What do you really want to be when you grow up?

Where is Your Life Going?

There has got to be something more than this, you tell yourself as you shuffle off to bed. Its been another defeating day of too many hours at the office, a hurried, errand-filled lunch break, eating fast food at your desk while working through stressful deadlines, dealing with your co-workers latest personal crisis, intense rush hour traffic, shuttling the kids around to their extracurricular activities, throwing together dinner while you sweep and make lunches for tomorrow - and at the end of the day, a moment or two to put your feet up in front of the TV - because you can't stand anything else.

Where is your life going? How is it ever going to get there? What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you really happy? These are all questions that a life coach can help you answer, while objectively guiding you through the difficult choices you make day in and day out, helping you reduce your stress and workload, and teaching you how to improve your life exponentially by starting with the key component of your life. You.

Working with a life coach is the best gift you could give yourself. A coach will help you structure your life in such a way that you have more time for yourself, less stress and more energy. A life coach will show you how to set goals, assist you in managing your emotions, and give you the boost you need to get unstuck and start reaching towards your dreams, to be successful, prosperous and happy.

The challenges of balancing work and quality of life in a fast-paced, driven society sparks the desire for personal and professional coaches. Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their lives. It utilizes the best of therapy, consulting, mentoring and even friendship to create a powerful alliance- a partnership which helps clients manage their lives more effectively, improve work performance, create more fulfillment and actualize their dreams. Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, to ask meaningful questions and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from their client. A coach will help you design a plan to achieve what is most important to you in your life. Working together, any obstacles or blocks that stand in the way will be eliminated. Coaches believe all human beings are naturally creative, resourceful and full of potential. Coaches focus and motivate their clients better to more rapidly produce results. The process of inquiry empowers clients to reconnect with their own inner wisdom, to find their own answers, to step beyond their self-imposed boundaries and to live in sync with their higher self. In one of my testimonials, a client stated, “Coaching has brought new meaning into my life. I was seeing a psychiatrist for quite some time and on medication but I realized that it was more of a sedative and my energy level were decreasing drastically. Life Coaching forced me to believe that I have more strength than I imagined and I do not need to rely on a drug. The first step is recognizing my strength and wisdom from within.”

The coach’s job is to provide support, structure and accountability to enhance the skills, wisdom and passion that the client already has.

A life coach acts as an objective but involved person in your life. Something of a rental-friend who is never out to serve their own interests. Life Coaches are proactive, trained professionals who guide you through personal development, modifying your habits, improving your outlook on life's many challenges and will help you tune in to your destiny and leave unhappiness behind.

What do you really want in life?

How to find Your Purpose?

Before you can succeed with a life coach, its important to select a life coach that's right for you. Not all life coaches will be able to successfully help you achieve the balance you are craving. There are some things you can look for to see if a life coach is right for you.

First, you want to be sure you have a clear understanding of why you are contacting a life coach. There might be one specific achievement or goal you are looking for, or perhaps you are not quite sure why, but your life feels chaotic and you want to sort it out. Do you want to lose weight? Establish a healthy romantic relationship? Find your life purpose? Learn the mastery of self-care? Or simply find balance of work/play?

A life coach will be better posed to meet your needs when he/she understands what you want. It will be easier for you to select an experienced coach when you realize what is missing in your life.

Our spiritual well-being affects our capacity for joy and serenity. Most coaches work with the whole person – mind * body * spirit. Underneath broad categories of executive and life coaching, most coaches have a specialty niche- a targeted market encompassing experience, training, and knowledge (For example, self-care, health, law, prosperity, nutrition) Before finding a coach, it is helpful to write down what you are looking for as the expected outcome of the coaching partnership. The clearer you are on what you want and expect from a coach, the more likely you are able to get it.

Coaching is not therapy. Typically, therapy helps clients fix problems, overcome “issues”, manage mental illness, and delve into the past. Coaches don’t deal much with analyzing human behavior. They focus on solutions. Rather than asking “why?”- A coach asks, “How?” Coaches do not see anything as a problem, only a situation as an opportunity to learn. Some sample questions: Who are you? What steps are you willing to take to define who you are? What belief systems are you willing to modify to be who you want to be? What are you committed to having show up in your work/life? What are you doing for others that you are not doing for yourself? What is important to you? What are your challenges? What gets in your way? Where do you want to go? How would you feel if your life were just exactly the way you wanted it to be? How do you define success? How will you know if you’re being successful?

Many life coaches are certified through an accredited program. There are several accrediting organizations and a multitude of certifying schools. Be sure to ask about your prospective coach's training and certification. Find out how their school is accredited. There is no one way - many excellent life coach's come from different training, and most accredited schools vary in the curriculum and vigor - so you'll want to use other measures to determine if a life coach is right for you.

