I never wanted to be a coach.
I wanted to really help people through a meaningful deep process, and come on, this can’t be the work of a coach!
This was my attitude when I started my professional helping career, and I geared myself to specialise in supporting people who experienced a lost pregnancy or young babies (like we did). I totally believed that only counselling is the profession for me
When beginning my studies, the start of my course for counselling was combined with coaching.
But, if I’ll be honest, I disparaged a little bit those who took the course I was on to become coaches.
“They’re not as serious as me” I thought to myself to begin with.
For the first year of my new career I concentrated on counselling so much, that I’d built a good name for myself as the one who dealt with pregnancy loss (I must have done a very good job as people still ask me about it).
But something happened:
It came to a point when I started to feel that it took me too low, draining my energy.
I realised that I couldn’t hear only stories of loss.
One day, I gave a talk about Positive Mental Attitude (a topic which I combined with my counselling).
As if by magic (although now I know that it was just the precise thing which needed to happen), someone high in the ESA (European Space Agency) was in the audience.
He asked me about coaching. I said that I could give it a try (I studied it on my course and knew enough to do a reasonable job).
He was very happy, (I did a more-than-reasonable job), and he started recommending my coaching services to his colleagues and friends.
In the meantime, I started to concentrate more on studying coaching (the irony?) and within 6 months I had 8 clients for coaching.
What can I tell you?!
I fell in love!
My wonderful tutor at the time encouraged me to combine my counselling work with coaching work, and to deepen my knowledge as a Life-Coach.
Life-Coaches learn to work deeper with clients, they know how to work with emotions, are trained and not afraid to look at the client’s past and to draw observations and help from a very broad point of view.
One more client, and another, and I knew:
This is it!
I could feel so many things click into place:
- my holistic attitude to helping
- seeing my client as people with a rich past, with life experiences (some good, some more challenging)
- looking at their current situation: focusing on the here and now
- helping them creating personal meaningful goals
All this IS what helps them thrive.
I added Life-Coaching to my work,
and to be honest with you,
this is mostly how I work now.
And I LOVE IT.
And that’s what I teach my students too:
To embrace the belief that the client knows the answers to the questions or challenges they may be encountering in their life—even if those answers are not clear to begin with.
Coaching helps to reveal, layer by layer, where the difficulties lie. The clients and the coach, together, become aware of discoveries, clients are able to face the obstacles, and they improve their own lives.
We aim to broaden our clients’ perspective and open their mind, and by doing that, to allow them to reach the goals which are most important to them.
We help the client realise their own self-worth and self-belief.
If you also believe that we all are more than what can be seen on the surface,
That seeing the whole person is vital (and not just at a local difficulty they might have now) … That these are the things which will allow them to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals…
Then your place is with us!
Read more on our website to understand what we believe in, and what we do.
Noa Brume
The ICCI International Coaching diploma course manager and trainer