“Success begins the moment we understand that life is about growing …it is meant to be a never-ending education and when this is fully appreciated we are no longer survivors, but adventurers. Life becomes a journey of discovery, an exploration into our potential. Any joy and exuberance we experience in living are the fruits of our willingness to risk, our openness to change and our ability to create what we want for our lives.”

Those words from David McNally, author of ‘Even Eagles need a Push’, perfectly sums up how we should view our lives when we’re in our fifties and older. Often at this age we think that any ‘success’ we may have wished for in life is now behind us, any joy and exuberance is on the wane. In short, we often feel that our lives from now on will be pretty predictable, hopefully safe, comfortable and reasonably enjoyable, but definitely ‘more of the same’.

But it needn’t be like that!  At this age, although we are now too old to change who we fundamentally are (and why would we want to when so much of that is good?) we are still able to change our habits, attitudes and behaviour to get us closer to where we want to be. Change is never easy but it gives us the ability to create what we want for our lives and that’s something we all need to continue to focus on right until the day we die.

But where do you start? How do you know what will really make a difference? What should you change? How should you go about it when perhaps you’ve tried and failed many times before? What can you do to ensure success?

One solution is coaching. One-to-one coaching, with its emphasis unlocking your unique potential can be a highly effective tool for developing and sustaining a huge range of new qualities and behaviours regardless of your age, personality or situation. Far from being some sort of fashion or fad, it’s an incredibly effective process. Most of those who have been coached genuinely report “it was the best investment I ever made”.

What is coaching?

You can’t have failed to have heard about coaching. Articles, TV programmes and advertisements for life, business and executive coaching abound. But what does it actually involve? What can it really do? Is it worth the money? Is it something we should be taking seriously?

Coaching has many and various definitions, one of the best being ‘a process of unlocking an individual’s potential to maximize their own performance’. In simple terms it works by helping and supporting you to achieve your goals in your way, rather than by prescriptively teaching and telling you how.

There are very few challenges in life where coaching isn’t appropriate apart from those involving medical or psychological problems. It is not counselling or therapy so if you have problems with, for example, depression, alcohol or drugs you must seek specialist help. This aside, regardless of the specific issue(s) involved, coaching can help you:

• clarify your goals
• decide the steps to take to achieve those goals
• be clear about what or who might hinder your progress in achieving them
• be sure you’re pursuing the right goals

• maintain the motivation to keep you moving in the right direction

Generally, coaching works by providing support in three different ways:

1.     Objectivity

Your coach is a great sounding board for your thoughts, aims and ambitions. Although you may bounce ideas off friends, family or colleagues, they will often just tell you (with the best possible intentions) what they think you want to hear. Your coach, however, is completely impartial and their focus is entirely on getting you to clarify how you feel about things, your perceptions of reality and how your ideas relate to what you are attempting to achieve.

2.     Clarity and focus

Coaching helps you decide exactly what it is that you really want. Many of the difficulties people experience with moving forward – particularly at this age - come from lack of clarity and precision about what their goals actually are. Until you can put your goal into words and see clearly what you need to do (or stop doing) to achieve it, it’s often impossible to change. Coaching also helps you create a ‘route map’ for each step of the way forward.

3.     Confidence 

Ultimately, lack of confidence can greatly hamper our ability to lead the life we want whether it involves a career or relationship change, new behaviours or simply the ability to feel differently about certain things (including ourselves). Whatever the specifics of what you’re trying to achieve, having someone else – your coach - believe in you is the greatest way to help you progress along what may otherwise seem a long and impenetrable path.

What does it involve?

Unless you want them to, no one need ever know you are being coached. Although coaching sessions can take place face-to-face they are more commonly conducted over the telephone. Timing is to suit you – evening and weekend calls are obviously popular – and sessions are generally weekly, taking place over a number of weeks or months.

Each session generally lasts for about an hour and the cost varies according to whether it is face-to-face or telephone, and the number of sessions you sign up to. In between sessions, you will be required to undertake tasks or activities related to the achievement of your goal.

Is coaching for you?

Frankly, coaching isn’t for everyone and there are three golden rules that you have to accept for it to be successful. You must:

Take the time to understand what coaching is

Really want to be coached, and want to change

Be prepared to work towards achieving your goals outside the coaching sessions

As with many things these days, word of mouth recommendation or the internet are both good places to start your search for a coach. Contact several - any good coach should be prepared to spend time in advance discussing your needs and may offer you a free initial session enabling both of you to judge how well you work together.

Coaching, if you’re prepared to commit to the process, can generate remarkable results so don’t dismiss it because you think you’re too old or can’t change. It simply isn’t true!  And if you’re still not sure, just think about this old saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got”… Is that going to be enough?

[Published in The Oxford Times' Time of Your Life magazine October 2007]