Ask 10 different coaches why this burgeoning profession is coming into prominence and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. If we take a long view of where society has taken us as individuals over the past 100 years, the need for and benefits of personal coaching start to become apparent.

Decline of the Family
At the turn of the last century, we were dependent upon one another for our very existence. In spite of our pioneering spirit–or maybe because of the enormous risks we were taking in blazing trails across this new country–we needed each other for our most basic of needs.

As we skip through the subsequent decades and observe the morphic changes of society, we notice a gradual disconnection of the tight bonds previously necessary to survive. The traditional family unit shrinks from the supportive environment of multigenerations living under one roof to the scarce reality of single parents barely able to make ends meet… both financially and emotionally.

The answer to the question ‘Why Coaching?’ could be a simple one. It may be our attempt at partial restoration of the safe environment we once enjoyed as an interdependent family unit.

Sense of Community
Even if multigenerational families under one roof are not the answer in today’s society, you’d have to agree the pendulum certainly has swung the other way just a little too far. We interact with grocery checkers, bank tellers, and convenience store clerks without so much as looking them in the eye.

We see neighbors who have lived near us for months or even years and we don’t even know their names. This conscious disconnect is often justified by the pace of our lives and, ironically, the needs of our family. This fast food equivalent of Family and Community, with fries on the side, is not nourishing our body, nor our mind, much less our soul.

We have read the self help books and listened to the self help tapes. Unfortunately, they have been of marginal assistance, or at best, less than we had hoped. We can pat ourselves on the back at our efforts to improve ourselves and admire those titles stacked in our bookcase.

If we are honest, however, we must admit they are now more ‘shelf help’ than self-help. In the dark recesses of our mind we recognize, we cannot do this alone.

Fortunate Few
For years, serious athletes, actors, and politicians have all used personal coaches to help maximize their skills and abilities. These professionals are often at the top of their game, yet wouldn’t think of ‘going it alone.’ Many of us are now recognizing the value of this unique relationship and are adapting it to a personal level.

Personal Coach, or Life Coach, are more than a friend with whom to share problems. They are a sounding board for solutions to the challenges we face on a daily basis. They are mentors in some cases, cheerleaders in others. Part consultant, part family. Coaches unleash the power of partnership.

With a coach, we do more than we would do on our own, go further and faster toward our goals, and take ourselves more seriously. We have an accountability partner who shares our best interest and keeps us moving forward. Personal coaching is about taking action and making things happen.

Taking It Up A Notch
Left to our own devices, we can often justify our average existence with the thought we are coping well considering all that the world is throwing at us. A Personal Coach helps us catch what we need, deflect the unnecessary, and totally disregard the irrelevant.

We don’t have to do it alone, but we are challenged to take responsibility for ourselves and to take action on our own behalf. Former Dallas Cowboys coach, Tom Landry, sums it up this way, ‘A coach is someone who gets you to do what you don’t want to do, so you can be who you want to be.’

The time for personal coaching is now. The reasons are the ones bouncing around in your head at this very moment. The question now becomes, are you ready for the rewards that come with taking the game of life to the next level?

Source link:- Personal Coach

professional challenges, she happened upon a piece of information that changed her life.

It had to do with personal coach Dianne Arguelles and her Santa Barbara, California-based business New Heights Coaching, through which she helps her clients “design the lives they want, set goals for themselves and make their dreams come true”. What a personal trainer can help you accomplish for your body, Arguelles suggests, a personal coach can do for your life.

Get Unstuck and Make Some Changes

“I had heard about personal coaching a year or two previous to that and I remember thinking what an interesting thing it sounded like,” Reese explains. “I was feeling stuck in my life professionally and personally and saw it as an interesting opportunity to take the bull by the horns and make some changes.”

After working with Arguelles for three months, Reese discovered her life had changed dramatically. “I felt that all of a sudden things just started to happen. It was a very powerful thing.”

Confidence Building
Kira Anthofer, a sales representative with Powercom in Santa Barbara, found personal coaching to be exactly what she needed to help build her confidence working in a male-dominated telecommunications field. The only saleswoman in her company, she regularly works with Quite serendipitously, as graphic designer Karen Reese struggled with some personal and engineers and technicians regarding network hardware. “When I go to technical seminars a maximum of 15 percent of the audience is women,” she says. “I have to be able to interact with men.”

