Health and Wellness Coaching: What You Should Know
What if you worked with someone who truly listened to you?
Your choice of lifestyle is by far the biggest factor in your overall health and wellness. The way you live your life largely determines the way in which you experience your life.
Maybe some aspects of your life feel full and satisfying, but there are others that are a source of frustration or are even a detriment to your wellbeing. Perhaps you have succeeded in the past to change and grow and yet at other times, you have found yourself knee-deep in feelings of failure, regret, and self-criticism.
You are not alone. You may have sought out all sorts of information, organizations, and people to help you along with the changes you have wanted to make. Despite all their good intentions and your efforts, their agendas may not have synchronized with yours, leaving you feeling isolated and empty.
But what if you worked with someone that approached the process of helping you in a completely different way? They truly listened to you; you felt heard and understood. They were your ally; your agenda was their agenda. They asked you questions to help you find the answers within yourself, for only your benefit.
This is what it is like to work with a wellness coach.
WHAT DOES A WELLNESS COACH DO?
According to The Global Wellness Institute, wellness is the active pursuit of activities, choices, and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. It is much more than the absence of disease. The keywords here are active and holistic. Wellness requires effort and the integration of all the dimensions of health and wellness. Simply put, wellness is living your life consciously in ways that improve your health and wellbeing.
A wellness coach helps their clients to develop sustainable strategies that bring a higher level of health and wellbeing to their lives. In effect, the coaching relationship is an alliance where both coach and client are working toward lasting, lifestyle behavior change. The collaboration between the coach and the client is highly personalized. While physical fitness and nutrition are especially important, they are only two of the dimensions of wellness and are not inclusive enough to be a truly holistic approach.
Every aspect of our lives affects every other part. A wellness coach must be able to address issues that arise from other areas such as occupational or financial stress to social and emotional problems. This is what sets them apart from other wellness professionals.
Although dietitians, personal trainers, and psychotherapists provide similar services, what makes wellness coaches different is not so much what topics they address, but how they address them.
A physician can provide guidelines for activity. A personal trainer can guide your exercise. A dietitian can develop a nutrition plan. A therapist can dig deep into emotional and mental struggles. Conversely, a wellness coach will not only help you follow your healthy lifestyle plan, but they will empower you to do so.
Health and wellness coaches are trained in empathy, motivational interviewing, and behavior change skills, which can help you set realistic goals. Coaches play an important role in assisting you to cultivate intrinsic motivation, confidence, and habits needed to meet those goals. They believe you are already an expert in your own life.
Make sure your coach is good match for you.
WHEN DO YOU NEED A WELLNESS COACH?
Depending on what you need and the coach’s expertise, a wellness coach can help you with:
nutrition counseling
exercise
stress management
cultivating resilience
losing weight
quitting smoking
working through a newly diagnosed medical condition that requires lifestyle change like diabetes or cardiovascular disease
illness or injury prevention
prioritizing self-care
work-life balance
mind-body techniques
improving interpersonal relationships
practicing a positive mindset
eating a healthier diet
a general desire to improve your health and wellbeing
any lifestyle changes in behavior to improve your wellbeing
You do not need to have anything wrong with you to work with a coach! Different people have different needs when it comes to health and wellness. If you have tried those other routes to no avail, maybe having someone truly in your corner is what you need. A coach who can help you identify your goals, strengths, and challenges, while providing small steps to help you reach your health and wellness goals, is a game-changer.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK FOR IN A COACH?
Since you will be spending a lot of one-on-one time with your coach, not to mention trusting them with your goals, make sure the two of you are a good match. You should be comfortable sharing with them. A wellness coach will be interested in hearing about your personal situation, past experiences, and what your goals are. You should feel strongly that you will be able to work together to achieve your goals.
Working with a wellness coach ought to be a pleasant, positive, and motivating experience. A coach has your best interests in mind, and you should feel that you are always in a safe space with them. Remember it is your agenda. Thus, the overarching intentionality of each coaching session is for healing without attachment to a specific outcome.
The coach not only helps you with the steps and plans that allow you to achieve your goals, but they are there to also hold you accountable. Sometimes the coach is there to support you in the way of education. Sometimes they help you overcome ambivalence. Sometimes they need to roll with your resistance. More importantly, coaches are there to celebrate your successes.
They remind you to focus on the positive, help you leverage your personal resources, and amplify your strengths. In the end, the sense of safety and the rapport between the two of you is of utmost importance.
BECOME YOUR BEST SELF WITH WELLNESS COACHING
At the end of the day, for you to truly thrive you need an integrated approach to wellness that incorporates all its aspects.
It is not easy to do this alone. To have support along the way can be a simultaneous necessity and gift. This is especially true if you have tried a little of this or that in the past with minimal success at best. Maybe you have felt lost in the deluge of products and services claiming to offer wellbeing and have no idea where to turn. Approaching your wellness with the idea of “I’ve got this” is not a badge of honor and could actually be a detriment to your wellbeing. Everyone from athletes to actors to CEOs has a coach. It would be weird if they did not have one.
When you choose to work with a coach, you are taking responsibility. There is no perfect wellness ideal that you are trying to achieve. Rather it is an ongoing process. Working with a wellness coach is an act of courage. You are acknowledging that you can get better; that you want to become your best self.
The value of coaching is something that can be hard to measure, but it is not hard to measure how you feel. Plato and Aristotle emphasized a life based on eudaemonia, or human flourishing. This requires not only health and wellness but developing the excellence of being human.
When you take the step to start working with a coach, you are starting on a path toward your True North…toward wellbeing…toward eudaemonia.
Think you might need a wellness coach? Take our Wellness Survey.
Ready for coaching? Review our wellness coaching packages.