EP. 13: Understanding Coaching and Why Coaching Can Be a Game Changer to Create Lasting Transformation
- odettecoronel
- 12 minutes ago
- 14 min read
Today, I’m clearing up any misunderstandings there are about coaching. Because not everyone knows what coaching is, they don't know what they’re going to get before they book a session. Let’s start with what it's not. Coaching is not me giving you advice, and it’s not me giving you a pep talk. We’re way past that in our growth journey.
It is my job as a coach to help you become the calmest, clearest, most grounded, most powerful version of yourself. It’s my job to sit with you regularly, look you in the eye, and say, “Let's design your life and your relationship with intention on purpose so that you can actually feel the way that you wanna feel.” Most people don't know what that's like to have someone like that in their corner. And they don't realize the impact of having that kind of support until they experience it for themselves.
In this week’s episode, we’re working on understanding coaching and why coaching can be a game changer to create lasting transformation. My clients know that they need coaching when they’re ready for an exciting new change. Their old lives don’t serve them anymore, and they know I can help them design a life and a love that will. Tune in to this week’s episode to learn more about coaching and how I support my clients!
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Transcript: EP. 13: Understanding Coaching and Why Coaching Can Be a Game Changer to Create Lasting Transformation
Odette: [00:00:00] So let's say you decide that you want coaching. How do you know what to look for in a coach? Well, the first thing that you wanna look at is you wanna make sure that they have some real training. You wanna make sure that they didn't just, you know, wake up one morning and just decided to be a coach. So you wanna check, you know, make sure that they have training in emotional intelligence.
In somatic and nervous system work, some training in relationship skills and communication skills and conflict resolution and some real effective coaching methodologies.
And when you meet with a coach, the very first thing is you wanna feel safe, you wanna feel supported, you do wanna feel challenged and not judged.
So all of those things you wanna make sure that you're looking out for when you're hiring a coach.
Welcome to Life and Love by Design. I'm your host, Odette Cornell, an accredited professional coach, relationship mentor, NLP, practitioner and coach [00:01:00] supervisor. I have guided countless individuals and couples who feel stuck to step out of autopilot and create relationships and lives that feel intentional, joyful, and deeply fulfilling.
Tune in every Wednesday where I'll share tools, conversations, practical strategies, and fresh perspectives so you can get more intentional about designing a life and relationship that truly fulfills you. So let's dive in.
Welcome back to Life and Love by Design, where we talk about how to create a life and relationships that feel intentional, connected, and by design, not by default. I'm your host, Odette Cornell, and today we're talking about understanding coaching and why coaching can be a game changer to create lasting transformation.
We're gonna be talking about what coaching is, what actually happens in a session, how it's different from therapy, and how to know when a coach might be [00:02:00] exactly what you need. So we're gonna be clearing up some confusion and hopefully opening up some minds to a whole new possibility for your own personal growth. So let me ask you something. When was the last time that you had someone in your life whose only job it was to help you become the calmest, clearest, most grounded, most powerful version of yourself? Not a friend, not your partner, not your mom, not your sister, not a therapist who's focused on processing your past.
I mean, someone who just sits with you regularly looks you in the eye and says, let's design your life and your relationship with intention on purpose so that you can actually feel the way that you wanna feel. Most people don't know what that's like. They don't realize the impact of having that kind of support until they feel it, until they experience it for themselves.
And once you do [00:03:00] experience it, you can't even imagine going back to life without a coach.
So what is coaching? Actually, let's start by clearing up a few things right away. Coaching is not advice giving. Coaching is not telling you what to do. It's not a motivational pep talk. Coaching is more like a growth process. It's a partnership. It's a space for reflection. It's a place to identify patterns in your life, patterns in your relationships, and then being able to break those patterns. It's understanding your emotional world, and it's really a path toward creating different outcomes in your relationships and your life.
A coach helps you see the patterns that you don't even realize you're repeating. A coach helps you calm your nervous system so that you can communicate better, helps you understand why you react the way you do. A coach will help you to build emotional safety with [00:04:00] your partner, and you also learn new skills.
