and they've never gone before and they're 50 pounds overweight then they start thinking like well I go to the gym and I'm going to start working out and then people are going to start looking at me I'm going to be I'm going to where am i doing my gym my gym shorts and my gym shirt and I'm be fat and overweight and I'm going to look horrible and I'm not going to be doing any heavy lifting for months because I have to build up to it I'm going to be running really slow on the treadmill so basically I have to start at Ground Zero and I'm gonna look like a fool whereas all these other ripped guys going to be walking around me working out and laughing in my face so maybe like that's the kind of picture they have of the gym so if they have that kind of picture you know of course of course they're not going to want to go to the gym there's a lot of resistance from that so in that case we got to find out what that resistance is and then work with it and that's going to be very specific to that individual for somebody else it might be totally different you know somebody else that does want to go to the gym might be thinking about the long commute that they need to make to the gym and the fact that they don't have time that that's time that they need to spend with their family and their kids that you know how selfish of them is it too to worry about their own weight and their own and their own looks which in the end are so vain right like caring about your looks and your health is so kind of vain in some on some level versus for example you know driving your kids to soccer practice and picking them up from school and spending time with them at dinner so if someone is very family-oriented they're gonna have a problem going to the gym because that's just time that's being taken away from their family so that's a totally different block and again all this is in your head not to say that there aren't real challenges out there I mean sure you have a limited time that's that's that's real but the fact is that there's also ways to work around it and in all those cases there's ways to get yourself to go to the gym it's just a matter of wanting it and then working through it so in that case you know we would start working with that person's particular problems and start looking at okay so the blocks are you know family time how could you make family time and gym time maybe how could you combine the two what are some possibilities there so we start working with that you know is it really true that you need to sacrifice family time is it really true that going to the gym is vain how are you actually helping your family by going to the gym maybe if you go to the gym you get fit and you lose 50 pounds you stop being a fat ass and stop being lazy and lethargic and sleepy maybe you'll have more energy with the kids your kids will have more fun with you you'll be more engaged and you'll actually gain gain more than you lose so it'll be a win-win so that's like ways of how to turn that kind of stuff around and this applies this applies everywhere it's not just the gym that's just like an easy example to use this can be with your business that can be with your relationships can be with how you're eating you know how you're approaching almost any aspect of your life any kind of negative habits that you have any kind of blocks that you have so coaching is really good about that and that's also really why coaching is is a good addition to kind of traditional self-development which is usually done through like self-help books so if you read Tony Robbins that kind of stuff you might be wondering well you know I've already read Tony Robbins I'd some that stuff I listened to some CD programs I'd listen somebody I watch them seminars maybe I went to a workshop or two I've read some articles online you know maybe I have my favorite newsletter self-development newsletter that I've signed up to so why do I need some sort of code you know some sort of coach to help me with my with my issues well all that stuff is great I think it gives you a very solid foundation I encourage you to do all of that as much as you can I do it myself I love it the only issue is that sometimes you need a little bit more you know and sometimes your problems are personal and that more generic advice that's geared towards the mainstream so you know if Tony Robbins is giving you some weight loss advice it just might be you know something that will apply to everybody but it might not address your specific little quirk or hang-up and it's not going to really deal with your specific inner game might give you some general inner game advice but not very specific in your game advice and especially if it's stuff that you've been trying for a long time and you haven't been able to get through on your own or with the help of books and CDs and stuff like that like maybe you've been trying to lose weight for a long time and you really struggle with it you keep losing a few pounds then you keep putting it all back on and you just can't lock it and make it sustainable well that's the kind of change that may be a coach you'd want to coach to help you with because you know you've already done the studying but it's still not enough you're still not really motivated engaged to do what you want to do you're having trouble locking it in so there's some sort of block that you have and you can either try to figure out on your own or you can help figure it out with the help of a coach save yourself some time and some struggle in the long run it might be a really good investment for you so that's that's another way that coaching is great is that it really deals with your specific inner game it's very tailored to you know to every individual client like few other few other products or services can be let me think you know what what other what other coaching