"why shouldn't you succeed?"

A client of mine recently sent me this article from the Huffington post and I think it sums up why people who work with coaches benefit from the relationship. As the author, Deborah Gaines says, "With kindness and patience, [my coach] began to do what all good coaches do: dismantle the road blocks I had placed in the way of my own success."

For me, as a coach, this happens in two directions. First, it's about removing what you've layered onto yourself in hopes of being/having/doing all the things you've wanted to be/have/do. All of those layers aren't working, right? If they were, you'd be/have/do all the things you've wanted. So removal. Then, alignment. The second part is all about identifying what's important to you, and then getting more of that in your life.

To do this, I often have clients identify their values. What are the guiding principles that steer them through their lives? What makes them tick? What makes them uniquely them? What principles and practices are important in their lives? What do they want from the people and the world around them? And then I ask them to identify what percentage they're living that value. (Usually the answer is under 50% for at least one essential value.) And then I ask what it would take to bump that percentage up 10%. Not 100%. Not even 25%. Just 10%. And we go from there.

We're a culture that often asks "what's next?" instead of "what's possible?" And coaching, on the whole, asks both. Because what's next is of no value if you haven't truly considered what's possible.