New coping strategies and a coach helps you to design changes that really stick. This is about creating change that lasts. This is not about being okay for now, or just, you know, coming up with a specific concrete goal, getting there and then you're done. It's really about personal transformation that.
You don't just benefit from today, you benefit from it the for the rest of your life. And by extension, so does everyone in your family, your coworkers, your career improves, all the different areas of your life improves. So it's almost like not just the transformation, but really an awakening. So what is it that happens in a coaching session with me? People ask me this all of the time. Here's what it's like to actually work with me. So in your sessions with me, we talk about your relationship patterns, we [00:05:00] talk about your triggers, we discuss communication habits, and I help you notice your patterns and break those patterns.
And I help you, I teach you new skills and create new habits so that you can create a new dynamic with your partner. We talk about your emotional response, your needs, your desires, and all of the ways that you're protecting yourself. We talk about the ways that you are disconnected from yourself or from your partner, and then we focus on how do you reconnect with yourself?
How do you reignite your own spark? And also how do you reconnect with your partner, how to reignite that spark in your marriage. I help you really slow down your reactions and kind of create a little bit of a pause before you react and really understand what's happening underneath whatever it is that's triggering you or whatever it is that you're feeling.
I help you learn how to communicate more clearly, how to figure out what it is that you wanna [00:06:00] communicate, because sometimes we feel all sorts of things and we're confused and we're not even clear on what we wanna communicate. And I help you rebuild, trust and rebuild connection with your partner. I help you bring back affection and emotional intimacy.
Remember, we all need from our partner's attention, we need affection, we need acceptance, I help you create a new dynamic with your partner where you have all of these things. And most importantly, I help you learn how to make yourself feel more grounded, more confident, and really in control of yourself. I help you not be afraid of feeling your emotions, so you're able to really feel your emotions, not be afraid of them, and let them pass through you to come out from the other side.
Because many times we repress what we're feeling. We try to stay busy. we don't wanna be present and quiet and still because we don't wanna feel the uncomfortable feelings that we're [00:07:00] feeling. But once we're not afraid of those feelings and we're willing to tolerate them and feel them, we can finally let them go.
We can become unburdened. So I help my clients with that. This is not just about talking, it's about actually thinking differently. It's about feeling differently. It's about behaving differently, and it's about creating different results. It's about creating a new identity for yourself, the identity that you want to create on purpose. And this is a practice. It's not something that you're gonna do just once and you're done. This is a, practice and it's tools. It's about awareness and it's about really applying them in real time. It's helping my clients apply the new tools, the new strategies, and then evaluating what went well. Is it working?
What's not working, what am I gonna do differently next time? Clients even tell me, you know, I feel different after even just one session. It's really powerful [00:08:00] because when you change how you show up, everything around you starts to change.
So what is relationship coaching specifically? I work with clients, either one-on-one or I work with couples. And what relationship coaching is, it's not about blaming your partner. And it's not about digging up your childhood or diagnosing you with mental issues. I see my clients as perfect whole and complete.
And although we do touch upon the past, we learn from the past, we might get to the root of some issues, but we really focus on the present and the future. So I help my clients in their relationships to build more emotional connection, to communicate with each other in healthier ways. I help them navigate conflict.
I help them, again, increase affection and appreciation, rebuild, trust, move forward after infidelity, bring back closeness, curiosity and intimacy in their lives. These [00:09:00] are things that are so important and we tend to lose them over time if we're not intentional about it. I help my clients stop feeling like roommates and start feeling like teammates, like partners, and it's really practical.
It's actionable. It's really forward focused. So instead of just asking, you know, why am I like this? And feeling like you have no choice. It's black and white, it's fixed. Instead you ask, you know, what do we want and how do we build it together?And that's the magic, and it's really empowering because I help you take responsibility for your side of whatever it is that's happening in your relationship. And once you take responsibility, that's also helping you gain control and focusing on the things that you can fix, on the ways that you can change on the patterns that you are able to break.
