Life Coaching

Life Coaching

Life coaching has become increasingly popular in the last decade. More and more coaching schools have been opening worldwide and more people are using life coaching services to improve their lives. The results can be seen in the abundance of websites related to this subject. Many of them are written by life coaches and mainly focus on selling their trade, while trying to obtain a larger client base and potential trainees. The result: huge numbers of commercial sites with tidbits of general information. Despite this, in my research I found numerous sites and articles that I found informative and worth a visit.

Get a Life (Coach)

Life Coach Magazine is one of the few sites that deal with a variety of life coach topics without trying to sell its owner's qualifications or gain potential clients. If you're looking for comprehensive information about life coaching and are interested in answers to questions such as to whether life coaching works, this is a good place to start. If you are curious about the difference between coaching and good, old fashioned therapy, or the origins of this new trend (hint: not from psychology), this is the website to visit. The site is informative yet not too academic and provides an abundance of information and detail about coaching and what the field has to offer.
http://www.life-coach-magazine.com/

Life Coaching for Personal and Professional Empowerment

You can find more useful information about life coaching on this website, owned by two life coaches. Although their explanation of "What Life Coaching" is will teach you little, you may find their articles about: "How to choose the right life coach" useful, informative and important. You can also take a life coaching test (for free) and see if the concept of having a life coach is right for you. If you are interested in becoming a life coach yourself you will find important information about that too.
http://www.lifecoaching.com/index.html

Sally Ann Law's Website

One of my favorite websites about life coaching is Sally Ann Law's; a personal and business life coach from London, UK. Although her motivation is also to obtain clientele, her site is very informative. The articles, all written by Sally Ann, are simple and clear and straight to the point. You can find information about addiction recovery, career changes, fighting depression, interpersonal relationship and so on. My favorite piece and the most enlightening one is: "What is the difference between life coaching and traditional therapy". And Sally Ann knows what she is talking about, since she's not only a life coach but has a PhD in psychology too.
http://www.sallyannlaw-lifecoach.co.uk/

Motivational Zone

Many life coach websites are owned and built by women, perhaps because there are many women life coaches. Apparently this new occupation is especially attractive to women and I assume this is due to most women's inborn empathic skills and their natural talent for care-taking. This being said, it is surprising to discover how few sites relate to women's specific needs in society today: working moms, single moms, mothers who give up their careers for extended periods of time and so forth. Maybe life coaches don't believe there is a need to relate specifically to these situations anymore. However they do relate to other more "feminine" topics such as dating and beauty. "Motivational Zone" is no exception and their topic "for women", could relate to men as well. And yet, this is a site that declares its aim is "Life Strategies and Solutions for Unstoppable Women". I hope they relate to these issues in the many workshops they offer. They certainly should.

http://motivationzone.com/

Setting Goals (and achieving them)

Setting goals and achieving them is one of the most popular subjects among life, career and business coaches. Everywhere you turn nowadays you hear abut how essential this is in order to succeed. I guess this must be true, since it has so many advocates. But looking back at my own experience in life I feel setting goals is a bit overrated.

Sure, in order to achieve a goal you have to set it first, but I'm not sure setting a goal necessarily means you are going to achieve it. What I found is that first you should know what is it that you want, and once you do, commit yourself to achieving it. This is the only way I have achieved my goals. This also was (and still is) the only way I could find the mental resources I needed in order to overcome the many setbacks and failures along the way. Why? Because there was always something more important than feeling sorry for myself: Achieving the goal I was committed to.

