FreelanceCoach Blog

Stress is an everyday reality for us in the present times and life coaching can deliver a lot in helping us deal with stress. Today’s life is extremely demanding. What with workplace pressure, parenthood, commuting hassles, etc. our lives are constantly under stress from different quarters. It is therefore not unusual for us to feel pent up at times. However, stress is rather harmful when it becomes a continuous affair. A lot of the present day lifestyle diseases are directly a result of excess stress in our lives. Hence it is important to look at stress management seriously. In certain circumstances the amount of stress in our lives become too much to handle and we end up feeling lost. It is best to seek professional life coaching in such cases to help deal with the situation quickly and effectively.

Why do you Need Professional Life Coaching to Manage Stress

In everyday situations, it may not be so unusual for you to deal with stress and still keep going strong. We all deal with our stress at some level or the other. However when it becomes an integral part of your everyday existence, when it starts to badly affect your work and personal life, it becomes important that you let a professional handle the situation. In such cases if you continue to evade seeking professional help, the problem has every chance of getting aggravated and causing mental trauma or depression from inability to deal with it. International studies have shown that life coaching helps reduce stress levels (57.1%) and leads to a more balanced life (60.5%).

Essentials About Dealing With Stress

The basic premise of stress is anxiety and pondering over the past or future. It is very common to develop stress through pondering too much about what went wrong and how you could have probably stopped it from happening. This could be about discontinuing your diet, your exercise program, not being able to give time to your kid and so on.The continuous self reproach gradually weakens you and makes you feel bad about yourself for not having handled a situation better and also instills fear in you of your inability to deal with similar situations in future. Thereafter you start being anxious with how things might turn out in future and with passing time, the anxiety and fear might get a grip on you unless conscious efforts are made to shake them off. The easiest way to deal with stress is probably to dwell in the present and taking one thing at a time without getting too anxious about the “what if”s. However it is easier said than done when it concerns your own life, its problems and fears.

Life coaching sessions help you get past your regrets from the past, the anxiety for future and help you to focus on the present, thereby relieving stress. Hence seeking professional help is advisable when you feel that stress is becoming an everyday issue that you are finding difficult to deal with. Once you have realized and taken action by seeking expert help, the chances are very high that you will be able to get past stress issues pretty soon.

To Your Success and Happiness!

Anda Tudor, Life and Career Coach

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Thoughts are very powerful towards channelizing personal growth in our lives. Our thoughts are what makes us what we are, how we are and how our life is. They guide and shape our beliefs and convictions. If you wish to achieve something in your life, the first important thing to do is to believe in it and your thoughts are the most important tools that could help you do that. Each of your individual beliefs and thought processes together form the essence of your belief system and ultimately conjure up the story of your life. This is the reason that life coaching experts, who deal with life beliefs, dreams, failures and achievements issues of numerous individuals day in and day out, lay utmost importance on shaping of thoughts.

Channelize Your Thoughts to Fuel Your Personal Growth

You perform your life duties and responsibilities according to certain beliefs and perceptions that you have. You try to deliver them to the best of your ability and the way your thoughts tell you to deliver them. Whether it is your work, your relationship, your family or your passion, you are driven by your thoughts and perceptions. To make sure that your actions are fruitful and results in your personal growth you need your thoughts to be positive and also have strong faith on your belief system. The outside world might offer other or negative takes of what you believe in, but if your belief system is strong enough they will not be able to sway you from your path. You will keep on repeating to yourself about the positives of your thought process and belief system and the story that you wish to make out of it. The more you reiterate your beliefs to yourself, the stronger it becomes. Once you have a strong belief system it steels your mindset and helps you put in the action that you require for your desired personal growth.  It may so happen that you get influenced by external thought processes and suddenly start doubting your goals, your conviction, etc. It is vital to not be swayed by negative thoughts or opinions that weigh you down. If you find it difficult to get past the impasse for too long take expert advice of life coaching guides, they will help you find back the faith in your beliefs, fight the fear or apprehension of being yourself and following your passion and reinstall the confidence in yourself to pursue and achieve the personal growth goals you set for yourself.

Once you are strong with your thoughts, life beliefs and your passion to achieve what you want, there is no stopping you from reaching the level of personal growth you wish to reach. You just need to focus on positive thoughts, egg yourself on and keep believing in yourself.  It starts with you and your thoughts and if you manage to keep your thoughts focused, you will reach the zenith in no time.

To Your Success and Happiness!

Anda Tudor, Life and Career Coach

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At times we start accepting that we can do nothing much about our lifetime regrets and that is when life coaching helps us get past this phase of inaction and despair. We all have regrets in our lives and at times such regrets start overshadowing important aspects of our beings and lives. There are instances when we get stuck with ruing over something that we could not or did not do and the consequences that followed. These regrets start affecting our performance at job, our family and social life, our happiness and well being. It is useful to seek professional life coaching services in such circumstances to help us come out of the impasse.

Does Life Coaching Really Help?

International studies have shown that life coaching leads to more self confidence (52.4%) and a more balanced life (60.5%). Numerous people have benefited by seeking professional guidance at critical junctures in their lives when they felt bogged down with worries and regrets. It is not for nothing that coaching is one of the fastest growing professions the world over. Professional Life Coaching experts help you find the positives in your life and deal with your failures and regrets. Unless you are able to get past lifetime regrets, it becomes difficult to move ahead in life and take new chances for a better life. It is important that you see what you have and how you can make your life better under the given circumstances rather than constantly running after illusions and ending up with more regrets.

Few Things Which Help in Getting Past Regrets

Some of the most common kinds of regrets mostly have to do with “What if I did what I wanted to” or “I wish I had spent more time with my parents/children/family”. At times we run after material possessions too much and in the process end up giving up on our passion, our time with family and friends and in the process develop regrets that is difficult to get past. One of the principal theories of life coaching is to help you identify and do what matters to you, be it pursuing your hobby, spending quality time with your family or traveling. When you do what matters to you most, it makes you happy and minimizes the chances of developing regrets. Even when you already have regrets, coaching helps you see that you can still start to change things from the present. It helps you being more content with what you have, lets you follow your passions, enjoying your relationships and indulge your mind and soul to help you become a happier person from inside out.

It is only when you let yourself be happy without blaming yourself too much for the past mistakes that you start your journey away from your lifetime regrets. Life coaching helps you see the positives, accept your mistakes and prioritize your happiness, ultimately helping you to lead much more contented and blissful lie.

To your Success and Happiness!

Anda Tudor, Life and Career Coach

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At times we are struggle to decipher why the world outside perceives our worth as much less than what we know it is. You might have wondered at times why people fail to see the positives or good in you that you feel is very much there. This ultimately leads to declining self esteem and confidence, which, to say the least, is a very undesirable state of mind. But take heart there are ways that you could address this.

What Factors to Look Out for To Project the Best in You

The key is to pay close attention to the factors and parameters that the world uses to gauge you.

1. Look. One of the very first things to start with is the way you look. By looks we don’t really mean your physical features per se, but more the way you present and conduct yourself. Choose your clothes carefully. While it is not advisable to be fastidious about your dress, but the way you dress does carry a message to the outside world and to everyone you interact with. Let’s face it, most of us feel good talking, interacting and being with someone who is well dressed and is presentable. So the first step that you can take is to dress appropriately and be presentable.
2. Behavior. The next important thing is to watch out how you interact and talk. Words have power and so does how they are spoken. Be clear, precise and interesting. It is important that people don’t have to try too hard to hear you or understand you. It will help if you speak slow enough to be followed and use intonations that make your words sound audible as well as interesting. One of the most important key to being attractive is to be a good conversationalist.
3. Listen. Do remember that listening is an equally essential part of a conversation. If you continue to manipulate and dominate entire conversations, people will lose interest and feel less inclined or obliged to interact with you.
4. Body Language. Also while you engage in a conversation, be aware of your body language. The way you move your head, hands or place your feet also reflects your state of mind. At times fidgeting or gesticulating too much with your hands may give out the wrong signals. Your body language talks a lot about how confident you are with your words, subject matter and the environment, which has direct effect on how your persona is perceived by people around you. Confidence is one quality that seldom fails to impress. A firm handshake, a steady eye-to-eye contact and avoiding unnecessary hurry in a conversation will help you establish that you are well at ease and confident. So be careful about what indications you give to your audience or conversation partner with your gestures and body language.

