Project Life - Life Coaching & Personal Training

Living Above The Line

Most people come to a Life Coach looking for happiness in some form. They might need to overcome a challenge, or change a destructive behaviour, or heal a relationship, improve their health, or enliven their career. Perhaps they are already relatively happy, but want to take their life to the next level.

The pursuit of happiness through coaching can raise two common challenges for any coach: scepticism around the validity and effectiveness of coaching as a profession, and the expectation of prospective clients that coaching will in some way ‘fix’ them, or that the coach will provide answers to all their questions for them.

What Life Coaching Isn’t

Life coaching is not targeted at psychological illnesses. It is not a therapy, a diagnosis nor a consultation. Coaching will not focus on your past nor presuppose anything needs fixing. A Life Coach will not tell you what is wrong with you, nor give you the answers to your questions or tell you what to do. Most importantly, a Life Coach is not responsible for the results, or lack of results, a client experiences through the coaching process. That responsibility lies 100% with the client.

Living Above The Line

One of the key foundation principles of coaching is the law of ’cause and effect’. This is sometimes described as ‘above the line vs. below the line thinking’ and what is meant by this is that we, and only we, are accountable and responsible 100% for our thoughts, emotions, actions and results. This can be a challenging concept for those who choose to live their life ‘at effect’ i.e. in a self-created culture of blame, pointing the finger for their problems everywhere except within themselves.

Choosing to live our lives ‘at cause’, or above the line, is perhaps the single most empowering decision we can make in our lives. When we recognise that how we experience everything in our life is a choice, we move into an unprecedented space of personal power that positions us for the most fulfilled and compelling future imaginable.

People who live at cause, above the line, commit fully to their families, their occupations, and their lives. They put their best into everything they do. They embody self-reliance and accept total responsibility for their actions. They find a way to get the job done. They are a bright and attractive energy to be around.

Below the line people just get by. They constantly look to others for solutions to their problems. They have a profound sense of entitlement. Someone always owes them something. They are quick to blame. Conflict and drama follow them from job to job, from relationship to relationship. They always have a story for why they don’t get results and it never involves them. They create a dark and negative energy.

What Coaching Is

In order to fully understand any concept, and to allow us to develop a fully-formed opinion of a subject, we must experience it firsthand for ourselves. It is for this reason that many coaches will offer a complimentary session to prospective clients: also to establish if the coach/client relationship is going to be a good fit. Every Life Coach has a unique style and approach to their coaching practice and this adds depth and character to the industry, however there are common themes, concepts and techniques embraced by all coaches.

The ICF (International Coach Federation) is the leading global organization dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high standards, providing independent certification, and building a worldwide network of credentialed coaches. The ICF defines coaching as follows:

“Coaching is an ongoing professional relationship that helps people produce extraordinary results in their lives, careers, businesses or organizations.

Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life.

In each meeting, the client chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions. This interaction creates clarity and moves the client into action.

Coaching accelerates the client’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of choice.

Coaching concentrates on where clients are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future, recognizing that results are a matter of the client’s intentions, choices and actions, supported by the coach’s efforts and application of the coaching process”.

That’s a concise and accurate description of what Life Coaching delivers. What it doesn’t encapsulate however, is the sheer power, emotive force, life-altering results and irreversible personal growth that come from working with a great coach. I know this not because I am a coach but because I have had, and continue to have, life coaching myself, and I always will.

I spent the first 32 years of my life ‘at effect’, subsisting below the line, and it was a grey and miserable existence. My life isn’t perfect now, I’m not always happy, I make mistakes, I get angry, I sometimes eat entire tubs of ice cream in one sitting - but now, through coaching, the key difference is that I understand and embrace the fact that all of those behaviours are choices I make. The power of this knowledge is that at any given time, I can change my choice to do, feel or experience something completely different.

Observe yourself for a while: your thoughts, your actions, your emotions. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it, and we create our reality through our choice of language and thoughts. Are you creating a reality that serves, supports, nurtures and challenges you? Or is your reality a darker place of blame and anger? Are you above the line, or are you below the line?

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