Mind Tools

Many of the websites dealing with setting and achieving goals are career related websites. I guess this is because most people regard success in terms of their career. MindTools.com is no exception. The site's mission writes its owner "is to help people… learn the practical skills needed to excel in their careers". If this is what you are pursuing, you'll find a lot of useful information, including practical advice on topics such as leadership skills, memory improvement, time management and more. The reason I chose to write about this site is because of its informative, friendly and educational article about stress ("Stress Management – What you Need to Know about Stress"), an article valuable even to people (like me) who have no desire to become managers or the best employee in town.
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_00.htm

Top Achievement

The ultimate website to check out when your interest is setting goals is topacheivment.com. Unlike most websites related to setting goals, this one deals with a whole range of categories related to setting and achieving goals, and not only ones related to your career. The articles tend to be a bit corny at times but most of the time they are informative and touch on a wide variety of topics, such as goal setting tutorial, top 10 steps to set and achieve goals, and many more.
http://www.topachievement.com


Goal Setting for Kids

Two lovely women, Cassie and Monica, chose a very original angle to deal with setting and achieving goals: The importance of teaching young children how to use their resources in order to achieve goals. "When a baby tries to impact the world around him, this is the earliest form of goal oriented behavior", they write in their blog. "Teach your child that when he takes an action and gets a result, even if it is not quite the result he wanted, he can learn from that outcome and then take more action". Although the articles are short, their point of view is refreshing and so very true.http://kid-goal-setting.blogspot.com

Happiness

Happiness is something most of us pursue and want very badly, and yet it's always evading us, and seems to be given to others. This is probably why the quest for happiness is one of the most popular fields. There are many websites, articles and books about how and where to find happiness, and yet there are still many unhappy people. Can we change this a little? Let's try.


Happiness Quotes

The first thing you might want to do once you decide to explore the concept of happiness is trying to figure out what happiness is all about and why people pursue it. In that case try starting at: www.wisdomquotes.com. It's one of the many websites that collect famous and inspirational quotes. I liked this one in particular because of it's variety of quotes and categories. The section with quotes about happiness is especially diverse, sometimes inspirational, sometimes cynical and witty, and always educational. You can find amusing and clever quotes by Albert Camus, Benjamin Deisraeli, Carl Jung, Edith Warton, Hellen Keller, Mark Twain and many more. Enjoy!
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_happiness.html

David G. Myers's Website

After exploring happiness quotes, it's time to explore happiness itself and what it's all about. David G. Myers, Professor of Psychology in Hope College offers a variety of articles all about it. I know when you hear the title "Professor" you immediately think of long and tedious articles you'd never find the time or patience to read. But Meyer's articles are different. They are friendly, communicative, clear and simple. Sometimes they can seem a bit shallow and full of clichés: "Want a Happier Life?" for example, sounds like lots of self help books and articles we have seen on the shelves for years. However, articles like "Happiness" or "Wealth, well-being and the new American dream" are full of interesting information about new researches in the field that can really help focus on the meaning of happiness in our life.

http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=47


When Will I be Happy?

If high browed professors and long articles turn you off, you can visit my website: life-coach-magazine.com, where I offer articles about various topics related to self development, including a few about happiness and the reason we pursue it. Many of the articles are the result of extensive research on the web, so they contain a lot of information and data but aren't heavy or tedious. A recommended article about happiness ("When Will I Be Happy") can be helpful if what you want is data about recent researches in the field, or basic definitions of happiness.
http://www.life-coach-magazine.com/when-will-i-be-happy.html


Partners-INC

Recently I stumbled upon a European blog (I think their location is in Amsterdam) which is more of a net society aimed towards people who wish to promote happiness. The founders of this site are two young students who decided "to address the topic happiness and to initiate happiness projects sharing the positive vibes", as quoted from their site. This blog deals with happiness related topics from various angles, organizes meetings, brainstorms about new happiness projects, tries to realize these projects and commit to "happy action". The blog offers a "happiness channel" which is digital content on diverse topics related to happiness and self development. It includes a forum for the community members who are invited to discuss happiness topics. The founders invite members to contribute to the community in any way they can – a worthy cause, no doubt. I personally like the idea of a community promoting people's happiness, and I love the way this blog's appearance and atmosphere.
http://partners-inc.nl


