I often get asked about what coaching is and who it is for so I am writing this in order to shed some light on the matter. 

Firstly Coaching is not for everyone.  Every good coach will tell you that they only want to work with clients who are committed to the work and will in fact turn down clients who do not make an effort to fulfill their part of the coaching relationship. Coaching is a fantastic opportunity and not to be taken lightly. It is a new age method of communication and it is becoming increasingly popular in the corporate field because it is so powerful and effective. Those who have been lucky enough to work with a personal coach will have a lot to say about its benefits.

Secondly coaching is for open minded people who demonstrate a flexible and willing attitude to trying something new. Most people think they are open minded but they are confusing this with being accepting of others who are different to them. That’s all well and good but, what open mindedness really means is that you are willing to change your own mind and behave differently yourself!  If you have been doing the same thing over and over and achieved the same dead end results then you have to be willing to try and do something differently in order to get the results you want. It sounds simple but changing our minds and doing things differently to how we used to do them is one of the hardest things we can do which with the help of a coach is made easier to understand and practice.

Thirdly coaching is for people who are willing to take a risk. Clients are asked to explore new and different possibilities to the ones they are used to exploring and for this reason they need to be willing to look at old things in a new way and look at new things with an open mind. People who take risks in life understand that half the success is in taking the risk, the other half is in making it work. Because in fact  in life there is no failure or success, there is only working towards achieving the outcomes we want, or not!  This is an extremely empowering concept that can be experienced through coaching and if understood can be very useful and liberating in life. Coaching provides the support and encouragement which turns an uncertain risk into a secure opportunity.  

Fourthly coaching is for people who want to get the most out of themselves and their lives. People who come to coaches want to get as much as is possible out of their time and efforts. They want to explore as many new avenues as possible and stretch their comfort zones as far as possible. They want to put in the extra time, effort and resources to help them achieve their goals. They are willing to learn new skills, they are happy to experiment and see what works for them and how they work best. They want to  look at themselves and the world with fresh eyes and better clarity. They want to feel differently about influences from experiences and people that have held them back from being independently, individually complete. They appreciate life and all it has to offer as much as possible. 

Fifth, coaching is for those who want to improve aspects of their life and personal performance that already works for them. Coaching will facilitate these client to observe and know themselves by increasing their self awareness in order to enhance what they are doing right so that they can achieve the maximum and best results for themselves, again this is a really empowering journey and will lead to increased self awareness, personal satisfaction and great for self confidence. 

Finally coaching is for those who want to take responsibility for their lives. All clients who come to work with a coach are ultimately taking responsibility for the development of an aspect of their lives or for the way they are living their lives as a whole. A coach will facilitate clients to explore their opportunities in depth and then exercise the choice of experiencing and realising the path that will bring them the greatest fulfillment and enrich their life the most. 

In short the summary is that coaching is for people who are passionate about personal development. It is for people who do not want to be bound by their past and are willing to take a risk and explore the possibilities they can offer themselves in their future. Coaching is for people who are willing and eager to make a change in their own mind and life. It is not a therapy nor an offering, coaching is the chance to do a work on one self. It facilitates a way of thinking, observing and behaving which is geared towards attaining success. That success differs in meaning from person to person, but the end goal is the same for all, it fulfills an inner purpose.

Here is a taste of Coaching just for you!

Coaching is all about movement directed towards an aim or a goal in life, in essence its about understanding where you are and discovering where you want to be and then planning your path to your desired destination. 

Everyone and everything is in motion, the planets, the stars, our bodies, our mind and emotional states, our awareness, time etc… they’re all in motion and they are moving onwards and ahead.

Applying this concept to yourself think about where you want to be in 3 years from now. 3 years ahead in time is quite a tangible future to think about and also enough time to make some really powerful choices. When you are thinking about what you would like to achieve try to think about what would add more value to your life. I say this because ultimately we all want to live fulfilled happy lives, but what does that really mean? It means living a life according to the values and beliefs that are close to our hearts. 

Ask yourself in 3 years time, what would I like to have achieved that would make me proud?

Write it out in as much detail as possible. Is there a particular area of your life that you would like to transform? Here are some ideas:

• establish yourself in your career
• a change of career
• get a qualification to do something you really enjoy
• set up your own business
• write a book
• loose weight and have the healthy figure you’ve always wished for
• have a baby

These are all life changing events. So in 3 years you could change your life and with a little direction make changes that can bring you lasting happiness. Off course you don’t have to do it in 3 years, I’m using this as an example. Some people achieve in 3 years what others achieve in 1. It’s up to you, but I find 3 years is long enough to consider achieving your life changing goals realistically and without added pressure.

To help you further divide you goal into tangible realistic stages, maybe ask someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve to help you do this. Establishing realistic stages will also help you to measure your progress and know that you are on the right track. 

