You would never expect an athlete to reach the Olympic Games without a world-class coach. Nor would you expect a professional football team to enter the stadium without a whole team of coaches – head coach, offensive coach, defensive coach, and a special teams coach. Well, today, coaching has moved into the business and personal realm to include coaches who have succeeded in your area of interest – and who can help you traverse this same path or even one far greater.
One of the Best-Kept Secrets of the Successful
Of all the things successful people do to accelerate their trip down the path to success, participating in some kind of coaching program is a the top of the list.
A coach will help you clarify our vision and goals, support you through your fears, keep you focused, confront your unconscious behaviors and old patterns, expect you to do your best, help you live by your values, show you how to earn more while working less, and keep you focused on your core genius.
Worth More Than Money
I have had many coaches who have helped me achieve my goals - business coaches, writing coaches, marketing coaches, and personal coaches.
What were the results?
First and foremost, I immediately doubled my free time. I delegated more tasks, scheduled vacations rather than merely thought about them, and hired additional staff that ultimately positioned my business to earn more. And that was just in the first few months.
Not only did my business benefit, but my family did, too.
For me, coaching wasn’t just about making more money. It was about helping me make better decisions for myself and my business. The truth is, most coaching clients are smart – very smart. Yet they still know the value of accessing someone who can be objective, honest, and constructive about the options they are facing.
Why Coaching Works
Regardless of whether the program is designed to achieve a specific business goal – say, increasing your real estate listings – or whether it is specifically designed to help you simply gain more clarity and progress in all areas of your personal and professional life, a coach can help you…
Determine your values, vision, mission, purpose and goals
Determine specific action steps to help you achieve those goals
Help you sort through opportunities
Keep you focused on your top priorities
Achieve balance in your life while still accomplishing your business or career goals
Different Formats for Coaching
Coaching can be delivered privately or in groups. Most often, it’s done through regularly scheduled telephone contact, although it can also be done in person. Over the course of the sessions, you’ll work together with your coach to develop goals, strategies, and a plan of action that is positive, desirable, and realistic. Support is often provided between sessions through e-mail and other media.
Occasionally, depending on the coach, you may be coached via structured large-group teleconferences in which you listen to valuable information, and then implement what you hear on your own. Some coaches will work with you every week and others once a month.
How to Find a Coach
There are literally thousands of coaches available to work with you. There are personal coaches, life coaches, and business coaches. Some are industry specific (dental, chiropractic, real estate, and speaking), some are job specific (executive coaches), and some are interest specific (strategic planning, health and wellness, finances, and career transition).
You can find them on the Internet, in the phone book, and by asking around. There are organizations like Coach U and the International Coach Federation that can help you find a coach near you.
For information on The Success Principles Coaching Program, which is designed to personally help you integrate the principles into your life, career, relationships, and finances, visit www.CanfieldCoaching.com for more information.
In my experience, the reason many of us are not living up to our fullest potential lies in the gap, the gap between knowing and doing. Often, we attempt to close that gap with the New Year’s Resolution only to find ourselves back where we started come February or March.
In the end, a coach will challenge you to do more and be more.
© 2006 Jack Canfield
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As the beloved originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield fostered the emergence of inspirational anthologies as a genre - and watched it grow to a billion dollar market. As the driving force behind the development and delivery of over 100 million books sold through the Chicken Soup for the Soul® franchise, Jack Canfield is uniquely qualified to talk about success.
Behind the empire Time Magazine called the "publishing phenomenon of the decade" is America's leading expert in creating peak performance for entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, managers, sales professionals, corporate employees and educators. He is a compelling, empowering and compassionate coach who for the past 30 years has helped hundreds of thousands of individuals achieve their dreams.
Affectionately known as "America's Success Coach", Jack has studied and reported on what makes successful people different. He knows what motivates them, what drives them, and what inspires them. He brings this critical insight to countless audiences internationally --- sharing his success strategies in the media, with companies, universities and professional associations in over 20 countries around the world.
Jack is a Harvard graduate with a Master's Degree in psychological education and one of the earliest champions of peak-performance, developing the specific methodology and results-oriented activities to help people take on greater challenges and produce breakthrough results.
He's personally taught millions of individuals his unique and modernized formulas for success and has packaged them in his latest book The Success Principles™: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. This new self-improvement standard contains 64 powerful principles of success utilized by top achievers from all walks of life and all areas of commerce. The Success Principles - and the entire empire of "Principles" books, products, coaching programs and branded retail merchandise - is Mr. Canfield's next offering to the more than 100 million readers he currently reaches worldwide.
Mr. Canfield's other best-selling books - The Power of Focus, The Aladdin Factor, and Dare to Win, - have generated millions of bookstore and Internet sales, and have launched complementary products such as audio programs, video programs, corporate training programs and syndicated columns to enthusiastic corporate buyers. His audio program, Maximum Confidence, has sold more than 350,000 copies through Nightingale-Conant alone.
He is Founder and Chairman of the Canfield Training Group in Santa Barbara, California, which trains entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and motivated individuals how to accelerate the achievement of their personal and professional goals.
Jack is also the founder of The Foundation for Self-Esteem in Culver City, California, which provides self-esteem resources and trainings to social workers, welfare recipients and human resource professionals.
Jack is the CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul® Enterprises, a billion dollar empire that encompasses licensing, merchandising and publishing activities around the globe. Jack's nationally syndicated newspaper column is read in 150 papers worldwide, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® radio shows are syndicated throughout North America. Jack is also syndicated columnist through King Features Syndicate and is a popular news subject featured not only in major trade publications, but in every major metro newspaper across America and in hundreds more around the globe.
Chicken Soup for the Soul® has also been a featured television program for both the PAX and ABC networks. Additionally, the company's licensing division produces dozens of top-selling items including Chicken Soup for the Soul® nutriceuticals, pet foods, greetings cards, music, collectibles and other licensed merchandise. A Chicken Soup for the Soul® magazine also launched in the summer of 2005.
Jack's background includes a BA from Harvard University and he also holds a Masters degree in Psychological Education from the University of Massachusetts and a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Santa Monica, Parker College of Chiropractic and St. Ambrose University. Over the past 30 years, he has been a psychotherapist, an educational consultant, trainer and a leading authority in the areas of self-esteem, achievement motivation and peak performance.
Jack Canfield holds the Guinness Book World Record for having seven books simultaneously on the New York Times Bestseller List - beating out Stephen King. He even holds the Guinness Book World Record for the largest book-signing ever for Chicken Soup for the Kids Soul. And he's the only author to have won both the ABBY Award and the Southern California Book Publicist Award in the same year - honoring him as both an outstanding writer and a consummate book marketer.
Jack has also been a featured guest on more than 1,000 radio and television programs in nearly every major market worldwide - many of them on a repeat basis. A sample of these shows include Oprah, 20/20, Inside Edition, The Today Show, Larry King Live, Fox and Friends, The CBS Evening News, The NBC Nightly News, Eye to Eye, CNN's Talk Back Live!, PBS, QVC and many others.