As you know, we often field questions from people who are thinking about getting their life coach certification.

One of the questions is…

“What if I want to be a speaker along with getting my life coach certification?”

It’s a great question… and it’s a great opportunity.

LIFE COACH CERTIFICATION + SPEAKING = GREAT OPPORTUNITY!

Personally, I do a lot of speaking and I find that with each paid speaking gig… I also have the opportunity to connect with potential life coaching clients.  Plus… it’s always fun to go beyond the one-on-one work of life coaching… and get to impact a larger audience.

But I have to say that one of my favorite aspects of having a life coach certification and speaking is… you can utilize life coaching strategies as you speak.  And that increases your impact dramatically.

Let me give you an example.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to the International Association of Administrative Professionals.  It was a great group and we were digging into strategies that help you to overcome worry and stress.  Really… the concepts were self-coaching strategies that allowed to them to be aware of their self-dialogue.

As we worked together… I landed on one specific concept that the group loved.

GRATITUDE

As you may know… studies have shown that you can not only cultivate gratitude… but as you do… your body starts to produce increased levels of dopamine and serotonin. Now these bad boys are your body’s natural anti-depressants. They’ve also been shown to increase your ability to retain information and think more clearly.

For example, one study published in American Psychologist found that if participants in a study wrote down three good things each day for a week… they would be happier and less depressed.

In fact, this study continued on and found that if participants continued to look for three good things a day… they continued to be happier and less depressed at one-month, three-months and six-months!

The longer the person continued… the longer the effect. Even when the group stopped the daily exercise, researchers found that the “Gratitude Group” stayed happier and less depressed than the control group.

The conclusion from the study: Researchers found that the study group had trained their brains to look for things to be grateful for and that started to change the way they looked at the world. So this little exercise of writing down three good things… changed them on the inside (increased levels of dopamine and serotonin) and changed them on the outside (their view of the world).

COACHING STRATEGY AND SPEAKING:

I challenged them to think of three to five things that they are grateful for every day.

In other words… I asked them to ask themselves a coaching question every day.

What are three things that I’m grateful for… today?

I clarified that they don’t have to be HUGE things like trips to Disney World. And they don’t have to be wildly profound either. They can be simple things like a really good meal… a really good laugh with friends… or a really nice convo with a friend.

I told them that the key is they have to be specific.

You can’t just say… “I’m grateful for my family, my friends and my dog.”

You need to think about something specific. Like… “I’m grateful for my walk with my dog this morning. That made me laugh and feel good.”

But that’s it.  Just three things.

Happy Furry Friday, folks! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That’s right… coach yourself to find…

Three specific things… daily.

And when they look for the good stuff… science says they start to pump their body full of the “good stuff.”

Plus, their brain will begin to get in the habit of looking for more good stuff… which will not only help them to feel happier… but it will also have a positive effect on their ability to perform, stay focused and remember stuff.

And heck… who doesn’t want more of that?

So… see how I did that?

I simply used a good coaching question and a specific strategy… and then equipped them to coach themselves.

It sounds simple… but in other ways it was revolutionary for them.

Plus, it really set up the opportunity to be able to talk about how I work with individuals one-on-one with the same types of strategies to help them to break through to new levels of performance, clarity and engagement.

Keep dreaming BIG and helping others to do the same,

Mitch Matthews

Related articles

• Life coach certification: Quotes for Life Coaches(trainingtobealifecoach.com)

  ---

• Note 343 – Expressing gratitude through writing (mywritingnotebook.com)
• Teaching Kids the Importance of Gratitude (everydayhealth.com)
• Gratitude enables you to attract what you long for (uclaislamicstudies.com)
• Are you thinking about life coach certification? (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Life Coach Certification: Myth 12 (trainingtobealifecoach.com)

We are freakishly proud of Elizabeth Saunders who is a graduate of our “Coach Mindset Life Coach Certification.”

We’ve been excited for Elizabeth since she graduated from our life coach certification program because she’s been an incredibly successful, impactful and dynamic life coach.  And she’s grown her time management and life coaching practice to the point in which she’s working with clients around the world.

But to to top that off… today she published an article in the Harvard Business Review.

In it… she focuses on the thought patterns that create success and failure.  She also offers some simple but powerful tips to help you to direct your thinking in more powerful ways.

Plus she also offers some helpful tips to assess whether your self-talk is negative or positive when it comes to areas of…

• Evaluation of self-worth
• Sense of over-responsibility
• Insecurity in relationships

Here’s a segment from the article…

Your passion for your career can sabotage your attempts to succeed.

