The main reason that I first hired a coach in 2020, was because I wanted to work as a coach myself. Researching how to get into coaching, making sure you were being coached was the number one piece of advice that kept coming up. So, when I hired my first coach, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew I needed some kind of guidance and support that I wasn’t able to find within my family and social circles. I was trying to move forward in my life but felt as if I was wading through thick mud and not getting anywhere.
After about 5 months of various coaching, I prepared to launch my own coaching business. But I wasn’t really ready to and it ended up being a bit of a false start. I realised that having belief and confidence in myself wasn’t enough to get me clients. I decided to do some more research on coaching and what other coaches offered, as my experience was quite limited. There seemed to be a lot of coaches who could ‘help me manifest my dream life’, ‘change my mind set in 30 days’, ‘help me earn £10k in 5 days’. Call me cynical, but I started to feel a bit jaded with the idea of coaching and wondered if this path I had wanted to take was really all I thought it would be.
So, I took a step back and thought about how I had come to coaching in the first place. I’ve been on a self-development journey for nearly 25 years. That’s a pretty long time and a lot of self-help books! I’ve had therapy, done a lot of inner work, and also just got on with my life, trying to learn through my own experiences and knowledge gained along the way. I realised that the coaching I had invested in would not have worked, if I hadn’t gone through some type of self-development before I even hired a coach. When I look at a lot of coaching programmes being offered, the basic level of self-development doesn’t seem to have been thought about and it is straight into what your goals are and how to achieve them.
I never realised how much I needed a coach until I hired one. And the gains I’ve felt, I know I would not have experienced if I had carried on struggling on my own. Coaching is an investment. Of time, money, and self-worth. And not all coaches will tell you that. Coaches on the whole, want to help you become a better version of yourself, but some coaches get so caught up in this outcome, that the outcome becomes more important than the person being coached. A good coach is one who is not afraid to turn you away if they don’t feel you are ready. A good coach is one who will hold up a mirror to you in the way that family and friends won’t. A good coach will not tell you that your dream life will appear in 30 days, just as long as you believe it. A good coach will tell you that there is a certain level of work that YOU need to do, in order to work towards the outcome you want.
There are people who don’t know whether coaching is for them or whether they even need a coach. There are people want to but who don’t know where to start on their personal development journey or are feeling apprehensive at doing so. Or they don’t have the money to invest in coaching at a given moment in time. I tried to put myself in their shoes because they are people who often need the guidance and support the most.
I created the PERSONAL GROWTH WORKBOOK for this reason. It helps you discover where you are in your life, who you see yourself as and areas of your life you want to work on. It is a cheaper alternative to a full on coaching program, but the first step in making the changes YOU want to. And it is only the first step. Because I truly believe that a personal development journey is something that is a lifetime commitment. Because if we are not growing, then surely, we have stopped living.
Harmesch x
You can purchase the PERSONAL GROWTH WORKBOOK here on my website. Click this link to buy.
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