Coaching: Brave Conversations about Important Things

It's funny this experience of a life coach - I help people with such a broad range of challenges, so when someone asks what I do and what a life coach helps people with, I still find it really hard to answer succinctly. I do help people with the challenges you might imagine; becoming more present, reducing stress and anxiety, building confidence, reconnecting to values and strengths to work out what kind of life a client actually wants to be living. All that super helpful stuff that can influence the trajectory of one’s life. But above - or beneath - it all there is something that lies at the heart of it that I wanted to try to articulate here.

I create a safe space for a person to be able to tell the truth. To be utterly honest, candid, raw and open about what they are feeling, fearing and yearning for. This might sound obvious, but how often do you do that, sit with someone and speak your absolute truth, no holding back, no fear of being judged?

I have been working as a life coach for 5 years now and I have come to realise that the most important work I can do, the most impactful way I can be of service is to also tell the truth about the human experience. To help people to understand themselves and each other more. Because clients come with such shame, fear, guilt and loneliness in their suffering and challenges. But picture this - if you knew that the thing that you fear or desire or are struggling with was utterly normal, how would that change things for you? In what way would that alter how you step into your day? How you feel about yourself, speak to yourself and treat yourself? A lot lighter and kinder, is what I see. 

Until recently - and still now - we all operate in a world where we see other people’s best bits; the version of them that is presented to the outside world, the ‘them' that looks a certain way, does that job, loves their family, travels to that place, drives that car, contributes to their community in that way. But you have no idea what that person carries, what worries crowd their mind and the pains that make their heart feel heavy, what they yearn for deep inside and the type of life they would actually love to be leading if they actually could (or dared).

As an example, I have many clients who are facing the unravelling of their marriages; some relationships that could possibly thrive again with renewed energy and others that need to close that chapter. The guilt and anguish that people feel if they yearn for something else, if they find themselves attracted to someone else is very real and all-consuming. But in my seat, I hear this multiple times a day - it's common and it’s the norm, but the sufferer doesn’t know that because they have kept it to themselves until now; and nobody else confides in them about what they are facing!

Understandably, because society has taught us all to follow the same rules and expectations and therefore we are scared of the judgement from others if we make different choices. I understand that wholeheartedly, it is terrifying. But the other option is to not live a life true to you and to risk waking up 10, 20 years from now and know that you conformed, that you weren’t as brave as you could have been, that maybe you didn’t live the life you really wanted. Life is about bravely making choices towards our truest desires so that we can live a life more aligned, fulfilling and joyful. That is the objective of all the work that we do at The Vibrancy Hub.

And it starts with telling the truth, firstly to yourself and then to another person - in this case the non judgemental coach. And I make a promise from here onwards; to serve more people by writing and speaking more of the truth I witness of the human experience through the work that I do. So that everyone can feel less weird, less alone, less guilty, less fearful, less wrong, less stuck. Because you are none of those things, not even a little bit. You are a human and what you feel is real and valid and allowed - and so utterly normal. It's actually vital and important because these emotions provide all the signposts for the changes you need to make in life, if you are to thrive - even when it's scary and daunting.

So there it is, my ‘sacred purpose’ - to explore brave conversations about important things; to be a truth teller of the human experience.