Want More? Get Coached!

Who are you, what do you want and how do you know?

When last have you challenged yourself in any way? Pushed beyond your comfort zone and defied your preset assumptions of who and what you can be?

Back when I was in my mid-twenties, at a time when I was already in over my head as young single mother, full-time employee and a sporadic part-time student, I made a pact with myself to learn something new that would challenge me and take me out of my comfort zone.

For three years straight, I faced my fears (real and imagined) and did things I’d never dreamed of a short time earlier. The first one was learning to swim.

Though I’d grown up on an island and went to the beach fairly regularly, I was deathly afraid of the ocean. There was something about open water, its unpredictability and immense power that overwhelmed me.

The beach and I had a love-hate relationship; I loved the warmth of the sand under my feet but hated how much of it always wanted to hitch a ride home with me. I loved the therapeutic properties of the salt water but hated the burning sensation it left in my eyes.

But I was determined to conquer my fear and learn to swim so I signed up for lessons one summer. Every Saturday morning for four weeks me and an intrepid group of adults of varying ages and backgrounds faced our fears head-on. At the end of the course I was swimming—well, for the most part.

For some reason that I can’t recall right now, I missed the last class, where I was to have learned how to swim with my face in the water. So to this day, I guess I doggie paddle more so than swim, which will hopefully be enough to save my own life if I had to.

Besides, as a sistah with natural hair, it’s probably just as well since I don’t want the headache of trying to wash all that pesky sand out!

In any case, I learned then that even facing possible physical harm, if I followed the instructor’s recognized framework for teaching adults to swim, stayed open to growth and the immense satisfaction of expanding my possibilities, I could let the experience transform me and acquire a skill I’d have for life.

I had another such life-changing experience last week in San Jose, California when I trained to became one of only 300 Certified High Performance Coaches in the world!

It was an amazing five days of education and introspection, role play and fellowship with people from a myriad of ethnicities and nationalities—one as far away as Malaysia—who came to challenge their own assumptions of who they are and could be, while they learned how to exponentially raise the personal development expectations of others.

I’d never fancied myself a coach of any kind, maybe except to my two girls (who actually may characterize me as a drill sergeant). But I do spend a lot of time, joyously so, giving counsel to others, in both my professional and personal life.

Now, with this specialized distinction I’ll be able to do so with an ear towards challenging them to create heightened and sustained levels of clarity, energy, courage, productivity and influence, elevating them beyond mediocrity.

I learned that while everyone wants more of life’s good things, high performers prepare themselves to receive and maintain those things through mastering their psychology, physiology, productivity and persuasion.

The High Performance coaching framework teaches that these four energy states, as I call them are anchored by one’s presence in the moment and an awareness that their life has purpose, even though they may not yet know what that purpose is.

The High Performance Institute, defines high performance as “succeeding beyond standard norms consistently over the long-term. It is the feeling of full engagement, joy and confidence that comes from consistently living from and into our full potential.”

The Institute’s framework prepares coaches to guide their clients to their own outcomes, utilize direct questions and education to add value to the coaching engagement and effectively transition the client from one concept to another, building learning and progress into each coaching session.

What I know for sure is we need help getting the most out of our lives. And high performers know they can’t do it alone.

So, high performer, how’d you do on answering my opening question? If you need some help with it, start here.