Personal coaching, which taught her to look inside herself for strength, made her a more powerful person. “I’m a former athlete and coached high school basketball,” Anthofer continues, “and when I heard the word ‘coach’ I knew what that meant. It’s all a matter of you. All a matter of the athlete. And the coach is there to guide you and help you fine-tune your skills. I don’t become dependent on the coach. I’m refining the tools I need to do it on my own.”

It’s All About Learning and Taking Action

Unlike psychotherapy, which focuses on emotional healing and examines an individual’s past to address his or her present state, personal coaching emphasizes learning, action and moving forward. People who seek out personal coaching usually have a good sense of what they want to work on, according to Mary Olk, PhD, a licensed psychologist and certified personal and professional coach.

“Some people are relatively insightful and know they have past patterns to address, past stuff that needs to be focused on, and know that healing and changing historical patterns has to be done. In coaching you deepen your insights, but it’s a combination of learning and action.” Therapy tends to be problem-focused, she says, while coaching tends to be strength-focused.

While psychotherapy tends to characterize the trained therapist as the expert, personal coaching suggests that the client has all the answers but may not know it and hasn’t figured out how to access them.

“The client may have a negative self-talk, a ‘gremlin’, I call it, who chatters such things as ‘Who are you to want something different?’ or ‘You can’t be happy; you don’t deserve that.’ It is usually this phenomenon that stops us from getting what we want. The coach helps in challenging and breaking through this,” Arguelles explains.

And It Requires a Commitment to Change

When Arguelles works with clients she asks them to make a commitment of at least six months, although many stay with her for as long as a year and a half. “You don’t really see changes until about the fourth month.”

The process begins with a two-hour, face-to-face intake session during which clients complete a detailed questionnaire about their life and where they want to go with it. “It’s getting them in touch with their values,” she says. “I’m constantly helping people bring forth their truth. It’s something people don’t give themselves permission to do.”

While that preliminary session takes place in person, the subsequent weekly coaching periods usually happen over the telephone. Arguelles arranges a specific time to speak with the client about issues relating to the goals at hand and, if necessary, goes over homework assignments she’s made the week before.

It’s Like Having a Private Cheerleader

The evening before a scheduled one-half hour coaching session, Reese fills out a form faxed to her by Arguelles. The form helps her outline the course she wants the conversation to take. “She asks questions like ‘What did you accomplish this week?’ or ‘What are you struggling with?’ or ‘Are you living with your values? And if not, why not?’”

“Every week I have homework and she’ll start off talking about that,” Reese says. “Sometimes there are specific things I want to talk about and sometimes it just flows into something I didn’t know I wanted to deal with.”

Arguelles describes the personal coach as a “private cheerleader”, someone who helps you figure out what you want to accomplish and keeps you on track.

Looking at the Entire Wheel of Life

Frederic Hudson, founder of the Hudson Institute in 1986 and the Fielding Institute in 1974, says, “Coaching is much like parenting or re-parenting. People come to you because they want you to help them be different or act differently.” Hudson has worked with about 1,700 people and has trained nearly 500 coaches. As he sees it, his job is to help people “grow, develop and facilitate the future”.

“Personal life coaching involves the entire wheel of life,” Arguelles says. The eight sections that make up the wheel include career; money; significant other; physical environment; health and wellbeing; personal growth; family and friends; and fun and recreation. “You look at the wheel and give each section a number relating to your satisfaction. It’s amazing how unbalanced your life can be.”

Although Arguelles focuses on personal rather than career coaching, she acknowledges that career is one of the sections in the wheel, “and you can’t help but take a look at it. And if the person is unhappy with it we’re going to look at how to incorporate it into the overall coaching work.”

Check to See That Your Coach is Certified

Becoming a coach can be as simple as taking a few classes and then hanging up a shingle, or as rigorous as the training program Arguelles followed at the Coaches’ Training Institute in San Raphael, California. The coaching industry is not government-regulated, but the handful of schools that teach coaching have credentialing programs.

