Just think about when you go out shopping. Do you consider the brand? Absolutely. There are certain brands you trust, and others you don’t. It works the same way when getting a job. They want to see what education and experience you have.

Coaching clients are the same.

They will feel much better knowing that you have some sort of accreditation and experience. Especially if you have a track record for success.

Te International Coach Federation (ICF) is a popular certification authority, offering these 3 levels of certification:

1. Associate Certified Coach (ACC)

2. Professional Certified Coach (PCC)

3. Master Certified Coach (MCC)

Once you have a coaching designation, think about continuing education.  The field is rapidly changing, and it’s important to keep up.  Our most recent continuing education program, the Fit4Love coach’s certification has been approved by the ICF.  It’s an opportunity for life coaches to expand their offerings and include relationship coaching for singles.  Stay tuned for more details.

But how do you get them to eat more healthy?

Penn State just conducted research on adding purées to kid’s food. Take a look at this:

They tested three familiar foods — zucchini bread for breakfast, pasta with a tomato-based sauce for lunch and chicken noodle casserole for dinner. The team modified the standard recipes for these foods by adding a variety of puréed vegetables to reduce the calories in the entrées by 15 percent and 25 percent.

They found that kids equally accepted the modified recipes. That’s great news and an easy way to get more vegetables into your children’s diet.

You can read more here.

This is true of anything – if we are presented with too many choices when we go shopping, for say, wireless phones, too many options will lead us to no choice at all. It’s just something in our subconscious…we have to review all of the possible options, and that may take time, and even if we are determined to take the time to analyze the choices, we often get busy with other things, and abandon the whole thing.

So when you are running searches at the online dating portals, zero in your search. Make it very detailed, so that only a few results will come back. That will make your selection much easier!

I like how Amy Beyer puts it:

Dating is not a learned behavior.  There is too much advice out there telling you to be something different to land a man. This alone is what is keeping many people from finding a significant partnership. To find a great love, you have to be totally and completely YOU.

So don’t try and fool them, you’ll only be fooling yourself.

Get the rest of the story here.

The good news is, the subconscious can be changed. Dave Iuppa says this:

William James said that the greatest discovery of the last century is that your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between something that is vividly imagined and something that actually happened. Applying this to personal fitness means that, as a coach, if you have your client vividly imagine being fit, after a while their subconscious mind will believe it and kick in to make their actions consistent with that “reality”.

So exercises that focus on repetition and change your client’s conscious image of themselves is a powerful way to changing their underlying subconscious image, and thus their end result.

You can read more of what Dave says about it here.

Some easy signs that tell he is disconnected can include things like the hiding of his cell phone and activities on it. If you are in college, and he only has a relationship with you when both of you are at school, but not during summer, Christmas or spring break, he might not be that committed. Or perhaps if he is still friends with a past girlfriend, all of these are signs that he may not be as connected to you as you might think.

My advice – talk to him about it. He may be uncomfortable about it, but finding out sooner rather than later is better for you both.

Introverts tend to be quiet and reserved, but because they do not require interpersonal activity all the time, they can be alone and deep in thoughts for long periods of time, thus they can make phenomenal researchers, artists, musicians, and other jobs that require time alone in contemplation.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. has this to say about introverts:

You may not be the first person someone meets when they go to a party, but you may be the most interesting once someone gets to know you.

And I agree. While being extrovert can get further faster, the introvert tends to build deeper bonds with a smaller number of people. Each has its rewards…

You can read more about what Dr. Whitbourne says here.

The fear of failure is one of the most dangerous obstacles to success.

Jennifer Tardy says it this way:

As a matter of fact, most failures happen in the mind before they happen in reality.

So if you really want to be successful, regardless of what you are trying to accomplish, you first have to conquer your fear of getting started!

You can read more on this post here.

Jeannie Assimos presents a fabulous set of 14 anti nagging guidelines, and I found this one particularly interesting:

12. No carping from the sidelines. If your partner got the kids dressed, don’t mock the outfits. If you want something done your way, do it yourself.

The bottom line is, nagging doesn’t help in the long run. So the sooner you can curb it, the better off you’ll be!

Take a look at what Dana Bosley says in a recent coaching article:

The football coach studies playing techniques and tailors a game plan to his players according to their strengths and weaknesses. (This compares to discovering our client’s strengths and weaknesses and focusing on their strengths.)

To sum it up, while the field of information and training may be different, the core of what a coach is trying to do with the one they are coaching is quite the same. Any coach wants to see their player (or trainee) excel at the skill they are teaching them.