Everyone’s A Life Coach Today, But Few Help You Change. Here’s Why

You may have tried a life coach before. Maybe not. Most end up disappointed, or initially expectant, only to see immediate results quickly revert back to old habits.

Why Life Coaches Don’t Help People Change

What most coaches give in terms of practical advice isn’t really anything you don’t know already, it’s more of a motivation to get things done, to make changes in your life happen, but then after they’ve gone then you slip right back into the same routines, habits and fears again.

So, why didn’t it work?

It’s easy to say to someone that they need this help or that help, but the help many life coaches suggest often stays on the surface level, and it’s because either coaches are coming from a very surface level of understanding, and/or often express advice and truth through their own experience, and which doesn’t relate well to your own experience or needs.

Instead, with all good intentions, it’s try this or that, feel this or that, wake up earlier, meditate, learn to love yourself more etc. It’s all very hopeful, and, yes, sometimes people actually do need an inspiring person on their side to tell them it’s okay, but as soon as they aren’t around there’s no one to keep feeding them what they want to hear.

The accountability partner loses credibility when you aren’t able to be accountable when they aren’t there.

The issue is it’s played out on the external which keeps people somewhat blind towards how to truly take heed of their own conscious (never mind subconscious) understanding.

It simply doesn’t fix the core issue, and usually because most life coaches aren’t either qualified or knowledgeable enough (or both) to truly pinpoint where you need the help the most, or what fears, failures, or biases (blocks) are really holding you back, or understand where your conditioning is at societally.

They may only focus on trying to make you feel good about yourself and disregard the true blocks to your dilemma/s, which are often from a deeper source, and therefore coaching clients can find they still don’t overcome the blocks that stifle change.

What’s needed is a way to understand the ‘type’ of specific coaching help you need depending on where your block lies, and not generalist advice that applies generally to everyone.

Thankfully, there are places you can start yourself to help you adapt from inner blocks, such as following the 3 ways to unblock yourself suggestions below, and finding the coaching type you actually need to move past your blocks with our forward-thinking coaching type finder.

NOTE: A life coach, or any coach for that matter, is not there to be a friend or a counselor. If you do have deeper fears that are affecting your life in a negative way, where a coach can’t coach you into action in the right direction, then you need a therapist, not a coach.

3 Ways To Unblock Yourself

1) Unburden Yourself Each Day By NOT Doing Things

Far too often we don’t change our ways because we don’t realise what is truly happening within our mind as time passes and we age. Sure, we know our priorities and expectations change, but they also mount if we haven’t overcome the fears, failures or biases of before.

Most coaches try to get you to focus on ‘actions’ towards something positive, but these actions can end up adding to our basket of worry if they don’t pinpoint the right focus. If we only add to our plate it leads to the subconscious reminder of ‘another day gone, another day lost’.

We want the world, and we want it now.

There’s a reason more people are being diagnosed with ADHD. There’s a reason why we are distracted and confused as to where to go and what to do next.

We have a daily dose of influence telling us to do this and that, buy this or that, think this or that, but rarely have a daily dose of ‘cleaning up’ to counteract it. Instead, we end up piling up the pressure, the expectation.

This can happen at any stage too. It’s not just for when you are starting something new, but it can equally be a big burden when you already have made something but the pressure is there to keep going because otherwise you feel that you’ve got to start all over again.

The truth is, most problems clients come to coaches with lies on this external need to fit in and compete. People come to them talking about how their life is this or that, but then end up talking about other people or challenges that are out of their control.

It’s often a case of not knowing when to just quit something, as we are always told how bad quitting is.

Yet, if you want to change an aspect of yourself or life then quitting is actually what you need to do more of to make room to focus on something else.

Instead, we seem to add more. If we thought about it though, would we do half of the things we do if it wasn’t for pressure or fear leading us to do it?!

Can you really just quit something you’ve been working on right now?

Let’s take that stack of books you’ve got to read, or those bucket lists of all the things you must do at some point (but which never get completed).

If you are always adding to your list, then it’s about time we started deleting from the list. You’ll learn more about what you actually want to do this way (as what you actually want or need will find its way back on the list at some point anyway), and you’ll free up more time to create positive change.

2) Don’t Do The Same Thing Each Day

If your day is the same as yesterday then it won’t change.

Okay. Duh. It seems so obvious, but it’s really one of the most common things people miss.

Instead, we get sucked into the notion of routine and repetition is good for us. But, you have to break routines to change another aspect of your life, even if so much advice out there says we have to build routines and habits.

You can’t ever do everything in your day, so prioritise, or better yet, as mentioned, cut out completely.

Waking up and repeating what you did yesterday won’t lead towards any change.

And thinking you will form a habit that you couldn’t do by yourself before, but then suddenly will be able to after a life coach told you so, is misguided thinking.

Yes, accountability from others can help but, as we’ve mentioned, your life coach isn’t going to be there by your side every day of your life. It’s your life, and you have to run it and be accountable for it, and the best way to do this is by getting used to change and challenge.

A big part of this is getting used to anxieties that are promoted each day when you have to do something different or show initiative.

At first, your mind is like ‘What are you doing to me, we are meant to do this at this time?!’, but once you feed it a dose of adaptability it will, well, adapt like a duck to water for different challenges.

The other part of being accountable is to stop living for tomorrow, and getting into the habit of action now.

Do you want to keep dreams as dreams?

It’s easier to dream than it is to take action on your dreams, but no action gets you nowhere.

Let’s say you really wanted to learn how to fly a plane, but you were stuck in a job or had no money etc. Well, if you did the same the next day then the situation doesn’t change.

It can be tempting to stay in comfort when something feels easier but be careful as it will only get harder to change when that comfort runs out.

You don’t want to change by force, you want to be in charge of how you change your life, so you need a goal and a daily dose of steady habitual action to make steps towards it.

That’s the one routine that can help you change, which leads to the third point.

3) Fight Your Fears And Biases Each Day

Don’t be put off by fears or biases either. They end up only growing when you take the easy way out and don’t do anything to change. The next week only feels worse when there’s more time lost in your life towards making something happen because you succumbed to fears or doubt.

Instead, do at least one thing a day directly towards your goal. Of course, a good coach can help you toward being more motivated, and help you break down what to focus on, but you still have to take the action.

It would not be pleasant to let life pass you by because fears overwhelmed you.

It’s never a lack of knowledge, that can be obtained. It’s always fear that holds us back, so it becomes essential to learn how to fight your fears (and biases).

To overcome fears you have to fight them either consciously or subconsciously.

You can consciously ask yourself what you think you might be afraid of, but chances are you’ve also developed coping mechanisms which will make excuses for your fears.

To address fears it’s better to pinpoint where in your life your fear might have stemmed from – 9 times out of 10 it’s from childhood.

With biases, it’s best to test your biases consciously as they are easier to challenge and react to. You can ask questions like whether you think ‘men are smarter’, or ‘women are smarter’. See how you react, it may surprise you what biased reactions you might have.

You likely are influenced each day by many things and have lots of bias tested without realising it.

We live in a world of over-consumption where so many things (like life coaches) are now over-saturated, which only adds to the confusion of decisive choice.

You can try not to consume so much by limiting your daily intake of media, but to deal with your potential biases right now, then go onto different news sites or simply read article headlines, and note your immediate reaction.

You probably dismiss or assume many things as we all do, but it’s these assumptions that can take up lots of energy and also prevent you from wanting to change from what you already know.

Get to know something different, and start accepting change into your life.