Everyone Has the Ability to Make Their Own Decisions

As I am coming to the end of my life coaching training program, I took some time this weekend to review the course book and to refresh my mind on the concepts we learned. The basic belief behind life coaching is that an individual is the expert on him or herself and is able to create solutions to his or her own problems. Coincidentally, I was listening to an audio book this week in which the author talks about how we often latch onto other’s opinions to guide our decisions and resultingly inhibit our ability to think through these decisions. Opinions may be not very fleshed out thoughts to begin with, and although they are easy to acquire, the less we question the evidence or motivations behind them, the more we are prone to lack belief in ourselves.

Now that I have been trained on how to listen to others better, I am more aware of the frequency in which people discount themselves by acting upon other people’s advice. Meanwhile, I also notice that those who are asked for advice take the opportunity to speak their thoughts rather than first asking open-ended questions for the other’s benefit. My greatest challenge in coaching is to not solve the client’s problem in my head while they are talking as this leads me to guide the client to solutions that I think are best, and thus I rob the client of creating and owning a solution. I believe that adopting the practice of asking questions for the benefit of one’s own discovery and not to serve our own curiosity is essential to combatting our dependency on opinions.

I believe that adopting the practice of asking questions for the benefit of one’s own discovery and not to serve our own curiosity is essential to combatting our dependency on opinions.

Because relying upon others requires less time and energy, I think people may perceive life coaching to be draining. However, in the times that I have been provided a space to talk through my goals, I have come away more driven in pursuing my solutions compared to the times I embraced someone else’s proposals for me. Through continuing in relationship with someone whose full intentions are to listen to me, I am further encouraged to trust myself and am now a stronger advocate for cultivating this open mindset towards others. Although giving one a space to be fully heard is quite simple, the process of getting there is somewhat complex.

Book mentioned above: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill