Actuality: coaching

Actuality Counselling's coaching service can facilitate changes in your professional or personal life.

Awareness and change lie at the heart of coaching.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) has defined coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential". The late Sir John Whitmore defined the goal of the coach as "building awareness, responsibility and self-belief."

Coaching enables you to set aside some time for yourself in order to:

• increase your motivation;
• identify opportunities;
• hear yourself talk and consider where the words come from;
• find meaning and purpose in your life or acknowledge that there isn't any;
• clarify where you are and where you want to be;
• become aware of the values and personal qualities which are important to you;
• daydream constructively about what might be possible for you (without fear of judgement or criticism);
• explore alternative perspectives on your life and work;
• examine and confront what you perceive as obstacles;
• learn how to be more creative; and
• consider what actions you might take and set out plans.

If you are reading this, you may already be considering change as a business owner, an employee, a spouse, a student or, indeed, in just about any role you can think of. Perhaps you:

• have been thinking about change for a long time;
• have only just begun to think about change;
• have a specific change in mind;
• feel that change is needed but are not sure what it should be;
• have already made a significant change and would like to review it; or
• perhaps you have spent your whole life avoiding change.

Wherever you find yourself right now is where our work begins.

I qualifed as a coach with the Institute of Learning and Management and have also trained in Solution-focused coaching with Mark McKergow (see Counselling for a brief description of the Solution-focused approach).

This is a chance for you to sit down with another person and focus exclusively on you and your life. Using a range of exercises, role play, humour (in fact, whatever it takes), I will challenge you to take a serious look at who you are and encourage you to move forward at a pace that is right for you. I will listen to you and try to understand you; I will support you and provoke you; we will consider the past and learn from it in order to create a future; it will be serious and it will be fun, as we explore you and your environment, and discover who you might become and what you might achieve.

It is important to work with a coach with whom you are comfortable. At Actuality Counselling, you can try an initial, free session during which we can consider the issues on which you want to focus.

Tel: +44 (0)7941 488 550

e-mail:actualitycounselling@gmail.com

"... it is not the past that keeps clients from changing but the way their perceptions are presently organised."

James Lawley and Penny Tomkins (2000)