To become a certified personal coach, Arguelles first had to complete 98 hours of classroom instruction working with master coaches. Then she spent six months enrolled in intense training TeleClasses. She was able to complete these from her home base in Santa Barbara. Then came 24 hours of lab work covering a variety of topics and 100 practical hours of coaching five paying clients. With all that done, she was ready to sit for the all-day written exam and performance evaluation, which had her coaching two individuals in separate situations under the watchful eye of master coaches.

It’s important, Arguelles stresses, for people looking for a coach to check for certification. “Ask her if she’s certified and where she got her training to be a certified personal coach. When I got certified I knew I was a really good coach. And there aren’t that many certified coaches out there.”
Many coaches focus on business and corporate environments, she adds, and got their training as business people or consultants. Their expertise may be better suited for career coaching than life coaching and it’s important to know that up front. Just as you wouldn’t call on an orthopedist to handle a cardiac problem, you shouldn’t expect a coach specializing in one area to excel across the board.

The Aim is to Create a Healthy, Happy Life

According to Arguelles, the going rate for personal coaching runs anywhere from $200 to $300 per month for weekly half-hour sessions. However, the International Coach Federation (ICF), a non-profit professional organization of personal and business coaches, lists prices ranging from under $150 per month to more than $500.

“But don’t equate the cost with the coach’s ability,” warns Arguelles, who hosts the Santa Barbara Chapter of ICF.

When it comes to coaching, ability involves more than a coach’s professional acumen. It also requires that she know the limits of her abilities and when a client is standing on ground she’s not qualified to measure. “If coaches aren’t clear on their own boundaries and what they can and cannot handle, it can be a problem, says Nancy J. Smith, PhD. “Coaches have to be really clear on their own issues and what they’re equipped to deal with and have some appropriate referrals on hand.” Also, she added, the person seeking a coach should be mindful of confidentiality issues because the coaching industry isn’t regulated and coaches aren’t ethically bound the way licensed therapists are.

Licensed psychologist and certified personal assistant Mary Olk concurs. “Coaching is on a continuum of personal growth. Therapy is more into healing and rebuilding and coaching is part of creating a healthy, happy life. I haven’t met a therapist who doesn’t see the value of it. And as a coach I don’t believe it’s a replacement for therapy.”

Source link:- Personal Coach

Roger Federer is in full preparation in this off season of continuing his assault on the tennis history books. He is one major singles title shy of equaling the all-time men’s record of 14 major singles title set by Pete Sampras from 1990 to 2002.The Australian Open, which begins January 19, 2009 in Melbourne, is Federer’s next target as he looks to win his fourth title “Down Under.” The following excerpt from the book THE ROGER FEDERER STORY, QUEST FOR PERFECTION, details Roger’s 2005 Australian campaign and how his coaching relationship at the time with Tony Roche began. For more information on THE ROGER FEDERE STORY, QUEST FOR PERFECTION, written by Rene Stauffer, please go to www.rogerfedererbook.com. (It makes for a great holiday gift for the tennis fan!)

Because of his success in the 2004 season, Roger Federer found himself in an interesting dilemma with regard to his coaching situation. He was without a coach for the entire year, making him the exception on the professional tour, yet he completed one of the greatest individual years in the history of the sport. Despite his success, he still sought new impulses. He still felt he had an even greater untapped potential and he wanted to continue to improve- especially his serve, his backhand and his net game. He knew that if he rested on his laurels and stayed stagnant, his game would regress.

However, he also knew the dangers that taking on a new coach would have not only for him, but for the coach as well. “If a player loses a few times, then they’ll say that it was the coach’s fault,” Federer said in Bangkok. “As long as I don’t have a coach, I don’t think too much, and as long as I play well, I also don’t have to change anything. That is the case right now, but I am also aware that there are going to be times when things won’t run as smoothly. Then it would be better to have a coach.”

Since the beginning of the 2004 season, rumors swirled that Federer was pursuing Darren Cahill as his coach. Cahill, who was actually a childhood school friend of Roger’s deceased coach Peter Carter, was a standout Australian player who reached the semifinals at the 1988 US Open and was the former coach of Lleyton Hewitt. At the time, he was working with Andre Agassi and Federer was quick to deny the rumor at every opportunity.

