My Personally Published Blog Articles

When you receive your coaching accreditation, and become officially certified to influence and change the lives of many, something hits you, and hits you hard and strong, and that is, if God forbid, you are faced with a HUGE misalignment between what your coaching brain has been taught, preaches, calls for, and gets paid to influence, change and inspire, and between what your reality dictates, the reality that happens between within your household or immediate environment, such as your marriage, or your relationship with your parents, or siblings, or that between you and your kids, friends, co-workers, or even the larger community to which you belong,  the reality that makes up most of your days, weeks, months, years at a time, and all of the sudden you witness this gap, a gap so tangible, between what the world of coaching believes in, calls for, and between what you are living as a regular human being with other human beings, just as regular as you are! You come to discover that even the person you look up to, a.k.a. your coach, is living a life that is far from being aligned between what he is living in his everyday circumstances, and between what he would like to be living in, coaching is usually used to fill this gap, between what is, and what could be. This is where the power of choices comes in, the power of choosing alternative perspectives, the power of choosing to see things differently, because when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. After all, your parents wants. A relationship with their son/daughter, not the coach, your children need a relationship with her mom/dad, not the coach, but how could that be possible, when coaching is NOT something you do, but a person you become? An identity? 

You may want to ask yourself, does that mean that through coaching I can be taught to let go of things I really want, believe in, love, and things I need for my basic survival, happiness and prosperity? NO WAY! You must always go after these things, if anything makes you feel good, then do more of it, and if anything makes you feel the opposite of good and great, then stay as far as possible from it, or better yet, cut all sorts of ties and relations to it! What serves you, multiply it, what causes you a disservice, run away from it.

But why is it that sometimes we are not living our best possible life yet, and yet we choose to continue, and even worse, you are a coach! Hence you have been taught all the tools and all the possibilities on how to make the best of life for you and yet it still doesn’t happen!

Well you need support! You need a network! You need a collection of human beings in your life who share the same values, attributes, wants, desires, needs, and visions as you, maybe not all of them, those who are slightly different than you are also necessary because they can add a perspective that may not otherwise be clear to you, but the people you live with everyday, your husbands or wives, friends and coworkers, better share those string of attributes otherwise the already challenging work you will have to do upgrading the quality of your life, working on your thinking processes, emotion handling, and so forth, is only going to get more difficult, and then the risk you run with all that, is if not immersed enough into what you are working on changing or upgrading, you run the risk of quitting or even worse, stop believing in the importance and power of personally developing yourself to upgrade your reality to match your dreams because it is going to seem so darn difficult amidst the lack of common ground you are facing with those you refer to as family, better half, significant other, spouse, ……you may fill in the blanks with the title of your choice.

One thing that is not taught to us coaches when getting our certification, is the amount of discipline required to make this work. Being married is a challenging enough task, being married while being a coach, is an even more challenging task, a coach marriage book is a totally different ball game that needs to come with its own set of protocol, rules, theories, best practices, education, because you don’t just stay married the moment you tie the knot and get married. Getting married and being married are two different situations, the first is an act of combining two individuals in matrimony, the latter is the journey and the process that begins as a result of this matrimony and the many realities of life that are not always claimed, dealt with, or spoken about the moment everyone goes home and the two lovebirds are left alone in the marital residence!

A coach is also a human being. Made up of feelings, strong ones, and is strongly in touch with both thoughts and emotions, is excellent at expressing him/herself, knows how to ask for what he/she wants, is an excellent effective communicator, uses all sorts of communication and effective listening skills in absolutely every conversation, asks questions to help the other person ponder and express themselves, gives the other person space to speak their mind and has the capability to view absolutely any situation from the perspective of the person speaking, trying to feel what they feel, think what they think, to accordingly help them with the situation they are going through the way they would like to be helped, leaving the person feeling heard, special, connected with, empowered, and if all goes well, healed. Here is where things begin to go downfall.

The coach runs the risk of sometimes expecting the same treatment in return! If the person you just presented all the above to was your spouse, and when it was your turn to be heard, communicated to, and you do not get the same level of A-Grade communication eloquence, at first, you will be understanding, and say, its ok, they don’t know how to do it the way a coach knows, they haven’t been through the same learning process, the second time it happens, you will pretty much give the same excuse except a bit more in depth this time, they were busy, they didn’t fully relate, and you will begin to take ownership towards your thoughts and feelings saying I will find a better way to process what I am going through next time without having to run it by anyone, I’m a coach I can do it! You will continue to apply methods 1 and 2, several times in a row, and along the way, add some spicy spices to it such as accessing your higher self, using positive affirmations, I am enough, I am worthy, I am in control, going to your books and meditation and visualization, and by the times the months and years go by, you wake up one day, feeling a gap. A gap of not being heard, connected to, empowered or healed, by those dearest to your heart, and that the only time/way you can enjoy a conversation of your standards and to your fulfillment and enjoyment, is with another fellow coach, or with your own coach, its like connecting to regular people (non-coaches) has become so dry for you that it is better off sometimes not to have one altogether, and you begin to bottle up, bottle up, bottle up, bottle up, until the Grande finale happens one day, and you have just popped like an overblown balloon, and the funny part is, everyone around you will be staring in amusement, what the hell is wrong with you? You never showed any of this! You’re a coach, you’re supposed to be fine, know how to have it altogether! Its like when you are a coach, you are denied the basic rights of being a human being, with feelings, hormones, PMS, and the rest of the cocktail of feelings that comes with it.

Chill, being a coach, does not mean you have it altogether, you are a masterpiece in progress, we’re all a work in progress, and our primary goal is learning from today and making tomorrow look better, starting and ending the day with gratitude is also important, but it is also OK if you do not feel up to it at times, recognize the feeling, acknowledge it, embrace it, find out what’s behind, and start again. The best part about being a coach, is the ability to relate to other human beings by seeing through them, hearing their unspoken words and understanding their every emotion.

Let’s keep building a better world, for everyone out there!

Love.

Manar S. Al-Dina.