3 months ago, I began a new journey: the journey of becoming a coach.
Let’s pause here because many people, and maybe you too, don’t really know what that means. And that’s okay; to be honest, I didn’t really know what it meant either when I started. All I knew coming out of my Masters in Psychology and Spirituality at Columbia University, at the end of last year, was that I wanted a proven and effective method to work with people individually. I already had the ‘group facilitator thing’ down – I was leading mindfulness and wellness workshops, nature healing walks and I could teach meditation in front of a room. What I was missing was the individual growth piece: learning to support people through their life transitions, their goals and unique process of self-development. As a trained spiritual practitioner and alumna of the Spirit Mind Body Institute, my comfort zone was in holding space and showing up compassionately for anyone who attended my workshops or worked with me one-on-one. Now it was time to take those skills to the next level and branch out from wellness coaching into life coaching… and that’s how I came to the Co-Active® Training Institute.
Here we are, January 5th of 2022, I’ve just returned home to Northern California after finishing my graduate studies in New York City, been back for not even a full week and I’m already starting my first “fundamentals” coach training course. My initial reaction is that it’s a lot of jargon, but at the same time, I’m experiencing a sense of home-coming. Everyone in the virtual Zoom room is from a different background, both professionally and personally, yet we all share the same eager appetite to learn something new and be beginners at something again.
The Co-Active coach training model spans over 5 modules (or courses), totaling to over 100 hours of learning and practice in a classroom environment. I want to emphasize this, particularly if you are not familiar with the coaching industry, which is both unregulated and newer, yet has been booming exponentially in the last ten years alone. The most recent report by the International Coach Federation (ICF), conducted by PwC, found the estimated total global revenue for coaching in 2019 to be $2.849 billion USD, a 21% increase over the 2015 estimate. Therefore, with a booming and unregulated industry that allows anyone to call themselves a “coach”, I believe that formal and thorough training is essential. That was one of the reasons I chose Co-Active®, with its 30 years of expertise and 62,000 trained coaches working at some of the highest levels imaginable, while at the same time, teaching an embodied and intuitive method.
Coming from my background, working with people from a holistic mind-body-soul perspective, I was pleasantly surprised to find out right away that as a Co-Active coach, I hold every client to be naturally creative, resourceful and whole. In fact, throughout each course, it became more and more clear that my role as a coach is to bring forward the client’s internal resources, as well as help them discern and work with their self-critical feedback loops. To step back and empower the client to explore new perspectives or get in touch with their emotions and biggest dreams.
It’s an organic and magical process fueled by authentic connection within a safe container (the “Co” in Co-Active stands for that level of connection or “being-ness”). And of course, at the end of each session, there is a level of accountability and action, as is more typically expected within a coaching framework, which supports the client in their development until the next session.
The other side of the coach training process that often gets overlooked is that throughout each course and outside of class, a lot of internal work and heavy lifting is done by the coach-in-training. If you too are on a journey of growth or healing, you will understand this. It takes a lot to make conscious choices day after day, to reprogram our old patterns and get in touch with what is really at the heart of our being. This journey is fluid – forget the straight line metaphor because that’s not how real life works, and yet, each twist and turn on that journey is filled with new learning and possibility. I know that I’m a more well-rounded and whole person now than I was just three months ago and the good news is that life continues to be my teacher no matter what.
While this is only a brief overview of my take-aways from Co-Active coach training, I could not be more excited and honored to be of service to the world in this way. I am fulfilling my purpose to bring clarity and compassion to all beings by supporting my coaching clients, as well as expanding my skill set by taking part in the positive intelligence coaching grant and pursuing my professional ecotherapy certification.
Now, what about you? How are you choosing to show up today and serve your authentic purpose in the world? If you have any questions about becoming a coach or hiring a coach, don’t hesitate to comment or reach out to me directly.