If you find all this too complex to keep track of, it is advisable that you consult a life coaching expert to help you understand the gaps and pitfalls in your social skills. They will be able to identify the areas where you need improvement.

Improving your image to gain better recognition from the world outside is not necessarily a difficult task; given you have the required grooming, patience and observation. If you feel you are lagging behind in some of these factors, start now, take inputs from professional life coaching guides and chisel out your social skills. Soon you will find your social image going all the right places.

 Wishing you all the best,

Anda Tudor

PR Manager, FreelanceCoach

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Depressions are a part of our lives and the occasional bout of depression is probably normal, but when it starts to get regular and chronic then you could consider getting NLP coaching to help you bounce back to positivity. At times depression gets difficult to deal with and you find yourself immersing yourself in it with declining life urges. Holidays Season can be a cause of depression due to the pressure to do so many things at the same time or because one feels lonely. These are situations that need to be handled by professional life coaching guides and it is important to recognize that before the condition festers and results into serious and chronic depression.

Some Way Outs that Life Coaching Experts Suggest Toward Countering Depression

If you have been feeling that unhappy and down for a considerable amount of time, it is important that you seek professional guidance to shake off the depression. NLP coaching will help you see that disappointments and depression is a part and parcel of everyone’s life and not necessarily just yours. It is useful to know that positive and negative frames of mind are alternating and keep doing turns once in a while. Reassure yourself that the negative phase of depression will pass and get strength from that. At times it also helps to focus on your past achievements and what you have acquired in life already.

Life coaching sessions will help you understand that you already have a lot to be grateful about and it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to just reflect upon the lost opportunities and failures. Studies have shown that professional coaching leads to decided improvement in the quality of life (43.3%).

Interacting with positive people will also help you to see past the negativity that shrouds your conscious while in a depression. Your exchanges with them will help you realize that all of them have certain disappointments and failures in their life and yet manage to get past them by learning from those situations and focusing on the future possibilities.

NLP coaching professionals also advice that to break away from a negative state of mind, you could also explore breaking away from your regular routine to do something that excites you, like joining a meditation program, joining a gym, going for a hike with friends, interacting with your pet, nature, etc. Such efforts will bring in new energy and enthusiasm to your life and shift your thoughts from the feeling of gloom and lethargy that depression causes.

At times a simple redecoration of your room or office space can do a lot to cheer you up. When in a depression you could start associating your gloomy thoughts and problems with everything that surrounds you. This way your environment might act like a constant reminder of your problems, ultimately further depressing you. Cleaning, redecorating, changing colors, etc. can do a lot to change that and you will be surprised to find how much such small changes will affect you.

Finally, the most important thing is to look squarely at your problems and taking action. You have to turn around and take charge of the problem situation with a resolve to arrive at a solution. Agreed that it is difficult to do that when you are depressed, but that is precisely what NLP coaching will help you with, to find the motivation and resolve.

So whenever you find the first signs of depression showing up, take prompt action by not letting them fester. If needed, take help of a life coaching experts to guide you and spring back to life with vigor and positivity.

Wishing you all the best,

Anda Tudor

PR Manager FreelanceCoach

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Who are you?  No really, WHO ARE YOU?  If you really know who you are then you would probably know how to respond to difficult or conflict situations.  But most of us don’t know who we really are inside, and so we avoid or just jump in blindly when it comes to handling difficult situations.

For example, perhaps the person that you see in the mirror you believe to be stable and creative with a healthy emotional expression.  That person has a blend of strength, sensitivity and creativity that you really admire – and others do too because they’ve told you as much.  But what you don’t see or chose not to acknowledge is the insecurity and self-doubt that lies just beneath the surface.  Yes, that is you, the real you.  That air of confidence that everyone admires is also hiding your insecurity and self-doubt.

Now that you know you have these underlying issues, isn’t it safe to say that perhaps the way you handled past conflicts was based solely on these traits and not the air of confidence that you put out there for everyone to see.  It’s the insecurity and self-doubt that drives your need to express your anger or resentment every single time, no matter what.  And you analyze everything to death which only puts you into deeper hot waters.

