I then realized that a majority of my life has been lived coaching people on health, fitness and nutrition. These life areas are my true love and passion. I shifted gears and decided I would become a health and wellness coach. I planned to help people feel better about their lives through helping them manage their earthly bodies. I am a lifetime athlete; and sports and athleticism make it easy for me to attract like-minded people and clients. I love the foundation of being an athlete: universality, respect, equal opportunity, objectivity, hard work, overcoming obstacles, diversity, team spirit, teamwork, focus, drive, and commitment. These traits of sport and athletics trickle off of my tongue so easily as I have lived them for 40 years. I planned to combine this passion with my 3-years of experience as a colon hydrotherapist and an advocate for a raw food life style. I thought these two combined ingredients were key to helping people understand how to cleanse their bodies as well as how to get not just calories but actually nutrition from their food.
I have been working in the field of diabetes over the last 15 years and discovered that our society desperately needs health and wellness coaches to turn our national healthcare crisis around. According to a 2011 statistic from the Center for Disease, Control and Prevention, and estimated 25.6 million over 20 years of age in the USA have diabetes ; between 90% and 95% of these individuals have type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes has a later onset and is more of a lifestyle disease often accompanied by poor eating, and a sedentary lifestyle. As I work with people inflicted with this disease daily, I am consciously aware of the amount of work needed to truly get our nation well. Thus, I came to the conclusion that I would niche myself as a health and wellness coach. I contemplated achieving personal training certification and incorporating physically working with clients on their fitness and health.
I realized though that I couldn’t discount my certification as a yoga instructor, and frequent practice as a semi-habitual meditator, voracious consumer of self-help information and a steadfast devotee of the law of attraction. I thought, “Maybe I am actually destined to a spiritual coach”. Since we are all just souls living in an earthly body, why not focus on coaching everyone’s true inner-being. Our spiritual life manifests and translates into our body and the world we create and live in. We have all experienced at one point or another in our lives how a saddened soul can manifest itself into an uphappy and unhealthy body. I wanted to guide people in a coaching practice to their “true” purpose in life. I could coach people on how to become the creator of what they want. So, I morphed my mental efforts into becoming a spiritual coach.
Most coaches and coaching students have probably experienced these frequent shifts in their niche; questioning which niche would fully utilize their skill sets and best assist clients in achieving their goals.
Undergoing weeks of supervised coaching as I neared my graduation date is when the light bulb went off as to the type of coach that I actually realized I could be. This determination has more to do with a personality style and way of living, than an actual defined category.
I used the Coaching Manifesto tool to assist me in defining the type of coaching practice that I wanted to build.
The Coaching Manifesto ( 2003 Ellen Bower Ltd. [email protected]) International Coaching Academy Pty Ltd)