If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Outsource Your Stress First

In my over 14 years of coaching experience, I notice that all my coachees come to me saying that they are suffering some kind of stress at work.  There is never enough time to do anything, and targets are always being raised, yet costs are still rising and profit margins are shrinking fast.

Today I share with all how our coaching works, and how we have been using this method to coach people since 2001.  Feel free to share this with your friends, for the more we share, the more we have.

First, I have my client define to me what their stress is really about.  But I never make the stress bigger than what it really is, nor do I dismiss their stress as 'nothing, many people have worse stress than you'.  

Next, I will help my client discover the causes of his stress, which means he needs to examine some deeper, even unconscious, aspects of his working and personal life.  My purpose is to bring my client quickly into a mindful awareness of these causes and to accept them, not deny or pretend they are not there. Only when we can accept the stress causes can we look at how to overcome it. 

At this stage, I share with my client the importance of anatta, that is, non-ownership of his stress.  For stress is the outcome of work, not the definition of a person.  Once my client can see the distance between his stress and himself, he will not be overwhelmed by them and have clarity.

When my client has clarity, I would coach him to work out the various alternatives or possibilities of solutions to his work problems.  At this point, based on our coaching experience, I will be able to, on the spot, clarify why certain solutions would work better than others. 

I would also teach my client some lovingkindness, which is a unconditional self-acceptance of ourself and of others, of forgiving, of opening the doors of our heart.  Many a times my clients will realize that all his work problems are deeply rooted in his sense of self-guilt. When he can learn to love himself, he will free himself of all notions of guilt, lack of self-worth and fear.

By now the client would have reached a point of 'ah-ha' or 'blinding flash of the obvious'.  When he can let go of his fear, solutions and motivation would just come out like water from a running tap.  He will be motivated, energized, and even tell me that I just need to give him 'a week or two' and he will solve most of his problems. 

Notice that so far, I never used the word 'advice', as we coaches are not advisors or counsellors.  We are facilitators drawing out the good stuff from people to get them to solve their own problems by themselves.  This is the gem of coaching: the coachee will reach a level of self-actualization, not dependent on the coach, and this is real learning.  From here you can see that the special power of our coaching lies in the empowerment of our coachee.  As such most of them would need just 3 to 5 coaching sessions to reach to the next level. 

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer Coach at Asia Coaching Training.  Our one-to-one coaching program runs once a week or fortnight, and there is a minimum commitment of 3 coaching sessions.  Coaching fee is the same as our training courses, details of which are at here.  Related articles:

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