We live in a world that typically wants us to specialize and compartmentalize.
Let’s take coaching.
For years people have asked me “are you a life coach or a business coach?” (As if those were the only two niches.)
To me, there is no distinction.
I enjoy helping my clients create thriving businesses. I love teaching about and helping students hone their marketing and sales and strategies (typical sales coach domain), as well as their systems (productivity), and client service (business).
What I’ve found, however, is that the thing that most often gets in the way of building and sustaining a thriving business is not the strategies, tools, and systems.
It’s not even marketing and sales and service.
Yes, those things are the surface level obvious culprits. If you don’t prospect and market, you won’t have leads to call, you won’t make sales, and you won’t have a business.
What Gets in the Way
Here’s the thing: what keeps people from doing those things is usually the stuff that falls in the “life” bucket.
A fight with a spouse or friend that leaves you feeling bad about yourself or your life situation. Physical pain. Loneliness. Grief. A bad workout. Feeling despair about the world.
On the flip side, I really enjoy helping clients create more meaning in their lives (life), deepen their relationships with their spouses and kids (relationship/family), find a home in the world (real estate) and in their bodies, and move with greater joy (yoga/movement).
If you look at what keeps people from doing these “life” things, it’s usually their work or business. They ignore life because of work demands. Or, they are limited by certain beliefs about what they need to do to be successful at work.
This is why my foundation tends to be helping clients create more effective strategies for working with time.
Divisions are Artificial
So when someone asks me “are you a life coach or a business coach?” I don’t have an answer for them, because I believe that is fundamentally the wrong question.
Whatever the context in which I’m helping a client, I bring a holistic understanding of human thriving.
Humans Are Multi-Functional Beings
Human beings are not one-dimensional agents. Like the bodies we inhabit, we are multi-faceted and multi-functional.
A fully-functional body requires using all our muscles and joints in all planes of motion. In the same way, resilience and adaptability depend on developing all of our “muscles” — all parts of ourselves, our various skills and capacities — in all planes of motion — all areas of life.
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