Steve Chandler - The Life Coaching Connection: How Coaching Changes Lives

Copyright 2012 by Steve Chandler
All Rights Reserved.

Robert D. Reed Publishers
P.O. Box 1992
Bandon, OR 97411
Phone: 541-347-9882; Fax: -9883
E-mail:

Front Cover Artist: Angela Hardison and Seesaw Designs
Cover Design: Cleone Reed
eBook Design: Susan Leonard

eISBN: 978-1-934759-70-7

For Kathy

Acknowledgments

Kathryn Anne Chandler for everything.

Steve Hardison for the ultimate in coaching.

Deuce Lutui for the internal commitment.

Barbie Gummin for the life coach connection.

Maurice Bassett for the fearless club.

Michael Neill for the academy of super coaches.

Brandon Craig for sales mastery.

Rich Litvin for the confidence salon.

Todd Musselman for words and music.

Dusan Djukich for straight-line leadership.

Fred Knipe for doctoring and cabaret performing.

Sam Beckford for being the small business millionaire.

Terry Hill for the two guys quartet.

Peter and Victoria Sykes for the music school.

Regena Thomashauer for the womanly arts school.

Stephen McGhee for modeling ascendance.

Rob Owen for results now.

Ken Webb for a holly jolly Christmas.

Colin Wilson for the books.

Byron Katie for the work.

George Will for the review.

If you dont change your beliefs,
your life will be like this forever.
Is that good news?

~ W. Somerset Maugham

1. Dont You Know How to Live?

I saw the angel in the marble,
and I carved until I set him free.

~ Michelangelo

Great coaches do work that is similar to a sculptors work. They see whats possible in their client, and then they help the client carve the negative beliefs away. Soon the client is feeling a freedom he has never known. This freedom happened for me when I turned my lifes dreams over to the hammer and chisel of my own coach, Steve Hardison.

The term coaching comes from the world of sports and also from the performing arts. Thats why they call it coaching instead of consulting or advising or counseling.

I remember a time when there was no coaching for people like you and me. There was only coaching for athletes and singers and actors. (Those superstars had strength coaches, voice coaches, and dialect coaches; they had quarterback coaches, golf coaches, and hitting coaches. For you and me? There were no life coaches.)

But soon a personal growth movement began as the world got more entrepreneurial and creative. Individuals became more empowered. No longer did most people work for the same huge company at the same boring job all their lives and then get a watch and retire and wear the watch in the open coffin.

Creative people and innovative small businesses were rising up. People changed jobs often, and even changed careers, and soon anyone who really wanted to succeed was considering hiring a coach.

Why not? Two heads have always been better than one. If you want something achieved, are you not better with two people on the project than one?

A lot of people have thought that this explosion of personal coaching is absurd. Why should the average person be hiring a coach? A life coach? Are you kidding me? Dont you already know about life? Dont you know how to live?

People asking those questions were missing the point. This was not about survival. This was about thriving.

Even today, people wonder if their ordinary life qualifies for coaching. Its that whole little old me approach to low self-esteem and false modesty. Thats the very problem that coaching ends up solving.

Mocking self-help is the ego protecting itself. However, protecting the ego keeps me isolated and shrunken down to my most survivable self. So I feel disconnected, not only from the world, but from my own potential.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled
by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those
who have lighted the flame within us.

~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer

2. Your Life is Gathering Light

The only real purpose of a goal is to inspire you
to fall more deeply in love with life.

~ Michael Neill

Ive been conducting a coaching prosperity school for years now, so that coaches can learn to build strong practices. Because of the impact coaching has had on my own life, I am more than a true believer. I am a witness!

I have noticed that some coaches are so dedicated to helping their clients that they neglect their own practices. They dont devote themselves to getting more clients, even though it would help the world if they did.

Thats one of the things coaches forget to do. They forget to become masterful at the art of enrollment and sales. But soon they notice that their life-changing work cant go on without clients. You cant change the life of a client that you do not have.

I also help coaches believe in the strength of their work For this, I sometimes begin with the lamppost distinction. Michael Neill, the colorful author of Supercoach , sometimes talks about how good a coach a lamppost would be.

Many people who are just beginning as life coaches and business coaches worry about whether they have enough smarts and expertise to be an effective coach.

Consider a lamppost, Michael advises them. Lets say your client leaves his office each snowy evening and stops by a lamppost on his way home and just talks to the lamppost. Lets say he starts to do that every evening, unburdening the days problems and vocalizing the possibilities and options for tomorrow. The lamppost will not talk back; it will just be there for him.

And by acquiring the habit of talking to his lamppost, this person finds his life is improving. It is gathering light. He feels a little less burdened each evening, and by expressing options and possibilities he even has new ideas he would not have had if he didnt talk to the lamppost.

So if a lamppost can do all this, imagine what you can do if you coach someone.

Sometimes coaching someone is as simple as listening. Then it moves to helping them get started on something they want to achieve.

3. Are You Isolated or Connected?

The cave you fear to enter
holds the treasure you seek.

~ Joseph Campbell

To those who have asked me why I have a coach and why Ive paid people to coach me through the years, I ask them why should coaching just be for athletes and actors?

They reply that athletes and actors cant afford to be average or mediocre. They have to be as good as they can be just to keep their jobs. Greatness, to them, is linked to survival. They have to be great at what they do or theyre gone.

Well, so do we now. The world has gone global. No more whining about outsourcing. If someone in China can do it better than you can, game over.

To have a great life, we have to be great at what we do.

That scares a lot of people, but it excites those of us with coaches.

Why should I not want to be as good as I can be at my own career? Even if Im not a pro athlete?

But why do you need to pay for that? Why not do it yourself?

Because coaching works and doing it myself never works the same way. I was okay by myself, but I was never great at anything. And even if I was, it wasnt as great as it could have been. Sometimes the things I was most proud of I later saw as unrealized potential posing as competence.

Many times people choose not to get coaching because it would be spending money on themselves! It might look selfish to their families. It might even look weak. And theyve invested a lot of energy in looking a certain way. Looking like they have their act together.

But even that suggests I am an actor. That all the worlds a stage and each of us play our part. Why not just go with that?