Have you ever been on a merry-go-round and gone round and round, your horse (or tiger or camel (who puts a camel on a merry-go-round) going up and down, wondering if you’ll ever get the chance to snag that brass ring?
Unfortunately, that’s how we often approach our wellness – going round and round, lots of ups and downs, making no real progress, just holding on and hoping for a shot at what seems so elusive, so unlikely: true wellness.

Without a clear vision of where you want to be, without creating and tracking solid, measurable goals, you run the risk of that circular trap…lots of motion, but none of it taking you any closer to being your best you!
That’s the “wellness go-round” and it affects an enormous number of people.

As a wellness coach I work with people to avoid that trap. We take basically a 4-step approach:
1. Preliminary self-assessment
2. Creating a Vision statement
3. Creating (and tracking) 3-month goals in support of the Vision
4. Creating (and tracking) weekly goals in support of the 3-month goals

Each person’s Vision statement is a personal and unique creation – some are poetic, others matter-of-fact; some are based on a specific time frame – a year perhaps – others are seen as being a future state but without a specific sense of when that might be reached. In all cases though, the Vision statement is more than a concept, it is a way to stay on track, focused, and motivated. We work together to understand strengths, motivators, perceived obstacles, all those factors which are key to understanding how to create your genuine and sustainable vision.

Likewise, the goals you’ll create are based on the realities of your life and capacity – setting goals that are unimportant or impossible to reach are not going to bring you to the level of wellness that will sustain you.
A person I was coaching once was concerned that “this vision stuff is all air and lace; I want the hard stuff” (OK, that was a very sanitized version of what was actually said but you probably get the drift). Once we got into the work though it was obvious that this is the real deal – the goals we worked on were solid, substantial, and did indeed help move this person ever-forward.

My intent as a coach is to help people become their own best advocates and, essentially, to learn to coach themselves. I see no benefit in the coaching relationship if I can’t help the person stand firmly on their own two feet! Admittedly, it’s an odd business model, but this is about helping people achieve a level of life satisfaction which they may have never considered, and that means more to me than anything else.