I have been life coaching since 1997, before the term “life coaching” even existed. Initially, my niche was expatriates moving from the USA to the Netherlands, then I added business coaching, and flirted for a couple of years working for a celebrity coaching agency owned by a friend. Eventually, I found that running both an NLP training business and a coaching practice was too hard to maintain. But earlier this year, I started to miss the one on one connection and follow through. So I posted on Facebook one day “thinking about starting coaching again”, and before I knew it, I had 5 clients without even trying. In all honesty this wasn’t a surprise, because I have been turning down coaching clients for years. I am asked in every NLP training I give.
I enjoyed it far beyond I ever thought, predominantly because I have felt a yearning for years to reconnect with my students beyond the training, Facebook, mini-workshops, and drinks!
10 things I love about life coaching my NLP training students
1. What happened to my students after class?
I am pretty well tapped into my students’ social media, and exchanges over email are also common. But to spend more dedicated time, sometimes well over 5 years, it struck me how much my students have grown as a result of the NLP training. They took the tools, and ran with them. Their filter has forever been changed, and the results of that are tremendous.
2. Going Deeper!
Life coaching my former students has allowed me to go deeper into a specific subject with them, whether that is fearing a burnout after working hard as a coach post-class, creating strategies for winning a television game show, or for the final 10% of their goal where initial limitations originally popped up, or yeah…some one-on-one time to deal with an abusive past and PTSD.
3. I can talk to them in NLP terms
Since I am dealing with NLP Practitioners and NLP Master Practitioners, I have my hands free to use any terminology I want! It also makes tasking with homework a lot easier, as much less teaching and more doing can be achieved!
4. How much do I remember?
It has been an interesting test for me to see how much I remember about my students. It’s interesting, how I still know their personality types, their background stories at the time, how they code, and I don’t forget any demos with them. My coaching client students found it a little shocking, and I am sure wondered if I keep meticulous notes in class. I actually make notes in my head in class, just a weird photographic NLP memory of my students. I wish I had it in other areas of my life. I don’t.
5. An opportunity to make another impact!
To have that invitation again is an honor. People experience a tremendous impact during NLP training, but to then be able to life coach them after is an opportunity for a larger and more personal impact.
6. Focused attention
When I teach classes, I am pulled into many directions, not just the group of students but also my team of trainers, the back-office, people I need to meet locally for the business, hotel staff, my local friends and somewhere….try to fit a workout in. The focused attention to one former student has just been wonderful.
7. Getting to know my student in a different way
Life coaching my students allows me to get to know them better. And it may sound exaggerated, but I literally fall in love with them during coaching. They are amazing, positive, capable individuals. And the more I learn, the more I want to put them all on some tropical island with me to hang out for a while! My students are good people, they are special, and they know how to have fun!
8. Memory lane
Reconnecting with students brings me back to their training room. Who they trained with, the things that happened in their class. The NLP training experience is intense for me, so to be put back into a training room of the past simply means the world to me.
9. The goal after the goal
The opportunity of life coaching my students on their goals has been amazing. This isn’t about the goals they set in class … they learned how to be professional goal setters in class after all. But the final steps, or the goal after the goal, to support them on that makes me feel so part of it! It’s a special feeling.
10. I can get better results
Results are paramount to me. I do what I do because I want to move people from a place where they are stuck to a place where they are unstuck. Now my life coaching students aren’t stuck, that’s something they learned to work with in class. But they may be experiencing something they’d really like to remove, improve on or get out of the way. I love that “game on” feeling, working with inherently coaching peers, at the point when I reconnect with them for life coaching after the NLP Training.
Book: Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
