What is a Life Purpose Coach Anyway?
A Life Purpose Coach is someone who is a trained master in creating significant conversations.  A coach asks questions, listens and then helps you recognize what you believe to be true.  Here’s an example:  I was recently coaching a person who said that they were very unhappy in their career and wanted to do something to make peoples' lives better.  He spoke very lengthily and confusingly about what this new thing might look like.  As he spoke, it was as if he was walking through deep mud. He was getting no where.  All he could clearly articulate was that he hated his present profession and couldn’t fathom going back to it and working for company x, y or z.  Then I asked him to talk about his professional experience.  His entire demeanor changed.  He moved forward in his chair, became articulate and engaged and started talking passionately about what he would do regarding a specific opportunity.  I listened and then stopped him briefly and said, “You just spent 45 minutes vaguely talking about some new possibility and telling me how you hated your profession of 30 years.  Then when I asked you about your profession you came alive and were articulate, passionate and focused.  It doesn’t sound to me like you hate your profession after all.” 

He agreed and we conclude our coaching session with him establishing to rejoin his profession.  We also reserved future time slots for additional coaching sessions so that he can begin to define the next steps for pursuing his desire to eventually transition into significant work.
You see, I didn’t really have to tell him anything he didn’t already know.  I just asked questions, listened and repeated back what he had told me. That’s what a coach does.  Coaches do very little in overtly giving direction, but it takes the involvement of a coach to enable most people to focus and move forward.

I Found the Antidote

There was a time when I had a skewed idea of what a coach is.  My earliest memories of people who called themselves coaches are that of older men yelling at me in gym class.  I suspect you may have had a similar experience, so let me make it clear, they were not coaches.  In my case, they were just “grumpy old men” dealing with kids who had bad attitudes.  They were terrible roll models as well.  In one instance my junior high coaches mercilessly made fun of the class of mentally challenged kids calling them “F Troop.” Perhaps you remember “F Troop.”  It was a popular television show, of that day, about a western outpost manned by a quirky collection of misfit Army soldiers. Simply put, this was not a good introduction to coaching.

Good coaches are altogether different.  It was former Colorado football coach Bill McCartney who said, “Coaching is taking a player where he can't take himself.”  Alabama’s legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant knew that the solutions resided in his players when he said, “No coach has ever won a game by what he knows; it’s what his players know that counts.”

One of the best things that ever happened to me was finding a coach and mentor who I could bounce ideas off of and one who was committed to drawing the best of me out of me.  He is called a Life Purpose Coach.  He does not impose his will on me but instead, like coaches McCartney and Bryant, help me to know myself better. Like daredevil Baumgartner, standing at the edge of space, my coach motivates and encourages me to consider all the options and opportunities that are before me.
 

Make a Roadmap for Your Future with the Help of a Life Purpose Coach

You probably saw it, too. Self professed daredevil, Felix Baumgartner, standing poised in the open hatch of his capsule, suspended 24 miles above the Earth.  He was about to descend back to Earth in a 9 minute free-fall at speeds greater then the speed of sound.  No man had ever attempted such a feat.  As he was about to jump, he said he felt “humbled.”  Perhaps you also saw the picture of him standing outside his capsule with the curvature of the earth behind him.  On one hand he must have felt very small, but on the other he was likely impacted with the vastness of life and all the opportunities that exist.

Scenes like this really motivate me.  I like to think about the possibilities and “what if’s” of life.  Unfortunately, that is not the way I live most days.  Most days are spent in my little world doing what must be done, wondering if I will get it all done, and questioning whether or not I am doing it right.  Perhaps that describes most of your days as well.
 

Find Three People to Compliment.
It was tenor, Robert Brault who said, “There is no effect more disproportionate to its cause than the happiness bestowed by a small compliment.”  In the next week find a minimum of three people to surprise with a compliment. Choose one from your family, one from your work and another from the community.  First, identify the person, single out something they did and quantify the result it had.  Next time you see them you will be ready to compliment them. Be generous with compliments and be one who is known for bestowing disproportionate happiness. “You (will) look simply marvelous.”

Directive:  Compliment people: use their name, tell them what you observed, and state the good they produced. 

Look for the Good. 

We have heard it said that we should compliment ten times to every time we criticize.  We also know that this is admittedly hard to do in some relationships.  Some people are just plain difficult!  Who is the one person in your life that rubs you the wrong way, but whom you cannot avoid?  We all have one.  Compliment them?  No, I am not kidding. Yes, you can do it.  There is always something that you can find in someone to compliment. I’m not saying it will spring into your mind immediately, but no one is without some worth.  No one on your list of relationships should be excluded from those you are responsible to compliment.