Health & Well-being - January 2007

Life coaching = Personal Training for your life!
by Elizabeth Gore, CPCC, PCC

Elizabeth Gore

How I arrived at coaching and Moab…
In 2001 in the midst of a successful broadcasting career, I stopped, looked around and discovered that my sense of purpose was missing. Following a series of professions – flight attendant, restaurateur, sales, talk radio host – it was time to decide what was next. After a lifetime of mentoring, encouraging and believing in people – I realized that a “life coach” was what I always had been – and wanted to become professionally. I became credentialed by The Coaches Training Institute as a CCPC - Certified Co-active Professional Coach. Three years later, the International Coach Federation, awarded me the designation of PCC – Professional Certified Coach – for 750 + hours of coaching individuals.

Coaching, writing (I’ve finished one book and am working on the next) and my husband, Manuel, are the three great passions of my life.

Manuel first brought me to Moab where he’d just finished building his dream home out on Bridger Jack Mesa six years ago. I’m a Texan but hadn’t been out to this part of the west before. It was love at first sight. We lived here part time for a few years and now full time. Amid all this magnificence and beauty, how could one’s life, purpose and possibilities not be inspired to soar?

What life coaching is…
People come to life coaching for many different reasons, but the bottom line is that they want change in some area of their lives.

And the bottom line of what I do as a coach is to remind clients of the wisdom, resourcefulness and power that they already possess with which to make that change.

In five years as a coach I’ve been deeply inspired to watch my clients work through all kinds of transitions, reach goals they weren’t sure they could and face down a multitude of fears. I’ve also worked with people that didn’t have a specific challenge or goal, yet felt something was missing – a sense of purpose, or a quality of life/aliveness that continued to elude them.

Three of the cornerstones of coaching are recognition, permission, and noticing.

• Recognition – acknowledging our strength, creativity and the unique, one-of-a-kind self we have to express/offer the world.
• Permission – to have what we want in our lives, and to stop tolerating what we don’t.
• Noticing – observing what keeps us stuck where we are that works against us, and what we are doing already that works for us.

Coaching is not therapy, which deals with deeper issues, often requiring serious exploration of the past.

Coaching takes the past into account, but our work and its results have to do with the present.

“Personal training for your life” works the same way as personal training for your body. Both -

• Create an agenda of specific changes/goals the client desires
• Strategize how these will be accomplished
• Address and remove what stands in the way
• Fully support the client throughout the process
• Commit to work for a period of time that produces results

How I coach…
Coaching is a convenient process to implement and work with. It is also completely confidential. The steps are -

• You and I meet on the phone or in person for informational purposes. We may also have a short “sample coaching” session. This meeting is at no charge and implies no commitment to work together.
• If we decide to coach together, you choose the plan - from a menu of different coaching packages - that best suits your goals and circumstances.
• Our first meeting is a two hour foundation session. (If in different locations, this is by phone.) We define what you want to accomplish, begin to design a strategy to achieve it and start providing you with self-coaching tools you can use during and after the coaching process.
• Our meetings after the foundation session, are all by phone.

An invitation…
Experience what coaching is like… there is no fee or obligation for a thirty minute sample coaching session. Whether we decide to work together or not, it’s my intention that you receive something of value from our session.

435.686.2519
ej_gore@hotmail.com
For more information, www.ejgore.com.