Remember if your goals do not match your values and beliefs then you are in conflict and achieving them could be difficult and harmful. Here are some core values that are commonly considered to bring us happiness. Weigh up your goals against these and mark them out of 10 to see how much your goals are in congruence with your values, you can add your own values to the list. 

• family
• community
• personal satisfaction
• excellence
• honesty
• passion
• self esteem
• security
• stability
• spirituality
• health

Now consider this. What would achieving this goal change about the way you live today? It’s an important question right? because it prepares you for the adaptations that you will have to make, it asks you to consider what you are doing now that isn’t going to work or help you achieve this goal and what you are doing currently that will help you achieve it. Therefore it prepares you for the practicality of achieving your goal.

This also turns our attention to where you are now. 

It’s important to be able to look at yourself and assess your current situation fairly and openly.

Consider the following in assessing where you are now:

• What are you doing so far towards achieving your goal? (what can you do to increase these activities?)
• Who do you know that can support you in achieivng your goal? (how can you extend your network and supporting community?)
• What resources do you need to help you achieve your goal? (how can you improve and increase your resources?)
• What is the next step for you to bring you closer to your goal? (or bring your goal closer to you? its a two way relationship!)

So you have now had a taste of coaching, it’s a positive and intriguing practice and it invites you to enhance the way you live. If you have enjoyed this session and would like in depth one to one or group sessions, or you know someone who could benefit from coaching then get in touch with me.

Establishing powerful goals in your daily life is the key to achieving the results you want to achieve rather than what you’re left with.

So what are the key steps to establishing powerful goals:

Your goals should be;

Specific – write your goals in as much detail as possible as often as possible
Measurable – you must be able to measure your goals according their nature and in time
Achievable – set yourself goals that you can achieve practically, use journey goals to break down your goals into practical stages
Realistic – there’s dreaming and then there’s actualising your dreams, set yourself realistic targets towards achieving your goals, this is how you can make your dreams come true!
Tangible – Your goals should be tangible, to do this think about what you can do in order to bring yourself closer to goals and bring your goals closer to you, it is a two way relationship!

Often your goals will be an image of the final product. Therefore it is important to set journey goals, even daily goals that will bring you closer to the final vision. Remember achieving the final vision or the final goal will only bring you momentary joy, who you become in the process brings you lasting happiness.

Lets take an example: you want to be in a healthy relationship, but you feel lonely, you think that there is no one out there that you will make a real connection to, you don’t really enjoy going out and meeting new people and you lack confidence in yourself because of past experiences and lack of self esteem.

The goal now seems far away. However if you follow the SMART model you can bring your goal closer to you. Often goals need to broken into different stages to develop a realistic path to achieving them. The final vision is a great motivator, but the first step of the journey always begins within.

Achieving any goal means adaptation and change. No matter what the goal is unless you being to think and approach the goal with a new attitude and take new action you will achieve the same results you always have.

If you want to be in a healthy relationship but you feel lonely and think there’s no one out there for you then because of this conflict in your goal and your personal beliefs you will be unlikely to find or stay in a positive and healthy relationship. So you can establish changing your attitude towards relationships as one of your journey goals.

If you want to be in a healthy relationship but you’re uncomfortable with going out and meeting new people then find ways around this. Another journey goal could be to socialise with your current friends, colleagues, family, networks and like minded people more often with the aim to enjoy the love and richness of the connections you are already making with the many many wonderful people in your life now. This will boost your happiness, confidence and chances are that someone will know someone who, well could be just the person for you.

If you lack self esteem because of past experiences and you find yourself making the same mistakes, allowing people to treat you badly, or just not having the love and joy of being who you are, then this will conflict with the values you attach to being lovable. In that case you will find a way of ruining any good chances for yourself. So another one of your journey goals could be to boost your self esteem. This is one of the most common and fundamental factors in relationship damage. Lacking self esteem is the reason people find themselves living lives that are unfulfilling, leaving them drained, angry and generally not enjoying life no matter how much wealth, beauty, passion and love they may possess.

There’s so much more to setting powerful goals then at first meets the eye. However we are moving on and up in our lives, whether we’re just surviving or at the top of the game effective goal setting will make astounding differences in who we are and the way we live.

Be aware of the mind, for the mind lives in desire. It’s every thirst is quenched and then a new stronger thirst is born. Every time it conquers a new territory it is satisfied for a moment only and then it hungers for more. It is like a spiral growing. More knowledge, more power, more beauty, more understanding and so on.

There is nothing wrong with  ambition or aspiration and without desire the mind will die. However now knowing the nature of our mind, we can manage  our desires, we are no longer weakened by the feeling of lack or desperate for having more, we can understand the cycle of wanting and achieving, we can let it happen naturally. By doing this we create more time in our lives, we are no longer caught up in the rush but we are moving forward in synchronicity, then we are free to enjoy the present. The present moment where everything is already accomplished.