Be Happy for Life

"Are you Happy?" is the main theme of the following website. This is what the site is all about: Finding ways to be happy. This website prefers to deal with the more practical sides of happiness. Although you can find articles about related subjects, such as "10 reasons why happiness matters", research about happiness is not its strongest side. The main reason to visit this site is for the self help advice, especially in the "Be Happy for Life Program". This program suggests we practice happiness with new perspective, by choosing the words we use, pursuing peace and so forth. It also offers useful exercises for enhancing our point of view about life. http://behappy4life.com/

About Me

My name is Ilana and I'm an introvert. I think I was born that way but I am not 100% sure. After all, I'm no expert in genetics or psychology but I'm a big fan of both. For as long as I can remember I have been an introvert. I grew up in a family with an introvert father and brother, and raised two introverted daughters, so I'm inclined to conclude that it has something to do with genes. Wouldn't you?

As a young child, being an introvert didn't create much difficulty in my life. Not as long as I stayed in my familiar surroundings and had my very out going and over protective mother around. I was never bored, even when spending time alone. Actually I liked being on my own, reading, painting, writing short stories and contemplating the world in general. The ability to enjoy my own company and the need to be alone for at least a few hours a day, something none of the kids around me shared at the time, was and still is a trait I cherish and wouldn't want to change - ever.

However, when I grew up and had to face the world, I started having second thoughts. I struggled with a fear of people I didn't know, especially loud and pushy ones. I often felt I was losing ground in competitive arenas (which was almost everywhere) and realized I was too timid and subdued for my own good. In spite of my expansive life experience and quite a few moments of success and even a shred or two of near glories – I couldn't help feeling I wasn't properly equipped to deal with life. For many years I wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

All those years, my way of dealing with my fears and my sense of inadequacy was to hide it from the world and to pretend I felt comfortable and confident. I don't think I was very good at it. Most people could see right through me, and those who didn't think much of introverts continued pushing me around, or ignoring me all together. It was painful either way.

About five years ago, I decided to do something about it. I participated in a few workshops, read self help books and articles on the web, I tried various self help techniques, and wrote about them anywhere I could. I became self help and self growth fan. I thought that if I did exactly the right thing I'd become a happier person even though I couldn't put my finger on what exactly was making me unhappy.

In recent years I realized I didn't want to be an introvert anymore. I felt that being an introvert was the reason I had experienced so much pain and failure in my life. If only I could become more friendly and out-going like my Mom, most of my close friends and my Ex - my difficulties would melt away.

It took me awhile to realize that this goal required effort and energy that I'd rather be spending doing other things. I learned a lot during this period. I think the main lesson was accepting me as I am, including my annoying introversion and its setbacks, while embracing its advantages.

I figured that if introversion was in my genes and in about 25% of the population's (this is what recent researches claim), there must be a good reason for our existence. If there wasn't, evolution would have gotten rid of us thousands of years ago. The fact that we, the introverts, are still here and thriving must mean something. So perhaps we do have an important contribution to make to society. Perhaps our creativity, intelligence, compassion and sensitivity are valuable. And perhaps, just perhaps, being an extrovert is overrated and being an introvert is an asset.

I haven't done research about this but my gut feelings are that many of those who are looking for self help material and are desperately trying to improve themselves, are introverts like me. I guess being intelligent, creative, sometimes even exceptionally gifted in your field, a sharp observer and a very sensitive person and still being ignored a lot of the time – can be very painful. Unfortunately, many of us waste time blaming ourselves, instead of learning how to make the best of our introvert traits. And believe me, there are many.

During my efforts to become a successful extrovert; one who wins in all situations and becomes the focal point of every gathering, I stumbled upon a lot of material. Most of it was full of crap and useless clichés, especially when it came to dealing with difficulties that introverts have, possibly because it was written by people who never experienced such difficulties in their lives.
Gradually I started reviewing websites and articles related to self help and self growth, looking for the more interesting and useful points of view. Now is the time for me to share the good stuff with you. I hope you find this information as interesting and helpful as I did.