Truth be told, Federer had his eye cast on another prominent Australian of an older generation-Tony Roche. The unflappable man with the sun and wind-burned complexion was born in 1945 in Wagga Wagga-a city located between Melbourne and Sydney whose meaning is “the city of the many crows.” He was one of the greats in tennis history, but won only one Grand Slam tournament title in singles, mainly due to the fact that the competition of his era consisted of legends such as Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Ken Rosewall and John Newcombe.

In his prime, the left-hander was an imposing figure with a treacherous serve and brilliant net game that helped him secure 13 Grand Slam men’s doubles titles and guided him to four Davis Cup titles representing Australia.

In singles, he reached six Grand Slam tournament finals, including the Wimbledon final in 1968 and the US Open final in 1969 and 1970. His only Grand Slam triumph in singles came in 1966 on the slow clay courts at Roland Garros, where aggressive players like Roche are usually at a disadvantage.

Roche is a gentleman and when asked about his victory in Paris, he immediately emphasized that he was only able to win the tournament thanks to the fairness of his final-round opponent, a Hungarian named Istvan Gulyas. “I injured my ankle and, without a doubt, would not have been able to play in the final if he had not allowed me to have an extra day off to rest,”

Roche said. “It was an incredible gesture of sportsmanship.”

Roche is considered to be one of the world’s premier tennis tacticians. He is a polite, quiet, extremely modest and very discreet.Even Australian journalists who meticulously cover the sport admit that there’s a certain mystery to Roche. “He prefers to stay in the background when working with players,”said Australian radio reporter Craig Gabriel. Even during his glamour years as a player, Roche preferred ceding the limelight to Newcombe, his long-time doubles partner. Roche won 12 of his 13 Grand Slam doubles titles with “Newk”-five at Wimbledon, four in Melbourne, two in Paris, and one in New York. Newk and “Rochey”-as he is referred to in Australian circles-led the Australian Davis Cup team as captain and coach respectively from 1994 to 2000.

But Roche didn’t always manage to keep out of the headlines. At 29, following a series of unsuccessful treatments for serious shoulder and elbow problems,he consulted a miracle healer in the Philippines, who used acupuncture to treat his ailments and allow him the opportunity to achieve further accolades on the tennis court.Three years later in 1977, Roche starred in the Davis Cup Final when he upset Adriano Panatta of Italy to help Australia win the Davis Cup title. The win over Panatta, next to his French Open triumph 11 years earlier, was his most celebrated victory in singles in his career.

As a mentor, “Coach Roche” led New Zealander Chris Lewis to his unexpected run to the Wimbledon final in 1983. In 1985, he teamed with Ivan Lendl and steered the Czech to seven of his eight Grand Slam singles titles, but unfortunately, not the elusive Wimbledon title that Lendl so desperately desired. After Lendl’s retirement, Roche worked with fellow Australian Patrick Rafter, who won the US Open twice and became the No. 1 player in the world briefly in 1999. After the death of his coach Tim Gullikson in 1996, Pete Sampras even offered Roche a job as his personal coach, but Roche preferred to stay with Rafter. After Rafter’s retirement, he worked primarily in Australia, working in women’s tennis with the Australian Fed Cup team and also promoting up-and-coming Australian junior talents.

Both Lendl and Rafter still rave when asked about Roche and his influence on their tennis careers and their lives.

When once asked who the most important person was in his career, Rafter answered without hesitation, “Rochey is my hero above all as a human being and not just as a tennis coach.”

Source Link:- Personal Coach

The team would ideally have signed Pini Gershon beforehand but a few conditions have to be met before Maccabi’s ex can once again charm the fans.

First, Tel Aviv will have to compensate Gershon for the 25 percent tax gap between Israel and Greece, where he coached Olympiacos until this past February. If Gershon returns from Europe before completing three years abroad – which would be the summer of 2009 – he would have to pay full taxes on his Olympiacos salary and what he received from the Bulgarian national team, which he led this year. That could add up to hundreds of thousands of euros.

The second obstacle is convincing Gershon to take a team he didn’t build and won’t be able to alter beyond a player or two.

“A lot of names were raised over the last few days,” a senior Maccabi official told Haaretz. “The game against Malaga this Thursday will be critical for Effi.” The official said the front office had held several consultations since the team was routed last week by Hapoel Jerusalem. Other possible candidates include former Maccabi head coach Zvika Sherf.