Start today and get to know the real you – not just your strengths, but also your weaknesses.  Don’t hide your weaknesses, bring them out and confront them.  When you acknowledge what they are, you can better understand why you re-act to certain situations the way that you do.  You will know the next step to take, how and when to take that step each and every time you are faced with a difficult or conflict situation.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about getting a coach, but weren’t sure why you might need one.  As your conflict resolution coach, I can help you learn more about your communication and conflict management styles; develop new options and strategies for managing any existing conflicts; gain confidence in your own abilities to manage and resolve those conflicts knowing that you have someone to support you.

Take the next step to get coaching and schedule a FREE Discovery Session with me!

Until next time…

Resolve It Now!

Eudine Herbert, the Conflict Mediator

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The essence of life coaching lies in healing you from the inside so that you can focus on specific areas of your life better. These areas could vary from your relationships to your work and career and from your family life to personal development and health.

There are certain points in our life where we feel that we are unable to identify our goals or where we feel helpless in a particular situation. There are times when we give up on our dreams and then there are times when poor health makes us loose our direction in life. We all go through such situation and sometimes we can deal with it and at other times we cannot. It is those situations that we are unable to deal with is where life coaching comes into practice. 

There are 7 aspects that life coaching focuses on and helps us to thus strengthen ourselves in each of these aspects. They are:

1)      Focus: This is the primary aspect. With the help of life coaching you can learn to focus on your goals, objectives, or situations. It will help you not only set time out for each priority in your life but also assist you in taking them head-on.

2)      Direction:  Once you have the focus, you need the right direction. Without a direction, you will be unable to reach your objectives. Life coaching will help you to create plans and strategies to be followed and thus achieve your objectives.

3)      Stress and Energy: One of the major reasons for lack of focus or direction in life is lack of energy, which rises from the high amount of stress. Life coaching is a process by which you will learn to reduce your stress and harness your positive energy.

4)      Confidence: Lack of confidence is one of the greatest issues that people of different ages are facing today. It is important to have self belief and confidence and this is exactly what you will learn through life coaching.

5)      Positivity: It is very easy to move from a positive frame of mind to negative and negativity surrounds all of us whether at work or home.  Life coaching enables understanding and accepting the positivity in us and around us as this will play an important role in your success.

6)      Balance in life: When nothing is working well, we lose our balance in life. Through this type of coaching, you can not only regain your balance but also move forth towards a brighter future.

7)      Growth and Success: Growth and success are inter-related but there are times when growth doesn’t bring success. This happens when you are stuck in a specific mindset. Changing the mindset keeping in mind future success and focusing your mind towards exploring new ideas and possibilities is what life coaching preaches.

Warm regards,

FreelanceCoach Team

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"The most important thing that I learned through life coaching was how my lack of self-confidence was taking away the glow from my life and hampering personal self-development” Sally Newton.

There are many more people like Sally who are facing their demons day in and day out. There are many Sally’s for whom living with their demons is the only choice and there are some who have succumbed to their demons. The demons are nothing more than the manifestations of your own personality that hampers proper personal self-development.

The question is how can you really instill self-development and enhance your personality? This is where life coaching comes to assistance. In order to identify how this type of coaching can help you, it is important to understand is what self-development really is.

Understanding Personal Self Development

Personal development relates to increasing self-awareness. When you are aware of your inner self and your strengths and weaknesses; you will be in a better position to command them. We are all a victim of our weaknesses and often our weakness overpowers our strengths. In such a situation life will always seem to roll downwards. There is nothing abnormal about this and most of us go through such a situation at least once in our life.

What life coaching does is that it teaches us to draw out our strength and harness it properly. This will ensure that our strengths overpower our weaknesses. When strengths are dominating, there will be an automatic increase in self-confidence. 

Ways of Achieving Personal Self Development

There are mainly 3 ways of achieving personal self-development through life coaching. They are:

Setting a Goal: Self-development starts with recognizing your true potential and how to judge your potential? This can be done only by testing your potential. To start with, life coaching will teach you to formulate a goal, aim at the goal, and achieve it. The goals initially will be smaller and achievable. As your keep achieving one goal after another, you will be able to judge your potential and understand your strengths. At the end of the day, you will be more self-confident and self-reliant!

