How Health Coaching Can Help You Find Your Inner Badass
You are an amazing and powerful human being put on this planet for a purpose. Maybe some days you really feel this, but it is also so human to feel like you are getting in your own way and are struggling to move forward on stuff you want to get done. Perhaps some of this stuff has to do with improving your health but you feel like you have neither the time nor the space in your brain to figure it out. To use a common phrase, change is hard – and it can feel overwhelming. There is no shortage of information about what we ‘should’ be doing for our health – eat better, move more, manage our stress and get consistent good sleep. Knowledge, however, doesn’t always lead to action.
The challenge often lies in how to implement these changes. Getting unstuck from a habit you know isn’t helpful, like enjoying a tasty bowl of chips before bedtime, can lead to feelings of shame and discouragement. Research supports the idea that the judgement we heap on ourselves for these dietary indiscretions causes us real stress and further reinforces bad habits. Negative thoughts and emotions impair our judgement so we are less able to make change, and so it goes…
How do we break out of the habits and behaviours that hold us back and move towards what we do want? That is very thing health coaching is designed to do.
As a health coach, I help people identify what it is they want in their life and support them in getting there. How exactly do coaches help people break these cycles and embrace new habits? We use the tools and techniques of motivational interviewing and positive psychology to help clients find their inner motivation to change.
When beginning to work with a client, I ask questions like: What gets you fired up about life? What’s truly important to you? What hopes and dreams do you hold for yourself?
Following this, I help clients create their own change goals that aim towards this better future. And session by session, we explore ways to make progress on them by coming up with small, doable steps called experiments. As partners on this journey of discovery, we reflect on learnings, celebrate wins and collaborate on possibilities for growth.
Health coaches throw out the ‘shoulds’ around health and behaviour change and instead focus on partnering with clients to use their innate strengths, life experience and inner wisdom in order to make change that is realistic and doable for them. When we center ourselves in our own health story, it has a way of influencing other parts of our lives too. Famous actor, dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov is credited with saying “I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
I want you out there changing the world and showing up as your badass self – the world needs your light.
If this post makes you curious about health coaching, get in touch with me! I’m excited to share the benefits of health coaching with my community and would be happy to book a no-charge conversation about working with me as your health coach and learning more about your needs.