How coaching helps with Downshifting

Sally Lever …by helping you:

* let go of your old, stressful way of life, find a new path of vitality and an improved way of living.

* deal with fears surrounding financial responsibilities, your relationships with others and other consequences of making a major life change.
* improve your health, wellbeing and spiritual life.
* further your personal growth.
* achieve balance, clarity and peace
Believing that it’s actually possible.

Do you ever get fed up with the constant round of earning and spending - trying to keep up a “standard of living” that’s costing you a lot more than just money? Perhaps you’re beginning to feel a bit too much like a “human doing” and would like to get back to becoming more of a “human being” again. I certainly did and started the downshifting process for my family back in 1998. With years of experience behind me I can help you to downshift to a richer life too.

Letting go of the old way of life.

Think of how often, on meeting someone new we are asked “…and what do you do for a living?” Many people take their sense of identity and security from their occupation. If this is how you feel, you may be wondering what you will have left or how you will survive if you leave the rat race.

But is that identity the “real you”?

If you have been forcibly downshifted, for example through ill health, redundancy, relationship breakdown or bereavement, it can be a shock to have to embark on a new way of life. If you are in this type of situation, coaching can help you to come to terms with the negative feelings you may be feeling at this time. Yes, there will be fear, disappointment and disbelief. Success in this situation is not about suppressing those emotions or making them wrong. It is about observing and acknowledging them and then learning how to handle them in a way that works positively for you.

Or perhaps you have just had enough of the treadmill, are considering taking the active step of quitting a well-paid job and are unsure how to proceed from there.

Together we can start to view these concerns in a different light and overturn the limiting beliefs associated with leaving the rat race. Once you are able to view your situation as an opportunity, or if you already do, then coaching will support and encourage you in defining how you would like your new life to be and in taking the steps to get there.

From this point on, coaching will help you to welcome the changes happening in your life, whether expected or unforeseen, as your self-confidence and self-awareness grows.

Personal Growth.

Despite the fact that life coaching is perceived by many to be “about goal-setting,” in practice most downshifters seem to prefer to spend at least an equal amount of their coaching sessions on process work or furthering their personal development. Much of this centres on their philosophies of personal transformation.

Coaching will help you to view downshifting, or a change to a more sustainable way of life, as a learning experience. Like many, you may well envisage a new path and an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth and we will explore what that means to you and how you can benefit from your insights. You may feel you have stepped up to a new level or are beginning a new phase in your life. For some, coaching can be about embracing new objectives and achieving wisdom, honesty and openness. Many experience the concept of “living in the moment” for the first time in their lives.

Identifying and defining your core values in life i.e. qualities such as honesty, openness, peace, responsibility, companionship, health, wealth and freedom, is am important part of the coaching process. We will discuss the relationship and importance these have to your everyday life. In this way, coaching can support you in uncovering your authenticity and learning to live in a way that is true to who you really are.

“Getting my coaching from you has been a fundamental catalyst to my life being elevated to a new level of energy and focus. Your non-directive coaching style has encouraged me to think through issues and ideas in ways that have ironically “forced” me to reach deep inside myself for answers that ultimately truly serve me in reaching my full potential.
Through our coaching work together, my determination in holding myself to account for becoming all that I can be has never been higher, and knowing that I have a imminent coaching call coming up has supported me in maintaining my focus and keeping me on task at such consistent levels that I never before experienced in myself. And the really exciting thing is that I believe that I’ve only just scratched the surface of my own potential. It is because of this that I requested increasing the coaching frequency from three calls per month to a weekly call.
I am greedy and (I think appropriately) impatient in discovering who I am at core and what I am capable of. I’m buzzed! Thanks Sally” - Simon Allard - Life Coach, Trainer and Entrepreneur.

Financial Issues.