Communication designed to bring about greater self awareness and positive change.

Students get 20% off!

This is what you can expect for your money:

• 6 months personalised Coaching,
• Improving productivity,
• Time management skills
• Personal balance,
• Utilising individual resources,
• Improving communication skills and confidence,
• Understand personal potential,
• Success – expect the coaching relationship to change negatives into positives.

What is expected from you:

• Commitment to achieving the results you desire,
• Responsibility for taking action,
• Mutual respect and trust,
• You will not be judged so be open and honest,
• Sincerity to make it work and be willing to do the work,
• Payment of fees have to be made prior to sessions, and
• Enjoy the Coaching relationship, working with a Coach is a positive and powerful experience, a real treat!

Clients’ success Stories

Soanz ST is an art student from Bath who has benefited greatly from Coaching, here is what she has to say about it:
“For me, coaching has created a stable platform of having a better understanding of myself, and has instructed me in dealing with challenging or worrying matters. It has enabled me to identify improved differences in behavioural patterns. Coaching has been a highly valuable process, and has enriched my life on many levels. I find I am now able to identify ways forward with clarity and confidence, and feel less anxious about decision making and problem solving.

“Having the presence of a life coach has been the crucial element which has brought about many positive changes in my life. If ever I have felt in doubt or worried, the life coach is always a phone call away, and the support and objectivity brings about a refreshing perspective in which to tackle difficult challenges. I can honestly say now, that I am the happiest I have ever been before in my life, and undoubtedly the advantages of having a life coach has brought about a new, improved, and more confident me. This process is highly recommended to all those who wish to apply changes in their lives and progress onto living a content and fulfilled life.”

Communication designed to bring about greater self awareness and positive change.

Clients often ask me questions about Coaching and making important decisions in their lives that could be helpful to everyone. I will answer some of the questions that I have been given and post them here for you. If you have a question that you would like answered then email me on sanam.saleh-taleghani@selfstate.com and I will answer them for you.

Q. What can you achieve from working with a Coach?
A. Working with a Coach will achieve the results that you desire and work towards. Initially you will identify the area or areas in your life that you want to work on, then you will set the goals together with your Coach and begin the work.

It’s a journey of refinement and self discovery. Working with a Coach will allow you to identify and work with your inner potential, what this means practically is that you begin to develop and expand your current vision of yourself and what you are capable of. Your Coach will often push you beyond your comfort zone, often ask you to refine your ideas and help you to create an image of yourself till you are satisfied with the results.

Your Coach will work with you to unravel your innate powers. Your innate powers are your natural skills and abilities, some which you may already know and celebrate and others which you have yet to discover and develop. By encouraging you to evaluate your strengths and work on your weaknesses your Coach will align your capabilities and help you orientate them towards achieving your goals.

You will soon become aware of habitual limitations that are unnecessary and hold you back, these are thoughts, feelings and actions that become a part of daily living and which we often let slide without addressing. At first you may think that these habitual limiting beliefs and actions are not as significant as you feared, however the impact they have on our confidence and ability to develop and grow soon becomes evident. They effect our self esteem and the extent to which we apply ourselves to achieve our full potential. They have therefore, a great significance towards the fulfilment of our purpose and aspirations.

Your role is key, you will determine the subject and pace of your progress, you will determine the goals and the direction and most important of all you will have to do the work. Your Coach will be there to guide and support you and push you when you need it, ultimately though the responsibility of the work and the extraordinary effort that is required is yours and so are the results you achieve.

Communication designed to bring about greater self awareness and positive change.

Clients often ask me questions about Coaching and making important decisions in their lives that could be helpful to everyone. I will answer some of the questions that I have been given and post them here for you. If you have a question that you would like answered then email me on sanam.saleh-taleghani@selfstate.com and I will answer them for you.

Q – If you have to choose between the head and the heart, what would you choose to make you happy?
A – Happiness occurs rarely for the majority of human beings, this is because they are often in conflict with themselves. What does it mean to be in conflict with oneself? It means that there is a multiplicity within you and that in satisfying one you are sacrificing another, which ultimately causes you pain.

Your values are the assets that you will assign to the 8 fields which sum up the entirety of the areas of your life, and personal growth which are; body & mind, health & spirit, career &wealth, relationships & community. They determine what goals you have in each field and and how you will achieve those goals. Your beliefs are the rules that you will live  by whilst achieving your values and what you will judge your actions and the actions of others by. The will also determine your boundaries and your limitations.

For each area of our lives, however active we are, we have developed values and beliefs. Often, in each area we have developed multiple sets of values and beliefs and these are in conflict with one another and thereby cause a duality or multiplicity within us. Therefore when we act on them they cause us pain because we are sacrificing one set of values and beliefs for another.