Positive Outlook: Creating a positive outlook is easy but keeping it can be that difficult. Most often, a small defeat or stress can put a dent on our positive outlook. Where do we begin? Life coaching will help you to maintain constant positive outlook even when life seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Positive outlook plays an important role in controlling the mind and the more positive you are, the better equipped your mind will be to take on any challenge.

Evaluate your decisions: Last but not the least is evaluating your decisions. The process of evaluation will help you to determine where you went wrong or what needs to be improved. The process of life coaching process will help you to understand where and what you lack and how you can strengthen it so that overall personal self-development can take place.

Warm regards,

FreelanceCoach Team

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Often we feel that our life is stuck at a saturation point. Be it your career, health or relationship, it is usually difficult to perceive the small changes that happen on a daily basis. This is why I often perform a time travel back to my past.

No, I haven’t been luck to invent a time machine or stumble upon a magical lamp. This is a simple exercise that I strongly believe everyone should once in a while. Time travel in this context, is done by writing a letter from the past you to the present you.

Take a piece of paper, and imagine yourself to be the person you were 5 years ago. Write a letter, dividing it into 5 major sub-headings. Each of these sub-headings would focus on important areas of your life.

The first area should be your quality of life. What changes would you want to bring in your character and personality? What bad habits would you want to get rid of, and the good ones you wish to imbibe upon.

Young people do not focus much on being healthy, but they should. How healthy would you be in the next 5 years, on a scale of 10 where 10 is healthiest and 1 being not healthy at all?

The third and fourth areas can be interchangeable, considering the importance of each in your life. Some people value relationship or love over career while for others career comes first. Whichever sub-heading you wish to prefix before career and love, here are a list of questions that you can include in your letter:

For career; what are your reasons for choosing a particular profession, and do you see yourself content and successful after 5 years? What is your 5 year’s goal with respect to money, promotion and work-life balance?

Relationship is a tricky scenario as most people starts to mature and think of relationship differently with age. This should be a fun part to write on. State down what is your current view about relationship and love, are you the no-strings attached type or is it happily ever after for you since the first date. Is your present perception likely to stick even after 5 years? What changes you would, if you could bring in your future relationships?

After you are done with the letter, come back to the present and analyze whether you have lived up to your expectations. Note how your life has changed, which areas have improved and which needs working upon.

This simple exercise would give you an insight on how your life has changed over the past couple of years, and how you wish for it to change more during times to come.

By Alison Bourget

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In today’s world, coaching is becoming more and more important; people are looking to improve themselves and the life they are living. Therefore you, as a person with high dreams, willing to help people to grow bigger and be a part of the positive change in the world go and take coaching classes thinking that at the end of these the clients will come running to you. Are you one of them?

You tried to obtain clients by talking to friends, giving free sessions to anyone listens to you, etc. But you want more, you know that you have a lot to offer and you want to use your talent. But what to do? 

    Telemarketing is a successful method for selling different services like cable TV, charity, insurance, etc. Maybe you wouldn’t think that this is right for coaching as you want the client to be willing to be coached and interested in coaching already. I would like you to think again.

Telemarketing is an integral part of any business. It is not about ringing as many people as possible; it's about ringing the right people. By speaking to the decision makers from a carefully selected leads generator list of potential clients/customers etc, you can help maximise your coaching business potential.

There are many advantages for doing telemarketing for your coaching business:

• You’ll expand rapidly your clients’ network. Telesales is unrivalled in its effectiveness to make connections. How else could you speak to hundreds of potential clients in so short a time period?

• No geographic boundaries. With telemarketing you have the opportunity to reach anyone, anywhere in the world. 

• Find new opportunities that you couldn’t find elsewhere. If you listen carefully to people on the phone, you can discover opportunities that you never knew existed. A client that you called might know somebody that is going through a change and needs guidance and support.

• You’ll develop more as a coach as you will expand your knowledge about asking questions and relating to different types of customers

If you want to bring your coaching business to different dimensions, consider telemarketing as an important tool for this.

Anda Tudor                                                                                          February 17^th, 2012

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