Life Coaching

We use the word “coaching” to define professional assistance for just about everything in our modern world – business coaching, life coaching, academic coaching, sports coaching, sales coaching, public speaking coaching, and more. But what IS coaching, and why should you care? Well, if we drill down to the most basic concept that modern-day coaching is founded upon, we find that it boils down to one powerful word:

Connection.

Coaching is a future-oriented, growth-focused method of connection. It’s about connecting (or re-connecting) with and within yourself – with your feelings, thoughts, strengths, and values. It’s also about outward-focused connection with your world and with others, partnering to make goals, hopes, and dreams a reality.

Coaching is also about connection with your coach. Good coaches are professionally trained to leverage a variety of skills and breadth of knowledge covering active listening, powerful questions for inquiry, and numerous topics from positive psychology and applied neuroscience. But what really makes a coaching relationship powerful is the coach-client connection, rooted in the simple yet radical belief that people are capable, resourceful, and whole. Coaching helps us to become an empathetic witness to our own stories, and, in the process, become more and more like our best selves. We are better leaders, better friends, better partners, and better selves when we embrace the process of connection.

“Coaching is not something that we do to people, it is something we do with people.” Leigh Gauthier, PCC

Coaching recognizes you as the preeminent authority of your life. This allows the coach to focus on being the expert solely on the coaching process, and to manage the focus of the conversation that you help create and craft.

Coaching excels at assisting individuals through change and transition. You may find coaching particularly beneficial if you are navigating personal, relational, or professional change, or if you feel stuck, and deeply WANT to change.

There are a few primary reasons clients come to Neurotherapy of Colorado Springs for coaching. First, coaching is a non-clinical, proactive, conversational mental health and wellbeing model. Many clients find this model of talk work more appealing than meeting solely with a therapist or counselor. It allows them to process things verbally, while being focused on their future growth and goals, rather than their past.

The second reason many clients pursue coaching at Neurotherapy of Colorado Springs is as an adjunct or follow-up to neurofeedback. During the process of neurofeedback, our clients are growing and changing, rewiring their brains, and developing new neural pathways. Coaching during this process helps clients synthesize what they are learning and have learned, build new habits to maximize their brain’s potential, and set their eyes on the future of what their life can look like with the new brain they have built.

A third reason clients come to us for coaching is for performance enhancement. Many clients come to us from high performance-based backgrounds, whether they are athletes, executives, performers, or military professionals. These clients find all that we have to offer at Neurotherapy of Colorado Springs appealing and effective, and that includes our coaching model.

Even though they seem very different on the surface, both coaching and neurofeedback share some strong and complementary similarities.

As discussed above, coaching is all about connection. Neurofeedback depends heavily on connection, as well. Your neurotherapist creates a safe and welcoming environment, connecting with you as a person and building trust. Gradually, through connecting new neural pathways with repetition and focus, you change your brain. And when you change your brain, you change your life!

There are other similarities between neurofeedback and coaching. Both coaching and neurofeedback are based on the principle of neuroplasticity. That is, that as long as the brain is alive, it has infinite potential to grow, heal, and change.

Neurofeedback relies on the highly motivating and satisfying power of dopamine to reinforce the changes the client is making in a session. Coaching does the same, by using the pleasurable sensation of an “aha!” moment to slingshot into client-created actions that help them achieve their stated goals for a session. Both of these modalities are unique in their client-led approach. All we essentially do in neurofeedback is allow the brain to see itself and make the changes it needs to make in order to thrive. Coaching holds up a similar mirror for the client, reflecting back what is heard in order for the client to gain deeper clarity and understanding.