Birenboim was unequivocal in response to reports of his imminent demise. “As long as they didn’t tell me anything, I am the coach,” he said yesterday. “I read what they say about me in the papers, but I prefer to keep my personal feelings to myself.”

Though he insisted yesterday he felt fine before the game, last night’s win surely must have let him rest easier.

Source Link:- Personal Coach

The fortune- teller

Coping strategies :-

First, shift your focus from worry to something that brings calm and joy. Shut your eyes and envision something like a favorite getaway. Next, ask whether you need to learn something from what you’re worrying about, then listen for the answer, said Tammy Holmes, Valley spiritual coach. Keep a journal of your worries, your answers and your actions. Note which paths panned out. This will help hone your intuition instead of wallowing in confusion, negativity and fear, Holmes said.

The ruminator :-

You go over past conversations and deeds, believing that by revisiting the past you will feel better. Instead, you feel worse. Negative self-talk, such as saying, “I always say dumb things like that,” only ignites regret, recrimination and self-doubt.

Coping strategies :-

“Ruminating about past mistakes – financial or otherwise – offers a lousy return on investment,” said Karen Russo, author of The Money Keys: Unlocking Peace, Freedom and Real Financial Power (Lifesuccess Publishing, 2007, $24.95). Russo, an ordained minister living in the Valley, offers these suggestions: Become present. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Bring a specific past event into your mind and ask, “What did I learn? What skills or relationships got created? What am I committed to not doing again? Share your answers with a supportive friend or family member. Then let it go.

The global warrior :-

The fate of the planet keeps you up at night. You worry about global warming, starving children, animals becoming extinct. You feel that just by worrying about them, you are helping improve those situations. Your compassion is admirable, but not when it interferes with your ability to care for yourself or loved ones.

Coping strategies :-

You are worrying about things that you single-handedly cannot control, said Theresa Ramsey, a naturopathic medical doctor and lifestyle expert in Paradise Valley. That awareness should lighten your load. Define how you would like things to be instead of focusing on how you don’t like what you see. This is shifting your energy away from fear to hope.

The Control Freak :-

You believe that your thoughts can control whether good things or bad things happen. While a good attitude can help, and being prepared is always a good idea, thinking that the future can be controlled is delusional and eats up energy.

Coping strategies

Control freaks are stressed, anxious, nervous, tense and uptight, said Julie Farha, a Scottsdale personal coach and author of Exploring Your Potential (Evolving Journeys,2008, $14.95).

First, stop the mind chatter. When it happens, say, “Stop!” as often as you need to. Visualize a stop sign if needed. Spend time in nature. Meditate or spend a few minutes each day in quiet. Get creative by painting, cooking, writing or listening to music. The more you embrace the flow of life and help others, the less opportunity worry has to creep in, Farha said.

The generalist :-

You worry about everything and nothing. You worry about whether traffic will make you late for work and whether you are putting enough money away for retirement. You worry when you have nothing to do while you’re waiting in line, put on hold or stopped at a traffic light.

Coping strategies :-

Instead of panicking, consider the eight T’s, said Grayce Gusmano, a marriage and family therapist, practicing in Scottsdale. The eight T’s stand for Take Time To Turn Toward Things To do Today. Take Time To: Consider where your focus is. Turn Toward: Worry can turn your mind in many directions. Turn your mind toward one concern at a time. Things To do: Discover those things you can do and make a list. Today: Do something today. Breathe. Seek support.

Source Link:- http://personalcoachnyc.blogspot.com/2008/11/theres-much-to-fret-about-here-are-ways.html

Ten Rockford runners ran their best times of the season at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh Brooks Invitational in a strong field of nationally ranked teams. There were 8 nationally ranked teams in the men’s race and 4 in the women’s race and ,according to Personal Coach Roger Fredrickson, this really helped the Regents run their best times of the season.  “The competition out here today was instrumental in producing quality performances and that fall in line with our goal to improve from meet to meet and finish better in the conference standings than we did last year. Our men’s team has established themselves as one of the top teams in the conference and these efforts today should help us remain in that upper echelon.”

The next meet for the “Running Regents” will be November 1^st at the Conference Championships in Mequon, Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin – Concordia.

Source Link :- http://www.rockford.edu/athletics/news_detail.asp?ID=1218