Coaching Model: Live Your Life ALIVE

A Coaching Model Created by Jessica Lyons
(Life Coach, UNITED STATES)

Martha Beck, a daring and courageous life coach likened life to a labyrinth, always doubling back from where we’ve come and crossing the circle of life as we move into a deeper connection with ourselves and with others.

The labyrinth design is central to the coaching model that I integrate with my clients. While we follow a number of processes, I often find myself doubling back to explore underlying beliefs with a client as they come up, or heading back to their vision to keep sculpting and molding where the client sees him or herself in this world.

I invite you to join me on the coaching adventure through the labyrinth of life.

What’s the Process?

1. Current Picture ­ Where is the client today?
2. Vision ­ Where does the client see themselves in the future?
3. Exploration ­ What is coming up in the client’s landscape? ­ Values ­ Underlying Belief (Byron Katie) ­ Core Desired Feelings ­Desire ­ Stuck and Getting Unstuck
4. Pick and Plan ­ Pick the focal points and develop a plan of action.
5. CELEBRATING! ­ Acknowledge and celebrate the clients achievements.
6. Review and Reflect ­ Ask the client what worked (is working) and what could change.

 

1. Current Landscape

The discovery session and initial intake session will create much of the emotional and physical landscape of the client. It is particularly important that the coach get a clear picture of the client’s life, as they see it, and an understanding of their personal belief and story. This will help craft the approach and the relationship built by coach and client.

2. Vision

Invoking the client’s internal and external landscape is not necessary here. This part is about creating a vision of the landscape as they want it to appear. This vision will be recreated and reshaped and reformed as a potter working with clay. But in order to know where a client wants to go, a coach needs to know how much (or how much fog in their vision) is happening for the client.

This vision will be a picture for the coach and the client to revisit and recreate as the client discovers and unearths pieces of themselves, their heart, and their desire in the exploration stage of this coaching model. Here’s where the coach gets to explore with the client what they actually want.

3. Exploration

Exploration is one of the key facets of coaching. This part is about discovery and risk­taking. It’s important for the client to feel comfortable and supported in taking risks to move them closer to their vision. This requires doing exercise to get clear on their values and measuring other life decisions against their values.

Exploring underlying beliefs is going to be an especially important foundational tool to come back to. We are going to unearth and deconstruct foundational beliefs that have been occurring throughout a client’s life. Specifically, I use Byron Katie’s “The Work” to do inquiry into these beliefs and create a space with which to change the way that we view them. This space allows the client to play with other ways of of seeing their story.

There are many clients that have never had the chance to dream for themselves and here is where we will explore their dreams, their desires, their yearning. It is only with deep connection with this space in our heart that we can create and move forward. Without being connected to our desires, without moving closer to our yearning, we are unable to grow and evolve as we were meant to in this life.

At all times, the coach job is to reflect the gaps that they see the client making. A responsibility of the coach is to create a trusting relationship where the client can be supported and pushed to the next level of their being. Highlighting or reflecting gaps in a client’s behavior or action is important for this part of the exploration process as the client discovers their deepest desires.

4. Pick and Plan

Here as coach, I’ll introduce Margaret Lobenstine’s Renaissance Soul “Focal Points.” This involves choosing 3­5 things that the client wants to focus their attention on. With these focal points, we will craft a plan for accomplishment and accountability that resonates with the clients spirit. As a coach and client we will develop daily and weekly practices and rituals that set the client up for success, their way!

This is a process, as we check in the execution of the plan, we’ll create flow charts and assign dates to deadlines to the tasks in order to climb up to the client’s goal(s).

5. CELEBRATE!

Some clients are especially good at this and other clients need a bit more help celebrating on the way down. Recently, Maria came to me because she wanted to quit her job and she was nervous to tell her supervisor. She was afraid that he would express anger and that she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. After she did, she was ready to take on the next mountain. Ready to face the challenges of her PhD program, she didn’t even stop to glance back at where she came from. She didn’t smell the flowers on the way down, she was running her way over the next peak.

In the mountains ranges of our lives, we need to also take time to look around as we reach each summit. These summits are often part of our labyrinth, popping up throughout our journey into ourselves and back out again.

In this phase, there will be time spent exploring rituals and establishing practices of celebration that speak to each client.

6. Review and Reflect

That downhill after the celebration is the time to use the momentum and the energy and reflect your process. Is there anything in your bag that you need to get rid of? Is there anything that you need? How are you going to change your pace on the way up the next one? What thoughts will you call on to propel you forward even when the way is difficult?

Be bold. Be courageous. Ignite your joy and dance your way to the top.

Jessica Lyons’ Mission : To embrace, inspire, and ignite joy in myself and others.