Personal goals and coaching motivations (1)

Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things that you don’t want” (Hannah Whitall).

Every single day, over the world, there is someone making a decision that will change his or her life, as well as course of destiny forever. It is this crucial fact that makes the issue of self awareness and acquisition of knowledge so important. In order to succeed in life and in any endeavour for that matter, you must acquire the required knowledge that is essential for you to know what to do and how to do it, anywhere and anytime.

Not only is knowledge acquisition and its correct application critical for your success, the drive to improve yourself through continuous building of your personal capacity is equally important. You must learn to build capacity mainly by expanding your innate abilities, such gifts and talents, as well as strive to unlock and unleash your potentials through practice. “Practice makes perfect” is a common saying. However, it is perfect practice that makes you truly perfect in a particular area or sphere.

In addition to the above, you must deal with any inhibitions and/or sabotaging feelings, which tend to slow you down, pull you down, push you down or make you stay down. These inhibitions are usually your feelings, based on beliefs formed from mind frames, which develop mostly from unpleasant personal experiences, fear, lack of confidence, indecisiveness, poor decision-making, faulty personal judgments and poor thinking patterns. All of these are internal powerful personal motivations, which only you can challenge or change, through a changed mindset. That is the power that resides in you.

No human achievement, success, greatness or triumph in the midst of great difficulties and adversity ever came from an external source or power. The source has always been, and will always be the mind. Within the human mind resides the most incredible power to achieve what appears to be impossible for others to achieve. Remarkably, the opposite, which is the power of impossibilities, can also potentially reside in every one of us. It all boils down to our personal beliefs and faith to do something different.

There is a very thin line between winning and losing, especially where the margin for error is razor thin. In his 2004 classic article, “Riding the Razor”, Tony Dovale, the popular South African energy coach stated that the most resourceful outcome of coaching is the facilitation of the ability to be in control and step into a state of contentment, fulfillment, happiness and peace. That is obviously the state of total power, where a person knows what to do and how to do it. Such a state brings success.

Everyone that has been involved with coaching understands that the end game of coaching is to achieve an outcome, which leads to desirable and sustainable change. It is about compelling a change situation, because the client is committed to doing something that he would possibly not do on his own if he had the choice. However, he is giving himself the express permission and freedom through personal inspiration to do it now, so that he can be assured of a future that he otherwise would not have had.

In setting goals therefore, coaching motivations must ensure unanimity of meaning, thoughts and action. The coach in this regard has the responsibility to effectively track, monitor and guide the client’s energy, leading the client to understand what he wants, why he wants it, when he wants it and how he can achieve his goal(s), within the context and framework of personal inspiration.

The coach thus watches out for sounds, language, posture, movements, voice, tone and expressions of the client, in the mind-to-muscle or mind-to-body personal energy display. He wants to know if these show excitement, disappointment, fear, irritation, anxiety, pleasure, desire etc? The reason is that these emotions reveal how the personal energy of the client flows. The energy status invariably determines the level of performance. That is why a good coach must always be aware of what is going on with the client. He is of course not to attempt to read the mind of the client or predict his action(s). The coach must however be ready to pick up important clues of energy flow.

In performance coaching, the success motivations are based on three factors, namely: Awareness, Understanding and Action (A-U-A). As a matter of fact, all of performance coaching can be summarised as the process of bringing awareness, understanding and action to the client. It is about making the client to be more aware about his emotions, and understand that emotion is actually “energy in motion. It is also about helping to monitor and manage such emotions. Finally, it is about helping to release the right energy for action. That is the crux of successful coaching.

Emmanuel Imevbere