So you are successful, rich and achieved a lot in a short period of time. What can a coach help you with now?

A coach can help you see patterns that you might forget to notice. Ronald Heifetz, senior Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School uses a metaphor of the dance floor and the balcony. When you are dancing, you focus on your dance partner, and the way you dance.

But, if you had gone up to the balcony and looked down on the dance floor, you would have noticed certain patterns like when slow music played, only some people danced; when the music was loud others joined and some never danced. A coach can help you move between the balcony and dance floor and help you have both the big picture view and focused attention to details.

Sometimes we are not even aware of the potential of creating a minute change that could lead into a major breakthrough in our lives. Imagine: a ship sets sail from London to Venezuela and its compass bearing is 5 degrees out, the ship would reach New York.

So a 5-degree course correction in our life now can lead us to a very different place. A coach can help identify this area and support you in creating the 5-degree change today. This change could be in the area of a relationship, breaking out from a habit or addiction, creating certain changes in lifestyle etc.

Again, despite being successful and achieving important goals, you might still feel a certain emptiness inside, or feel that you are not in the flow. This is when we are not really connected to our life purpose. A coach can help you explore your life purpose, what gives more meaning to your life and the legacy and contribution that you want to leave behind.

Coaching can help you be more successful and happy because:
The coach is non-judgmental and does not have an agenda.

The coach is not an expert of your field. If you are an actor, the coach does not know how to act like you or direct a film. If you tell a close friend something you are going to do, he/she will have an opinion about it. But the coach supports you non-judgmentally and confidentially.

The Coach creates awareness and accountability.

A Coach helps you increase awareness and see why you do things the way you do. Awareness about our patterns is the first step towards creating change. The coach then holds you responsible for making the changes. It’s a self-directed journey.

Coach is an expert in his/her field.

A coach is a professional trained in the process of coaching, holding unconditional space for your growth, guiding you through ups and downs of the journey and holding you responsible for your actions. For example, I have spend 20 years of life learning everything that could help me create long-lasting changes in people’s life. I have gone though certifications that equip me to guide people through their breakthrough process and most coaches are trained professionals like me.

There are many approaches to coaching: some have their roots in industrial and organizational psychology, some in therapy, and some in the human potential movement and New Age metaphysics. Though their intellectual sophistication varies wildly, almost all coaching schools principally agree that the client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole – and she/he holds the answers to her/his needs.

The coach is not an expert on what’s going in the client’s life. His/her job is only to ask powerful questions, to increase the awareness of the client and help the client learn from what is happening by leading the client on a path of self-discovery and thus to action and commitment.

We all know it’s lonely at the top. Highly successful people lead a complex and high-pressure life, and often they have no one they can reach out to. A coach can help them be more aware of who they are, help them align their physical, mental and spiritual self. A coach can thus reduce burn out, help develop more emotional intelligence and enable them to manage success effectively.