As one might expect, the subject of money and the trials and tribulations of surviving with less, or indeed how to earn more, are a regular feature of coaching conversations. Coaching can help you to define your financial goals and then support you in reaching them, whether your personal journey involves downshifting or upshifting. Some clients like to explore broader concepts around the idea of wealth. We frequently discuss different aspects of abundance theory and any negative beliefs you may have surrounding prosperity which are blocking your progress. We can develop techniques for transforming these into empowering beliefs that will energise you and show you the way to succeed. Coaching can help you to observe your own personal attitude to wealth, success and prosperity in a broader and more flexible sense. This will then free you to redefine what a purposeful life has become for you.

Relationships and lifestyle change.

One of the concerns that clients have is that downshifting will affect the relationships they have with their friends, partners, spouses, children and others in their immediate family. If you find yourself in this situation, then coaching can help by supporting you in your interactions and communication with others. Interpersonal relationships is an area where coaching can be particularly effective in encouraging growth in self-awareness, communication skills, assertiveness and compassion.

Health and Vitality

Lets face it, for most of us, leading a hectic lifestyle, fuelled by adrenaline is not conducive to good health. According to BUPA, 80% of GP referrals are for stress related illnesses and unrelenting stress can, over time, lead to heart disease, diabetes, chronic fatigue states, insomnia, suppressed immunity, anxiety and depression. For many, this is one of the costs of staying in the rat race.

Downshifting, in contrast, naturally calls for a healthier, slower pace of life. Coaching can help you adapt your daily life in a way that is conducive to optimising your health and wellbeing. Many people like to discuss how they can improve their nutrition and find more time to exercise in a way that is enjoyable and realistic for them. For those who favour using complementary medicine, slowing down their pace of life often gives them more time to take a holistic approach to their health and wellbeing. When people are under stress and short of time, their usual response to illness is to fight the body’s natural responses to the imbalance or to rush to treat the symptoms. This just shifts the source of the dis-ease to a deeper level, sometimes triggering chronic illness some time later.

Coaching can support and encourage you in developing a positive attitude towards preventing dis-ease. We can do this through identifying the underlying causes in terms of lifestyle and behaviour traits and learning how to handle them.

“Sally is a caring, gentle lady with a great sense of humour and a sincere, positive attitude to her own life and to other people’s difficulties with theirs. I strongly recommend Sally to anyone who values these qualities and her ability to offer non judgemental, constructive help to all.” - David- Holistic Therapist

Embracing your spirituality

Where are you with religion and spirituality?

Another symptom of being part of the rat race and living under constant stress is that we tend to neglect the spiritual parts of our nature leading to us meeting life at a very superficial and unfulfilling level. Coaching can help you to regain your spiritual side or perhaps discover this aspect of your true essence for the first time, leading to stress-reduction and a greater sense of peace and happiness.

Living your dream

In my opinion anybody can follow their dreams if they really want to. It’s not a lack of any particular intelligence or personality trait that prevents some of us doing that. We all have it in us. Rather, it’s eliminating the physical and psychological clutter that gets in the way that’s important and that is where coaching is invaluable. It’s strengthening your character, not changing your personality that will get you there!

In my view there are three main steps that are key to your success:

* Having a strong desire or intention.
* Having a deeply held belief that it’s possible.
* Accepting it into your life when it happens.

In my experience, most people do not have a problem with number 1, although they might well keep their desire under wraps or refuse to admit to it for lots of reasons. Many people, however, do have difficulty with numbers 2 and 3. For most of us, there is conditioning from childhood, from society’s expectations of us, from all sorts of past experiences that limit our beliefs on what we perceive as being possible. This same conditioning can also actually prevent us accepting the new way of life when it happens too. This is why I believe that a certain amount of personal and spiritual growth naturally accompanies a successful downshift!

“My thanks to Sally. Her life coaching has been inspirational…. Whilst encouraged, I have been able to be more honest with myself and therefore have established what I want out of my life. Discussing these life issues has enabled me to look at them in a different light and I have addressed them accordingly.” - Colin – Self-employed builder

If you are unsure whether coaching is for you and would like to chat through some of the options, please contact me to arrange a complimentary consultation.