Maxwell and me.

Some time back I was introduced to the concept of life coaching right here in Mississippi. My thoughts prior to this introduction were, “Yeah, right. Bogus.”

Well, I was so, so wrong.

Life coaching, turns out, is something I’m hard-wired for. I’m all about being an encourager and giving hope. But what if there was a way I could step out of that role and, rather than trying to teach, persuade, convince someone else, I was able to lead that other person to set their own agenda and goals and help them realize those goals?

I’m in.

If you want to scroll to the bottom and bypass all my musings, you’ll find a couple of links that will take you to more coaching information.

Spoiler: If you’re interested in being coached, the first session is absolutely free, no obligation. 

There was a bit of a problem. Anyone can call themselves a life coach. There’s no standardized certification process out there. It’s easy enough to find an online course that proposes to equip you as a life coach, but there’s no regulatory entity that determines whether someone is legit or not. It’s like the old days of massage therapy – anyone could call themselves a massage therapist, but now there are licensing standards in place. Currently, though, life coaching is like the Wild West. Fortunately, there are sound, professional ways to be trained.

If this were to be something I wanted to pursue, my commitment was to find the very best training and equipping I could. I researched for a long, long time.

I finally elected to get my training and be certified through the John Maxwell Team. I’m not afraid to use the term “gold standard.” It is recognized as the most comprehensive coaching training and curriculum available in the industry. It’s been challenging for me personally. This is a good thing. Coaching is my passion.

So, equipped by the best organization around as a coach, I’m ready to roll. And it’s all for you. My coaching involves the ability to understand you: to think how you think, and understand your perspective. From this benchmark, I will place another perspective on top of yours – stretching you and growing you gently to see a more empowering way. As a certified John Maxwell coach, I can see what you are going through now and what is up ahead. Coaching is foreseeing, paving the way, coming alongside you while helping you achieve goals and overcome what has limited you.

What is life coaching?

It’s a trendy concept, for sure. But let’s unpack this.

At its heart, it’s the process of helping you identify specific goals or certain things you want to accomplish, and then guiding you along the journey of reaching those goals. The beauty of life coaching is that it is applicable to any, and I mean ANY, component of your life.

It is driven by you. As the client with me, you develop and hold the agenda. It will be uniquely designed to serve only your success.

This process is broad and diverse. It can cover a whole host of benefits, such as dealing with immediate issues that are keeping you from growing, helping with personal communication and impact, and building a vision and plan against a life’s dream and goal.

This is a good time to share what coaching is not appropriate for:

• People with dependencies such as drugs and alcohol.
• Therapy for people who have suffered abuse
• A shoulder to cry on
• People who are abusing others
• People who are experiencing mental illness
• Counseling

Key point: therapists in some of the above fields deal with events that have happened in the past. Coaching is specifically about the present and the future. Coaches (this coach, anyway) is not qualified to deal with any past emotional trauma that is preventing you from moving forward.

Anytime. Anywhere. (sort of).

The beauty of the model I’ve adopted is that I can serve you from anywhere that has a wifi connection. So there’s the anywhere. The anytime is a little more iffy … obviously, there are day jobs, family responsibilities, and time zones to contend with.

We can make it work.

And for teenagers! (Just for parents.)

I’ve been working with teenagers vocationally for 40 years. That’s nuts. But I’ve also added working with teens to my services.

When it comes to coaching teenagers so that they will want to do better in school, make good decisions, become more responsible, etc., my philosophy comes down to two core ideas:

1. Teaching them to become self-motivated
2. Helping them find their purpose & meaning to life

The first step in helping your child become a responsible young adult is to teach them how to become self-motivated.

When they are children, they rely on you the parent to be the driving force behind their life. But as they mature, they are going to need to learn how to become self-motivated so that they are now the driving force behind their life.

This is why many parents struggle with getting their kids to do their homework, clean their room, brush their teeth, and do all the things they need to do to become responsible and independent.

Because they are not self-motivated and lack structure and discipline.

One of the biggest challenges you as a parent will face is to help keep your child focused on developing good habits rather than drifting on bad ones (i.e. too much TV, social media, video games, etc.)

The second step in helping your child become a responsible young adult is to teach them how to find purpose and meaning in their life.

Because you have been the driving force in their life (up until now), your child has not had a reason as to “why” they should behave more responsibly.

So many parents struggle to get their kids to do the things they need to do and it’s because most kids don’t have a good reason as to “why” they should. They don’t see what’s in it for them.

However, once they identify their purpose in life, now they have meaning which will be the driving force (instead of you) as to “why” they will do their homework, clean their room, be more focused, and make better choices.

To summarize…

Your child is not lazy or unmotivated.

Just tell them that you are going to take them to the amusement park or out shopping and they will move at lightning speed.

The reason why most teenagers “look” lazy or unmotivated is because they have not associated all the things you want for them as a benefit from their perspective.

Once they make the connection, you will see your child become more focused and driven without you having to drag them every step of the way.

So if you want to…

Help your child become more driven, responsible, confident, and focused so that they make good decisions and become a healthy, happy, and successful young adult…I can help.

If any of this intrigues you, you can get details right here.

Are you concerned about your teenager? Check things out here.

The John Maxwell Team faculty. World-class. The gentleman punching me in the stomach is Christian Simpson, my primary instructor.