benefits are there generally I think that when I'm coaching somebody I always have a tendency to give a little bit of advice or to ask leading questions so questions that start to get the the person thinking along the lines that I want them thinking along and that's easy for me to do and it's very tempting because like I said I do have that background of self development so I tend to know generally you know what direction someone needs to go and if they want to improve their relationship or they want to see more success in business or that kind of stuff but I actually find that the most powerful way to help people is to ask them questions that make them pause so and I actually look for this in my coaching sessions now because I'm always evaluating the questions that I'm asking some of my questions are kind of a boilerplate but some of the best questions is like when I ask something of a client and that client has to pause and then you hear a silence on the phone on the other end and they're just like whom they're just pondering it and maybe they struggle to answer it or maybe what they say is they say something like oh I don't know I don't have the answer to that and then I'll ask something like oh really well why is it so hard for you to answer that and then they start with they really start to think about it they start to to think down directions they've never thought down before because usually when you're thinking your mind can only focus on one thing at a time and you start to go down this this branching tree so you're thinking and then you have a few choices so you go down one choice then you choose another choice another choice other choice another choice so there's a lot of the tree that gets left unexplored of decisions and thought patterns which can lead you to totally different conclusions and in totally different directions so when I get a client going down a branch that he or she has never gone down before and to really get the gears turning in the head you can almost feel it and I mean I'm just coaching over the phone so I don't even see the client but I can I can feel it in my body when they start the cogs start turning so they're going out of kind of automatic mode and they're getting really conscious and aware and kind of deliberate about what they're planning so maybe it's something like asking them what they really want out of their relationship and maybe you know they haven't really thought about it and just forcing them to start defining what they really want out of their relationship and when you start doing that they start really think and start coming up with answers that lead to two results and lead to revelations and breakthroughs sometimes they might give a laundry list of answers and then one of those will seize on one of those and it's like oh what about this and it's like oh yeah that's actually a huge factor of the whole equation that I've never even considered before it just it never stood out to me before until you know a coach has a has kind of highlighted it and brought it forward so that's kind of how coaching can help without needing to give specific advice because a lot of times at least I kind of tend to think this way when a coach when people told me that like coaching just assumes that you have all the answers within yourself I'm like well on that you know it's good to have external knowledge it's good to have feedback and advice but I see that coaching now is a bigger piece of the pot it's just one piece of the larger puzzle of your life so it's definitely not a cure-all by any means and you should use other things in addition to it but what it can do is it can start jogging your memory and start getting you to think along as you've never thought about and dealing with inner blocks in a way where you know I don't need to tell you exactly what to do and it's good for me because that means I don't have to put the burden of responsibility on myself in terms as a coach in terms of know knowing everything I need to know so if you come to me and ask for coaching advice about business I don't need to be a business expert even though I you know I happen to have started my own businesses and I know a bit about that but I don't need to be like an expert in whatever business it is that you're doing to help coach you on it because usually the blocks are more general they're more psychological and they're more human than they are related to some specific business you know obviously if you have a problem with your business that you need various detailed help on you can get a consultant for that but also that consultant might just help you with that one specific problem whereas your bigger problem is going to be the way that you're thinking about your business and sure can someone to help you with there as well but you might not even realize that that's the problem until you talk to a coach and so it's good for a coach to not have to have that kind of level of specialization where we have to know your business we have to know you know I know stuff about fitness and weight loss and nutrition but you know I'm not a nutritionist I still feel qualified to coach you on that stuff because it's more about getting you engaged getting you motivated and removing your inner blocks that's what I'm coaching you on I'm not coaching you on the details of how to have a proper diet that's something that you would go to a book for that's something that you would go to a nutritionist for so I think I'm going to wrap up with that that was a really good I think I got all the points that I wanted out of there on in terms of you know how I see coaching as being valuable because to me it's really important that what I'm doing is valuable and it's not just a bunch of mental masturbation all right this is Leo for actualised org and for today I'm saying goodbye you