And although those patterns are still available for you to continue using, we can intentionally build new patterns together, and I can help you with that.
so this is another big question that I [00:10:00] get, and sometimes clients are not sure should I get coaching or should I go to a therapist and what is the difference? And people really get confused. So I just wanna simplify it and help you to understand what the difference is.
So the big difference is that therapy helps you understand your past. So it might focus on trauma, on mental health, on some deep emotional wounds or childhood patterns that really need to be diagnosed, and it really focuses on healing and stabilization.
So therapy is really when you're just. Really not okay. And you need something a little bit deeper, and therapists are really essential. There is an important place for therapy for many of my clients even that also decide to get coaching. You can do both. It's sometimes it's not one or the other.
Sometimes they really compliment each other. So with coaching, we really touch upon the past and we may get to the [00:11:00] bottom and the root of what. Created these triggers or emotional traumas, but coaching really focuses on helping you build your future. So we focus on identifying what your needs are, what your desires are, identifying the patterns that are keeping you stuck.
Sometimes we think that it's other people or these external circumstances that are happening to us and are causing us to be unhappy, but many times it's really. Or the patterns or our behavior or a way of thinking that's keeping us stuck. So I help you identify that, and then I help you create new patterns,
Coaching focuses on skills, on emotional awareness, on your communication patterns. We focus on mindset. We focus on accountability, personal growth, and also helping you redesign your relationship on purpose. So it's really not about one or the other. They really just serve different purposes. [00:12:00] I'm gonna give you an example.
it's a little bit of a metaphor. A few years back, I had an accident and I broke four bones in my foot. Initially it was three, and then I, as I was healing, I broke a fourth bone. But when I first had the [00:13:00] accident, the bones were so badly broken that there was no way that they were gonna reconnect and heal.
I needed to go to an orthopedic surgeon. To have surgery and put plates and screws in my foot and really fix the bones in my foot. Once I had the surgery and as I was healing right, we, got to the initial trauma that I experienced and we healed that part of my journey. Then I went on to see a physical therapist to strengthen the muscles around my foot to help me learn how to walk again on my foot, and I would see a physical therapist regularly.
I still had to visit my. Orthopedic surgeon to have a couple of x-rays and see how the healing was going. But after my surgery, I was able to just, you know, continue seeing my physical therapist and I still sometimes see my physical therapist for my foot. So [00:14:00] in this little metaphor and this little example, the therapist would be equivalent to the orthopedic surgeon, right?
It's about healing the trauma and fixing the root of whatever it is that needs. Healing and then the physical therapist is equivalent to the coach. So it's not that one is better than the other. they simply serve different purposes, and they're both very useful and you can see them in combination at the same time. Sometimes it's more appropriate to see just one or the other. And it's really on a individual basis. It depends what it is that's going on with you. It's, it's something that's really personal and it's okay to consult with both a coach and a therapist.
If you're not sure what to decide, I have many clients that I've actually referred to therapists and I've also had clients where a therapist has referred them to me for coaching. So again, both are useful. It's not that one's better than the other, they just serve different purposes, and [00:15:00] sometimes you can actually see both at the same time, and that's really powerful.
You just wanna make sure that the coach and the therapist are both aware that you are, you know, having both of these services at the same time. And there, you know, there's even a big shift that's happening right now. There are a huge number of therapists that are actually adding coaching into their own practice because coaching really offers structure and clarity and real world skills, and it really helps people achieve transformation and change a lot faster.
So again, it's really not about a competition. It can really be a partnership. So how do you know if you need to see a therapist or a coach? Well, you wanna seek out a therapist. If you're really dealing with some unprocessed trauma. Maybe you've got some clinical depression going on, or some PTSD, or maybe the anxiety is really affecting your daily functioning.
Maybe there's some kind of [00:16:00] crisis situation that you're experiencing right now when you're feeling really, you know, stuck in this crisis You might have some really deep, long-term emotional wounds that really need deep work or anything really that requires clinical training. Then you wanna make sure that you reach out to a licensed therapist.