Ask for References. Most life coaches should be able to give you the names and phone numbers of at least 2 or 3 satisfied clients. Nothing speaks louder about the ability of a life coach to guide you on your personal journey than their successes with other clients. Calling former or current clients and asking a few simple questions about some of the positive changes they have seen in their life since working with this life coach will give you an idea of what you might expect.

What prevents people from living the life of their dreams? Why is much of one’s life spent half-asleep? Half-committed to our state of being? Why is it so hard to change? The answer lies in choosing from love and abundance rather than from fear and scarcity. The choice to be passionately alive is an act of COURAGE. A Life coach will help you determine your positive intentions and guide you to stay focused on being positive and self-assured. The challenge is to honestly address the ways in which one has compromised, given up, neglected or lied to oneself and to others. Working closely with a Life Coach, he/she will help you fully acknowledge the truth of who you are and explore all possibilities. Often, we have a goal but lack follow-through. Most of the time, we know what we want in life and what we want to do but we lack support. This is where a Life Coach comes in. She or He will walk hand in hand down the path of life with you, supporting and celebrating all that comes your way. A client who was downsized from her company reports, “With the clarity and support I got from being coached, I had the courage to start my own business. This was something I’d always thought about doing, but was too afraid. Within a few weeks, I have started working for myself and have been able to generate clients, manage my new projects, and still have time to exercise, meditate and just be”.
Coaching is becoming so popular because many people are tired of doing what they “should do” and do what they “want” to do; a coachee is ready to do something special and meaningful for the rest of his or her lives. They want more, and not necessarily in a material sense. They are re-evaluating what matters most to them and are far more willing to take the next step in making it happen. People who hire coaches are often extremely successful in their own right prior to working with a coach. But they find that having that coach “in their corner” as their own personal sounding board and strategic partner helps them achieve an even greater degree of personal balance and professional success. Successful people are willing to invest themselves by hiring a coach as their partner in success.

Some coaches offer in-person coaching but many prefer the convenience and ease of coaching by telephone – this works well when the coach and the client are in geographically different locations and is also helpful for clients who tend to travel quite a bit. Coaches typically will meet with a client 2 or 4 times a month. The meeting length can range from 30-90 minutes for telephone coaching and in-person coaching. Coaches are sometimes available to work with clients for half-days or even full days. The cost to hire a certified coach approximately ranges from $200- $1,000 per month depending on how many times you want to be inspired. In person coaching tends to cost more than telephone coaching because it takes more of the coach’s time. Some coaches make group coaching available at a lower rate than private coaching.

Life Coaches help you discover what’s really most important in life and assists their client’s to realign their lives accordingly. The problem is, many can’t clarify what that dream or meaningful thing looks like, or if they can, they can’t see a way to reorient their life around it. A coach can help them do both. A client who transitioned from the corporate world to coaching states, “Coaching has been an enormous help to me in discovering what has been holding me back from moving forward in my career and cleared the way for me to take the next step”. Many coaches are spiritually based and help clients to tune in better to themselves, others and the universe. The coaching process helps people tap into their inner purpose and passion and connect that with their outer goals and tasks. The coaching process requires willingness, openness, commitment, responsibility and accountability. When you truly commit to what you want, you don’t leave yourself an option to turn around and run. As a client, you say what you will do and be held accountable to your coach about that. This ultimately provides extraordinary results. These results range from losing weight, improving self-esteem, establishing a loving relationship, connecting with your higher self, doubling your income, to successfully running a Fortune 500 company. A client who is a well-known scientist, asserted, “After coaching for less than 3 months, I changed the way I thought about myself and achieved a new level of success and satisfaction with my life. It was an extraordinarily rewarding experience.” Whatever your circumstances, goals or dreams might be, the bottom line is that you can achieve what you want. Remember, "Anything is Possible!"

Testimonials from Clients

Remember, "Anything Is Possible!"

6 Steps to Great Goals

Goals are an important way to conquer life. The roadmap of our daily journey, the blue print that shapes the direction our lives take, and the manifesto of what we want to accomplish before we leave the planet, goals concretely state our plans and allow us to start breaking our plans down into easy action steps.

There are some easy, positive goal setting techniques you can follow, to enhance your goals and turn them into reality faster. When you set yourself up for a planning session, create a quiet, serene place with music that makes you feel positive and successful, diffuse aromatherapy or burn incense, give yourself peace and allow yourself to enjoy the process of writing our your goals!

1. Commit. Write down your goals. Putting it on paper makes it much more tangible and allows you to better evaluate what you really want.

