WHETHER YOU FEEL STUCK IN A RUT OR JUST WANT TO FIND WAYS TO COPE WITH STRESS, LIFE COACH MICHELLE ELMAN HAS THE ANSWERS
THE AUTHOR Michelle Elman is a life coach, boundaries expert and author of The Joy of Being Selfish.
When I became a life coach, no one knew what it meant. Now, eight years later, many of us will have heard of them but it still brings a lot of confusion as to what it really means and what a life coach can offer you.
Life coaches help you with any difficulty in your life – whether it be your mental health, your career or your relationships – and try to get you back on track. As a generalisation, life coaches tend to focus more on your future whereas traditional psychology tends to focus on your past. A psychologist or therapist may ask ‘how do you feel about that?’ whilst a life coach will ask ‘how do you want to feel instead?’.
Do you feel that you want to make changes, that you’re stuck in a rut or forever going round on a hamster wheel? Here are my secrets for moving forwards towards the life you want…
1. Feel your feelings
One of the best places to start is to understand your emotions. Life coaches tend to term emotions as ‘energy-in-motion’ and believe that emotions are physical energy that sits within your body. This may be you feeling sadness in your heart or anger in your throat. To pinpoint how you are feeling, find time when you are alone and locate those emotions in your physical body. Put your attention on that emotion. You may want to breathe into it to release the emotion or you might want to have a conversation with that emotion, asking it what it is trying to tell you.
The reason people don’t tend to feel their emotions is because when you put your focus on it, the sensation will intensify and sometimes can get more painful. Sit through it, and keep breathing. After it gets more intense, it will release. Emotions are designed to be temporary – the only reason they stick around longer than they should is that we don’t have the courage to process them completely.
2. Create some time alone
Most people have such full social calendars that the idea of alone time is a luxury. Alone time can be so important for building a relationship with ourselves and finding time to wind down. Being able to enjoy your own company is such a life skill and since you can’t get away from yourself, it’s worth investing time in yourself.
Alone time rarely happens by accident, mainly because alone time brings up our noisy thoughts and uncomfortable feelings – so unless you create the time for it, it won’t happen by itself. One way
