Life Coaches as Partners in Midlife
By Anne Uemura
Your journey through midlife may seem rocky and tricky at times. Many of your relationships may be in transition. Your body changes daily. And your hormones may seem like they are on a separate trip of their own. While your passage through the midlife season will differ from those of other women, there are some common threads.
Midlife transition offers the same opportunity to everyone if they are able to see it with a positive attitude. Sometimes, however, it is hard to see the whole forest when your arms are wrapped tight around one tree. This is where a life coach comes in.
Life Coaching has evolved into an expanding profession, offering guidance for many different areas of life—including careers, finances, nutrition, exercise, spirituality. In midlife there is a special opportunity to look back and decide what hasn’t worked and to look ahead to having what you want in any area of your life.
A life coach is someone, often with a psychology or counseling background, who guides you through your self-discovery to help identify what doesn’t serve you.
Many who write, speak and teach about this process of improving your life, agree that your underlying beliefs are the key to your ability to make permanent life changes. The problem is that most people are unable to “see” their underlying assumptions and try to move forward without help.
· Using a Life Transition Guide
A warning: not all coaches base their coaching on the importance of subconscious beliefs. Consider finding one that will so you can work at a deep level. Even then the methods and style of these coaches may differ but the basic process is similar. Your life coach will help you discover the core beliefs in your subconscious mind. Important ones are about what you deserve, how important you are, how life is supposed to be, about loving and being loved, about being successful, and so on.
Together you will find a plan for rewiring those beliefs, identifying your goals and dreams, and creating an action- plan. Finally, your coach will help you to navigate the obstacles that are keeping you from attaining your goals.
Let’s look at a typical kind of midlife transition. Imagine that Debbie has two children who have moved out of the house. She and her husband spent all their savings on college for the two children and retirement is inching closer every day. Debbie is 48 and has worked as an administrative assistant for the last 10 years. She isn’t bringing enough money to save for retirement, feels adrift since the kids left home and has been suffering from back pain, panic attacks and insomnia.
In this scenario Debbie’s life coach helps her discover that she always believed the man should be the breadwinner. And that it would be disrespectful for her to out-earn him. With her awareness of her traditional views, she concludes that these beliefs aren’t helping anyone and works to change them. Also brainstorming with her coach leads to the idea of running a business as an online virtual assistant.
As Debbie moves forward with your business idea, her coach helps her make a plan to pursue her goal, encourages her and together designs a timeline to help her be accountable to herself.
The coach also encourages Debbie to start taking better care of herself and to see a health professional about her symptoms. At the doctor’s Debbie is shocked to find that she has been having menopause symptoms for two years now and has been suffering needlessly. Through her doctor’s care, better diet, exercise and a new yoga class Debbie begins to feel much better.
· If You Could Do it Yourself You Would Have
Life coaches offer a team approach to life. As a woman in midlife you probably spent the last few decades nurturing others and trying to do a great job whatever your responsibilities. And yes, you’ve been independent and self-sufficient. However now is the time to change to work collaboratively in partnership with a life transition guide, a life coach.
If your intention is to create balance, live a life of purpose and embrace the abundance the world has to offer, you must be willing to do some serious work to get there. A life coach will work with you, usually on a weekly basis, and assist you in getting the clarity you need to cut through the mundane demands of everyday life.
Midlife can be a miraculous journey of discovery and revelation. A life coach can partner with you and accompany you so you make the most of this precious life passage.
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Anne Uemura, Ph.D., http://www.coach4womeninmidlife.com, is a psychologist-coach-healer with an eclectic and diverse background including work with: Bach flower essences, Barbara Brennan, Brian Weiss, Psych-K, Toltec teachers, Cristhal Bennett; and students/clients she saw during her 13 years at UC-Berkeley and in her private practice of over 25 years. |
