Hiring a Wellbeing Coach

Wellbeing – the sense of ‘being’ within which wellness is always present.

Why Wellbeing?

Due to increased poor mental and emotional health, as well as stress-related illnesses, costing employers and the NHS a lot of money, wellbeing has been brought to the forefront of most of our minds.  We are now regularly being encouraged to look after our wellbeing by employers, the government, doctors, magazines, tv programmes and the like.  Most of these will urge you to do specific activities to take care of your wellbeing.  That might include things like:

• Yoga
• Meditation
• Getting out in nature
• Healthy eating
• Self-care
• Spending time with people you care about
• Reading for pleasure
• Decluttering
• Having a make-over
• Getting pampered (massage/facial etc)

Many companies are bringing wellbeing activities into the workplace to encourage their uptake even more strongly.  There is nothing wrong with this.  There are many different types of coaches working in this field to encourage healthy living and wellbeing practices, all of which are incredibly valuable, and often practices I participating in myself.   However, in my work as a coach, I have witnessed a pattern happening over and over again.  

People do not make time for these wellbeing activities if they do not believe that it is safe to do so.

In order words, if you believe that taking 30 minutes to meditate, means that you would drop the ball on another important area and then suffer the implications of that, you either won’t do the wellbeing activity, or won’t receive the intended benefits as a result of doing it – should you partake but stress that you shouldn’t be.  So, without a change in understanding, it doesn’t matter how much encouragement you receive, or how accessible these activities are, the benefits will be lost.

In my work as a coach, it is of fundamental importance to me that all of my clients know first and foremost that they are safe.  From there, we can then go on to look at behaviours that make sense. 

What do I mean about them knowing they are safe?

This comes down to shining a light on the misunderstanding that we humans carry around, believing that we who are is this separate, limited ego and it’s our relentless responsibility to make sure that we are okay and are getting life ‘right’.  We are constantly chasing more okayness and trying to avoid potential not-okayness.  This has us feeling stressed and stretched an awful lot of the time, as there is always more to do, better to get, further comparisons to make and worries to discover.  That stress and stretching can even extend to stressing about whether we are doing enough (or the right) wellbeing activities!  Totally counterproductive.  I coach my clients to understand who they are and that their wellbeing is not on the line.  I help them to look beyond the stretching and stressing, to a version of themselves that they had forgotten existed.  Their true nature.  From that perspective they will find that wellbeing is their natural state – or to put it more poetically, they will fall into a well of their being.

If you are looking for a wellbeing coach, I’d love the chance to chat with you about this extremely different angle of approaching wellbeing.  I do my work 121 or in groups, as one-offs or as programmes.  I’m pretty reasonable and flexible, and there’s no obligation at this stage.  Just a chat!