Now you wanna see a coach if you wanna work on communication, if you wanna work on improving your relationships or your relationship patterns, if you wanna improve your emotional intelligence, if you wanna learn better conflict resolution skills. If you wanna rebuild trust and connection, if you wanna recover from infidelity, or if you wanna change some habits, or you wanna really design the relationship that you want and you want, you know, some personal growth, that's when you wanna really see a coach.
When you want to really be the best version of yourself and you don't wanna settle for an okay relationship [00:17:00] or an okay, you know, version of yourself, and you really want to be intentional and and have a life filled with meaning and purpose, that's when you wanna reach out to a coach. again, many people benefit from both. There's no shame in having support from every angle.
So some of the most successful and high profile people in the world have used coaches. As a matter of fact, the very first time that I heard the word coach or life coach was from Oprah Winfrey or watching the Oprah Winfrey show.
She has, she used to have Martha Beck on who was her life coach. So Oprah. Has had coaches. Will Smith has had coaching. Leonardo DiCaprio has worked with Tony Robbins and with other coaches, Hugh Jackman, also Serena Williams, bill Gates, so many successful CEOs and athletes, they all have coaching and that's why they are so successful. So if you feel that you've got some kind of trauma, if you [00:18:00] feel that you're really in deep emotional pain or some kind of deep depression that you just can't find your way out of, maybe consult with a therapist first. If you have some clarity on what you want or what your issues are, or where you want to change or what your goals are, but you want some support, you wanna help with strategy or accountability or new skills, or you wanna really improve your relationships and stop feeling like roommates and really have a loving, deep connection with your partner, have more intimacy, have more affection and attention, and all of those good things, then.
Maybe see a coach. Remember that you can actually sometimes do both. So let's say you decide that you want coaching. How do you know what to look for in a coach? Well, the first thing that you wanna look at is you wanna make sure that they have some real training. You wanna make sure that they didn't just, you know, wake up one morning and just decided to be a coach. So you wanna check, you know, make sure that they have training in emotional [00:19:00] intelligence, in somatic and nervous system work, some training in relationship skills and communication skills and conflict resolution, and some real effective coaching methodologies.
You also wanna look into accreditation and ethics because this means that your coach is held to a higher standard and that they have boundaries and that they have professionalism. So you wanna check do they have any accreditation. You also wanna look and see how much experience they have. Have they worked with people like you?
Do they specialize in what you need, right? You want to feel seen by your coach. And when you meet with a coach, the very first thing is you wanna feel safe, you wanna feel supported, you do wanna feel challenged and not judged. So all of those things you wanna make sure that you're looking out for when you're hiring a coach And when you're meeting with your coach, you wanna feel a certain level of clarity. A good coach will [00:20:00] honestly tell you whether they can help you or how they can help you, or whether if therapy might be a better fit for you, a coach, a real coach, a good coach will be honest with you about those things, or they might let you know that, you know, a combination of both would be ideal. And you know, my point is that you should really leave your consultation or your coaching session feeling empowered and feeling with a certain level of clarity, not pressure.
So here's what I want you to take away from today. You don't need to be in crisis to want coaching. As a matter of fact, you should not wait to be in crisis to seek a coach. Many times, couples in general will have been going through struggles for at least seven years before they even begin to think about getting the help of a coach or a therapist.
Don't wait. It does not have to be completely broken in pieces. You wanna take care of something that's precious to you and nurture it and keep it [00:21:00] safe. So don't wait for there to be a crisis, And you know, you don't have to wait for your relationship to be falling apart. You don't have to hit rock bottom. You can choose coaching simply because you're ready for more connection or for more emotional peace, for more confidence, for more clarity, for more love, for more intimacy, for more intention in your life, and more alignment with who you are. Remember, coaching is about creating a life that you actually want. It's about designing your relationships with intention, and you deserve support. You deserve growth, you deserve connection, and you deserve a life that feels amazing to wake up to. So don't wait. If you're interested in coaching or you're just curious, book a free consultation with me.
Go to my website, odette cornell.com and let's chat and get a feel for coaching yourself. So until next time, remember that your life and [00:22:00] your love are yours to design.
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