What Is Personal Coaching? 7 Benefits Of A Coach For Your Mental Health

He coaching staff It is an intervention whose main objective is to strengthen self-esteem and self-knowledge. Thanks to the help of a coach and coaching we can learn a new way of management, a way of treating people, a way of thinking and a way of being. That is, we manage to change and focus on what we want to be.

What does coaching mean?

Currently, there is no single and universal definition of coaching, but we could define it as a psychological intervention tool, producing changes at an emotional, cognitive (thoughts) and behavioral level. It represents a process of change between “which one is” and the “what can become“In general, it consists of psychologically training a person or team through effective conversations to mobilize the improvement of performance and the achievement of established objectives.

In it coaching process There are two people interacting. On the one hand, the coach, who I am going to call psycho-coach (the psychologist) and on the other, the coachee or client (the athlete, the trainer, etc.).

And why “psycho-coach”? Because it would be convenient for it to be a expert psychologist in personal coaching who will accompany the client when it comes to achieving their potential. The personal “coach” who is not a psychologist is not prepared or accredited to assess whether a client (for example an athlete) has any underlying psychological problem, such as an anxiety disorder, depression, etc.

Throughout the coaching sessions The person becomes aware of the facts, not through the coach but through himself, stimulated by the coach himself. The coachee is the protagonist in the “coaching” process.

What is personal coaching and what is it for?

He personal coaching It involves using the conversation with the personal coach to be able to make a profound change through new choices, questions, reflections and behaviors. Therefore, through this individual coaching the objective is to be able to make decisions that imply a change in the life, work and relationships of the coachee.

As we have mentioned, it is very important that the personal coaching be an accredited psychology professional, since these changes must be accompanied by the proper scientific foundations for them to be effective and not have counterproductive effects.

Where does personal coaching come from?

The origins of personal coaching They come from the sporting context, extrapolating years later to the executive and business world. The person who promoted this method within sports was Timothy Gallwey, an expert in education and tennis, and was the author of a book titled the inner game of tennisfollowed by indoor ski and the inner game of golf. As you can see, he always used the word “interior” to indicate the internal state of the athlete, as he explained in his own words “the opponent who lives in the player’s own head is more formidable than the one on the other side of the grid.”

The Spanish Association of Sports Psychology and Coaching (AEPCODE), defines the sports coaching as a psychological intervention strategy in which there is an ongoing relationship between the psycho-coach and the coachee, in this case an athlete, a sports team, a coach, a club director, etc. This relationship enables the best performance of the coachee to achieve extraordinary results. Therefore, motivational “coaching”, or more specifically, sports coaching, is constituted by listening, understanding and generating questions by the “psycho-coach”.

Timothy Gallwey stated that the good coach would help unleash a person’s potential, that is, they would help them learn instead of teaching them. The personal coach helps his client to look at reality from another paradigm. The goal of a personal coach is to develop the coachee’s knowledge, responsibility and self-confidence. In a coaching session, coaches must understand the coachee and make sure that they have helped them. In fact, for clients to develop their self-esteem, in addition to achieving successes, they need to know that these successes are due to their own efforts, as well as that other people believe in them.

What is a personal coach?

He meaning of personal coach, is a person who helps us give the best of ourselves, that is, to weaken our weaknesses and strengthen our virtues. Therefore, the personal coach or personal coach should possess a series of skills for individual coaching therapy to give the expected results. In this way, the coach should have the following capabilities.

• Be patient – Be aware
• Be impartial – Support
• Be empathetic – Show interest
• Be perceptive – Be attentive to the coachee
• Know how to listen – Be self-aware

In summary, in the processes of coaching We work from the present to the future, the past is not touched. It is a process of change in which the coach accompanies the client in achieving the objective they want to achieve. We work with the healthy part, with the talent and skills, not with the dysfunctional part. If the client wants to resolve something from the past, they should do so with a clinical psychologist and with psychotherapy. Hence, as a psychologist and coach, I insist that it is advisable to work with a psychologist who is an expert in personal coaching..

I conclude with the allusion to the helicopter metaphor by a Spanish psychologist, Gomà, who I really liked when I read it. The one who pilots the change is the client, the coach accompanies and helps you to get up and acquire a panoramic view that will allow you to go in a straight line to wherever you want to go.

Psychological benefits of personal coaching

He personal coaching It is a very useful method of being able to achieve those goals that you so desire in your life. In many cases, a personal coach is able to offer you the tools you need so much to achieve those goals that you resist (a new job, a better diet and body, leaving insecurities, among others). Some of the most interesting benefits of having personal coaching are the following.

1. Define life purpose: Some people have been very clear since childhood about what they want in their life, but there are many people who do not know what their true passion is or what they should work for daily. Through the help of a personal coach People can better define themselves, know what is truly meaningful to themselves, and see clearly what gives meaning to our lives.
2. Learn strategies to solve problems: On many occasions, people encounter a specific problem over and over again. In these cases the personal coaching can give us specific tools to stop these problems and deal with them properly.
3. Be in the present: Have you heard of the flow state? Enjoying the present is the best way not only to be happy, but to achieve everything you set out to do in life. He personal coaching It helps us be more in the present and let go of those obsessive thoughts that take us to the future or the past.
4. Achieve goals: One of the strong points of personal coaching It is the learning of a series of personal techniques that allow us to achieve each of our goals in life. If you have a goal and you don’t know how to get there, a personal coach can be the push you need to achieve it.
5. Increase productivity: Are you missing hours in your days? Another of the skills that are acquired along with personal coaching sessions They are precisely the ability to increase productivity and motivation in our daily lives. In this way, the personal coach can help us obtain better time management to get more out of our day.
6. Greater awareness of ourselves: With greater self-awareness of yourself, the more efficiency and effectiveness you will have to achieve each of your personal goals.
7. Definition of strengths and weaknesses: By knowing more about what we are best at and what we fail at, we can better define how to enjoy more of what we do in our daily lives and acquire those skills to benefit from our abilities. In this way, together with a personal coaching we manage to reduce weaknesses and strengthen all our advantages.

Learning to give the best of ourselves is undoubtedly the best way to feel successful. So much so that personal coaching It allows us to focus on the most important thing in our lives: what is inside us.