2. Categorize. When you have a lot of goals, its hard to keep up. You may find yourself overly ambitious in one area of your life to the detriment of others. Delineate what you want in each area of your life: Relationships, Career, Finances, Health, Spirituality, Family, etc...

3. Plan. Get out the calendar. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will your life be. Set a completion time frame for each goal - if you're not sure, break your goal down into smaller pieces and set yourself reasonable deadlines. Using a calendar also helps you gauge how many projects you will be attempting to deal with at a given time so you can manage your time more effectively.

4. Evaluate. Listen to your gut. When you write a goal, examine how your body reacts, as this is a clear indication of how you feel about it. If you clench up, reevaluate the necessity of it, or at least see if it can wait for some more fun goals.

5. Be realistic. You are not going to lose 50 pounds in a month without ending up in the hospital. Be kind to yourself and you will feel the rewards of reaching your goals!

6. Be positive. Feeling great now about your goals, and believing they are easily attainable will keep you motivated and bring you faster and lasting success. Even when your goals seem difficult or unreachable , remember to visualize yourself succeeding and know that will carry you through the hard times.

Goals motivate us through life and provide inspiration in some of the darkest hours. Goals make us human. Goals make us feel alive.

Future Workshops/Events

Be your own Best Friend!

What About You?

Taking time for yourself seems idyllic and unrealistic to many of us. With many people taking on an abundance of responsibility and struggling to make ends meet, taking time for ourselves seems selfish and irresponsible. What about the bills, the kids, little Jimmy's football game, the boss, the husband, the dishes, the dog and the neighborhood bake sale? Who will cook dinner, who will make the bed and who will get that deadline met?

The truth is, anyone could do it. Let your ego absorb that for a moment. It doesn't have to be just you doing everything. There is often others who are capable and able. We are often our own worst enemies --expecting more out of ourselves than anyone else, and not learning when to say no, out of a sense of personal obligation to be everything to everyone ... everyone but ourselves.

Being your own best friend is not as hard as it sounds, once you've learned to tactfully decline requests for your time and energy, you will find it gets easier - and you may find requests start to taper off. Just saying no is as simple as saying, no. You don't even have to explain. If it's an optional work assignment, explain that the assignment would reduce your productivity. If it's a pressing need at work, you might ask your boss to help you prioritize the many tasks he's laid on your desk. Perhaps a friend needs a weekly babysitter, or your ex wants to take the kids an extra weekend and you had plans - whatever the case, learn to be the best advocate for yourself and learn to say no.

Once you've got a little extra time for yourself ~ decide, how you want to use it. Is there a hobby or art you've longed to take up? Perhaps you want to take up a fitness or dance class, catch up on your reading, or just soak in a luxurious bubble bath night after night after night. Go on, its your right.
Taking care of yourself first, while it seems awkward at first, will give you more energy and enthusiasm to tackle things that come your way. It makes you a more pleasant person to be around. Keeping your spirits up empowers you to be a better you - and it's a much better way to go through life.

How ready are you to live life to the fullest and be the best you can be? Please take a few moments to fill out “Is Life Coaching for You” quiz which was created by Dr. Bruce Schneider, President of the Institute for Professional Empowerment Coaching.

On a scale from 1 to 10, rate each of the following statements: (if not applicable, score the item 5)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Don’t agree at all --- somewhat agree --- Totally agree


1. I am ready to create more balance in my life.

2. I am ready to improve my personal and business relationships.

3. I am ready to make real and positive changes in my life.

4. I am ready to connect with my higher self and live my life’s purpose.

5. I am ready and willing to overcome self-limiting beliefs and behaviors.

6. I am ready to create plans and take action to achieve my goals

7. I am ready to achieve a sense of fulfillment at work and in my personal life.

8. I am ready for more fun, creativity and enjoyment in my life.

9. I‘d like to work less and make more money

10. I can benefit from someone who will help me to stay on track

Add up your scores.

Interpreting your score:

Under 30
Life Coaching is not for you right now.

31 to 60
Life Coaching could help you to look at your life from a different viewpoint as well as help you develop a plan to change what it is that you would like to improve. However, if you decide to work with a life coach now, you need to decide and commit that you will take the necessary action for your benefit or you will not make lasting life-changing improvements.

Over 60
Congratulations! You are ready for a Life Coach! You are willing to do whatever it takes to create the life you deserve and desire. When would you like to begin?

More on Life Coaching - Call Sue Waldman at (973) 857-9090

In This Issue

Where is Your Life Going?

How to find Your Purpose?

6 Steps to Great Goals

What About You?