Elizabeth Saunders

When you go from feeling energized, excited and in control of your work to feeling an overwhelming compulsion to achieve and produce, you’ve tipped from helpful harmonious passion into harmful obsessive passion.

Click here to read the full article.

Dig in.

I’d highly recommend checking out what Elizabeth has to say because it could help you as you navigate some of your own career moves… including the decision to pursue a life coach certification.

But she also offers insights that you could utilize with your own life coaching clients.

So yes… check it out and be inspired.

By the way, I know this has been a dream of Elizabeth’s.  Where would you love to have an article published?  Whether it’s an article about life coaching or some other topic you are passionate about… who would you love to write for?  Click comments and let us know.  We’d love to hear from you!

Keep dreaming big and helping others to do the same,

Mitch Matthews

Related articles

• Life Coach Certification: Myth 12 (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Are you thinking about life coach certification? (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Something I didn’t expect when I got my own life coach certification. (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Training to be a life coach: Do I actually need a life coach certification? (trainingtobealifecoach.com)

As you know… we’re going after myths that exist around the process of getting your life coach certification.

Today’s mythmight surprise you.

Bookstand with large textbook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s MYTH 12: You can be told how to coach.

Weird… right?

You might be thinking… “How could this be a myth?  Isn’t a Life Coach Certification simply a life coach training with an exam at the end?”

Well… in some ways that’s true.

But the key difference is… you can’t simply be told how to coach.

You have to own it. 

You have to take the ideas within a life coach training program… and make them your own.

Sure… you can learn life coaching strategies and techniques.  There’s no doubt.  However… unless you take the next step and “own” them… those theories and concepts just become useless baggage.

Let me give you an example.  I recently met with a woman who was going through a different life coach certification program.  It had been intense for her.  Multiple live sessions.  Time away.  Loads of theory and coaching history.  Lots of strategy and processes.  In fact, it was obvious that this particular program put a high value on “information.”

Now, information can be good.  But too much… can frankly get in the way.

Case in point… when we started to talk about prospective life coaching clients for her… I started to ask her about how she wanted to help people.  She threw out some general ideas and I said, “Great.  I like that.  Now, let’s say one of these people agreed to a complimentary session with you.  What would be the first two to three questions you’d want to ask them?”

Dead stare.

She had nothing.  Her brain was spinning.  She was processing all of that information.  She was sorting through all that training.  But she was stuck.  She was stumbling to come up with her lead questions.

She hadn’t owned it.

All of that training was still data someone had presented.  But she hadn’t found a way to make it her own.  She hadn’t found the way she wanted to use it.

I will even say that she had practiced.  But she had practiced in role play scenarios… tightly linked to the information as it was being presented.  So when I started throwing out real-world scenarios… that weren’t linked to made up role plays… she was stuck.

Now… I will tell you that I got frustrated for her.  (Not at her… for her.)

I said… “They didn’t help you beat your own “Intellectual Immune System.”

She looked at me with a puzzled face and said, “My Intellectual… what?”

I then explained my theory about how our intellect has a similar immune system to our body’s.  Not… medically… but metaphorically.  Basically, the idea is that intellect tends to reject things that come from outside us (even good ideas) over time… just like our body rejects much needed organ transplants… because they come from outside us.

Here’s a video from a recent TEDx event where I spoke in depth on the concept of the Intellectual Immune System:

So… again… here’s the key to overcoming this myth.

You can’t be “told” how to coach.  Yes… you can be given useful information and strategies.  (We do that in our training.)  Yes… you can be given proven tools and processes.  (We do that too.)

But… you can’t stop there.  You can’t stop at information.  You have to go a step further and ask yourself questions like…

• How am I going to own this concept?
• How could I adapt this strategy to fit my AVATAR (my ideal life coaching client)?
• Where could I employ this strategy to help my AVATAR to achieve what they want to achieve?

Keep asking yourself those questions.  Keep digging deeper.  Keep owning it.

And as you do… you will start to beat your own Intellectual Immune System and the “information” will become your own.  The techniques will become second nature.  They will simply start to flow from you.  Because… they are yours.

So beat this myth.  Don’t just be “told” what to do.  Own the solutions and beat your Intellectual Immune System!

As you do… you will set your own Life Coaching Clients to achieve the things they want to achieve!

Keep dreaming big and helping others to do the same,

Mitch Matthews

PS – Interested in finding out with the number 1 life coach certification myth is?  Click here to find out!  I think you may be surprised!

Related articles

• Are you thinking about life coach certification? (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Life Coach Certification: Myth 18 (trainingtobealifecoach.com)
• Life coach certification: MYTH 27 (trainingtobealifecoach.com)