When your centres are aligned, like the mind and the heart, they move forward together, in one direction, with clarity, precision and certainty. Then we can experience true fulfillment and happiness enrich our lives.

Like all things happiness will begin in your consciousness. A deep seated gratification for your very existence, for being and for acknowledging your being dwells in your heart which must be expressed in your own individual way. Through practicing and understanding this gratification, which is an appreciation of your being, you will develop an honest picture of the values and beliefs by which you live and the values and beliefs which truly represent who you are.

In our natural state the bulk of what we think and do is determined by the external world to us. Television, media, schools, peers determine for us by showing us in example who we ought to be and how we ought to live. They educate us on our values and beliefs, the very dear values and beliefs which we hold on to and fight for with our lives, are often determined by external bodies and not by our own efforts. We would have to study ourselves and one another and then evaluate our findings objectively and without judgement before determining our own individual values and beliefs truly.

Instead our brain takes in all the data it is given and we become the things we think about, the dramas and the false ideas, the limited perceptions of our communities and environments and the negative and dark realities that begin to influence who we think we are and the world we think we live in.

The majority of people feel unfulfilled and detached from themselves. They feel a gap between who they are and who they wish to be, this gap is real and it is determined by actions that we take on a daily basis which distance us from ourselves.

If you are not happy, it is because whatever you are doing that is not aligned with your true self, it is causing you to move away from yourself and this distance from the self hurts.

When you are not aligned with your true self, your true desires are not fulfilled and you feel a deep dissatisfaction with the world and yourself in it. This alignment does not occur naturally, this alignment requires a constant work on oneself to become conscious, to re-evaluate ourselves and the world we think we live in and to create a new future for ourselves. It is possible to become completely lost and stuck in this great dissatisfaction for the entirety of our lives. It is also possible to relieve yourself of the great dissatisfaction with the help of those who have done so before you. The choice is yours, to get different results, you must act differently.

What is Career Coaching?

Career Coaching has taken off in Europe and the UK in the past few years as a result of the benefits it brings to its clients:

The benefits of working with a Career Coach are:

• Exploring your professional ambitions and aspirations,
• Identifying your professional competencies, skills and talents,
• Understanding excellence,
• Identifying key areas of development and training requirements,
• Developing short-term and long-term career goals,
• Successful job search and application process,
• Interview preparation, and
• Identifying further issues and overcoming obstacles such as confidence, communication skills and resources.

The support of a Career Coach will be long-term and your Coach can also work with you to improve areas that will influence your professional growth objectives such as evaluating your values and beliefs, identifying limiting beliefs and behaviours that are holding you back from progressing, identifying and overcoming personal problems and setbacks such as lacking confidence and motivation, or confusion and lack of direction.

In short your Coach is your confident, and there to support and inspire you along your path of personal development to achieve excellence and explore the possibilities for your development. For more on Career Coaching see http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/careers/200261/470516/coaching-your-career.

Coaching has recently been int he media for its benefits, see the Guardian’s article “Coaching you career”.

Why is it that in London we work more hours, earn less money, feel more stressed and our productivity is lower than our European peers?

Facing today’s economic challenges, we need to update corporate styles to keep up with modern 21st century economic needs and developments.

Corporate leaders can instill the optimism and motivation in their workers that is vital for economic revival using new attitudes and behaviours. 

The attitudes of the past do not serve today’s economic challenges. This simply means that the short-term fixes which once had the financiers exited have to be reviewed and new long-term solutions will have to be put in place to maintain a steady and strong rooted growth.

Using training models developed specifically to equip leaders and their teams to rethink today’s economic challenges, Corporate Coaches can assist companies in reviewing and making effective use of staff and resources.

Matching common ambitions and  individual aspirations of the members of the organisation in order to ensure higher productivity levels.

Balancing performance with training to ensure lower stress levels and effective use of skills aimed at achieving the goals of the organisation.

Updating communication styles to encourage simple, effective and non-hierarchical attitudes suitable for the pace of 21st century development.

These are just some considerations that form a whole development of an outdated style of business thinking which must be reviewed to enjoy long-term stability and success.

The Power of Goals

Research was carried out by Harvard on a class of students to demonstrate the effectiveness of making goals:

• 70% had no written or verbal goals
• 27% had verbal goals; could at least say what it was they were aiming for
• 3% actually and written goals

Years later the results showed that the 3% of students who had goals and had written them down owned 98% of the wealth in the class.

“People with goals succeed, why? Because they know where they’re going. It’s as simple as that!” Earl Nightingale

Some of the areas that clients may wish to focus on include:

Personal Coaching

• Body & Mind
• Relationships
• Confidence
• Finances
• Career Development
• Time management
• Health & Spirit
• Community

Corporate & Executive

• Communication
• Personal Performance
• Career Management
• Conflict Resolution
• Diversity