Coaching
“Coaching for a Lifetime of Wellness: Five Keys to Sustainable Behavioral Change”
The theme of the 41st Annual National Wellness Conference was “Spotlight On Sustainability”. While we often think about sustainability and our environmental practices, as a wellness coach and psychologist I immediately thought of sustainable behavioral change. As I prepared for my presentation on this topic my research revealed that we actually know very little about how effective our…
“Well-being” Is Whole-Person Wellness
The term “Well-being” may have come along at just the right time. Public speakers and marketers are re-branding wellness as wellbeing by saying that well-being is more complete, more holistic. Well-being, they say, incorporates the whole person, their environment, their financial picture, their career, etc. On the one hand it’s too bad that we have to invent a new term…
12 Ways To Avoid Collusion In The Coaching Relationship
Whenever I’m training wellness coaches and use the term “collusion” a definition is required. The term can have a variety of meanings and a search done on “coaching and collusion” will yield an array of articles that seem to add to the confusion. While murder mysteries love to portray collusion as two of the bad guys conspiring to evil ends…
2010-2020 A Decade of Growth for Wellness Coaching
After years of building a foundation, health and wellness coaching has flourished in the last decade. At the beginning of this last decade the International Coach Federation was only fifteen years old and the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching hadn’t even been thought of yet. My book, Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change, had been on the…
A More Sociological View Of Wellness
Who has time to exercise and eat well when life is on overload? We are often urged by wellness professionals to exercise more and improve our diets, but isn’t that just adding more to the “to do” list? Without addressing the stressors in our lives, how can we fit the “demands” of being healthy into our lifestyle?
Of course…
A Thousand Pots of Brown Rice: A Mindful Way To Be Well
We all want to be as healthy as we can be, and are usually anxious to get there quickly, like it was a destination we could actually arrive at. Mastering a wellness lifestyle is rather like mastering any art, craft or skill. It’s more of a journey than a destination. Lifestyle means a way of living, and doing it well…
Access Excess: Always Wired Makes Us Tired and Less Productive
Paradox, double-edged sword, blessing and curse combined, mobile devices have made our lives easier and more stressful at the same time. I remember the feeling of relief the day I finally got my calendar synched on my work/home computer, my laptop and my smartphone. Now I could be in a conversation with someone at a conference and set an appointment…
Astonishing Non-compliance – Understanding Grief and Readiness for Change in the Health Challenged Client
Medical noncompliance is a vast and complex issue that results in widespread human suffering and immense healthcare costs. Of the 3.8 billion pharmaceutical prescriptions written each year (USA) it is estimated that more than 50% of them are taken incorrectly or not at all. Medical noncompliance also includes failure to do medical self-care, self-testing and attend follow up appointments with…
Being the Behavioral Change Expert: The WELCOA Wellness Coaching Interviews
Wellness coaching is about setting aside your expert hat when it comes to wellness content and becoming the true ally your client needs for lasting lifestyle change. Yet, where our expertise shines through is in helping our client to actually succeed at making those behavioral changes that will improve their life and health. We need to be the behavioral change…
Being Well. There’s an app for that!
There are over 10,000 fitness apps for Blackberry’s, iPhones, iPads, etc. and more being created daily. The fitness app “Loseit” has had over six million downloads! People use these apps to do calorie counting the easy way, track their workouts, look up health information and restaurant menus, and communicate with online friends who are helping them with a type…
Cancer and Lifestyle Improvement
We’ve often viewed getting cancer as luck of the draw. Other than eating enough fiber and avoiding smoking and too much sun exposure we haven’t really seen it as having much relationship to lifestyle. Now we’re finding that the way we live our lives has a significant effect on both the prevention of cancer and the course of the illness…
China Embraces Real Balance Wellness Coaching
Faced with the same lifestyle-based health crisis many other countries are experiencing, China has been searching for a way to help people truly succeed at lasting lifestyle change. Over half of the men in China smoke. The diabetes rate is now higher than the United States, with heart disease, COPD and other “lifestyle diseases” on the rise. Health information…
Client-Centered Directiveness: An Oxymoron That Works – Part One
At its very foundation, coaching is client-centered. The work of Carl Rogers profoundly influenced the founders of the life coaching profession. Yet, among the thousands of health and wellness coaches we have trained at Real Balance (http://www.realbalance.com), the question of how directive or non-directive to be remains an area of unsureness and anxiety.
As time marches on…
Client-Centered Directiveness: An Oxymoron That Works – Part Two: Adapting To Your Client
Effective wellness and health coaching adapts in many ways to the client we are working with. As we assist a person in finding ways to live a healthier life there are many adjustments that need to be made to deliver a customized experience that will work best for that individual.
In this post we will examine how to take…
Coach Like Hemingway: Confident, Succinct, Effective
Use short sentences. Use short paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative. Opening lines from 110 Stylistic Rules given to each reporter by the Kansas City Star where Hemingway got his first job in journalism (1917).
Ernest Hemingway certainly picked up on those dictums and put them to good use over an extraordinary career as a writer. When we think of these…
Coaching a Client Through To A Mental Health Referral Using The Stages of Change
Times arise when it becomes apparent to a wellness coach that their client would benefit from working with a mental health professional. The need for referral may be urgent and involve client safety as when there is a threat of harm to self or others. That rare situation is usually more clearly recognized, referral is made and coaching is usually…
Coaching Alignment: Patience and Pacing
Being in alignment with our client can refer to both our cognitive and emotional congruence with them. Congruence, resonance, and even alignment itself are all ways of expressing “being on the same page” with our client. This means clearly understanding the content of what our client is saying and also being in touch with their emotional state and expression. This…
Coaching Emotions for Better Lifestyle Choices
Check out the best in Health Coach Training: www.realblance.com
Lifestyle behavioral change is not simply a rational process. Emotions influence or sometimes completely determine the outcome of decisions we are confronted with every day.
When dealing with people remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
Coaching The “Boomer Generation” for Aging Well
Every seven seconds a “Boomer” turns fifty. The American post-war “Boomer Generation” spends more on health care than their parents did.
They visit the doctor more, they consume more services, and aren’t afraid to use their $7 trillion in collective wealth to improve their quality of life. From physical therapy, to cosmetic surgery, to the latest in life-saving technology…
Compassionate Detachment: The Being and Doing of Coaching Part One
Over six thousand wellness coaches have been trained by The Real Balance Global Wellness Services that I founded. In the process of teaching these people how to become effective wellness coaches I have benefited, as all teachers do, by learning from my students. In reading over a thousand case studies, listening to hundreds of recordings, interacting in classes and hearing their…
Page 1 of 5
