7 Reasons “Heart Coaching” is More Effective Than Self-Help

People Aren’t Good at Change

For over three decades, I have worked with people to help them change their lives. I’ve been an advocate (trial attorney), a teacher trainer, a university professor, a missionary and a life coach. I’ve learned a lot about personal change. I’ve learned that most of us aren’t very good at it.

The self-help industry in the U.S. is a multi-billion dollar industry. More books and courses are produced every year. But change – real, lasting change is still difficult, even rare. It doesn’t have to be.

Coaching is a Powerful Process for Personal Change

Coaching is a powerful process for personal change. Unlike teaching or training it doesn’t begin with knowledge or standards of achievement; it begins with you. Coaching meets you where you are. You discover a process to make and sustain the changes you desire in your life. And you learn how to break the journey into steps that you can walk out day by day.

Reason 1. Coaching is powerful because it is personal. Each of us is amazingly different. We have different personality types, different skills and abilities, different life experiences, ways of thinking and learning, etc. Coaching is tailored to each individual.

Reason 2. You develop an awareness of yourself: your habits, emotions, desires, thoughts and thinking processes. Self-awareness is a key life skill for success in relationships, work, personal growth, and most areas of our lives. We can change only what we can see.

Reason 3. You take responsibility for your life and your actions.  If you aren’t fully engaged in living your life nothing anyone else does will matter.

Reason 4. You learn how to reframe your thinking – to see other options and other perspectives. Perhaps the greatest barrier to personal change is that we, as human beings, aren’t very good at seeing ourselves clearly. We tend to see ourselves as we want to be, rather than who we are.

Reason 5. You learn how to make S.M.A.R.T. goals and walk out a process for taking action steps, measuring your progress, overcoming obstacles, and adjusting the whole process to keep yourself on track.

Reason 6. All of this is done in an honoring relationship where you make the decisions and are held gently accountable by your coach.

Coaching the Heart is Even More Effective

Traditional coaching deals with the mind and tries to empower personal change through awareness, change strategies, reasoning, and discipline. This is the model for secular coaching and often doesn’t involve God at all.

Heart Coaching recognizes that we have deep desires that drive us. Trying to overcome desires with self-discipline is like trying to fight the tide with a bucket. It’s a lot of work, but in the end the desires usually win. (Think dieting.)

Heart Coaching recognizes that God placed core desires in us. We all desire things like love, acceptance, justice, and peace. God has desires. We were made like Him. His plan was that these desires would be filled by Him.

The problem arises when we believe these desires have not been or will not be met by God. We then think and do things to protect ourselves (from the pain of unmet desire) or try to fill these desires ourselves – many times in ways that harm us or others. We often aren’t even aware of these powerful forces that derail our lives.

Reason 7. In Heart Coaching we invite Jesus to reveal those desires and to meet them. As Jesus reveals and fills the desires we become free from false beliefs and stop trying to fill the desires with things of this world. We then walk this out using the practical steps used in most types of coaching.

Heart Coaching goes to the root of the problem and is amazingly effective in dealing with problems people have had all their lives. It’s not so amazing when you realize that God is doing it!!

There are a thousand striking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.   Henry David Thoreau

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What could heart coaching do for you that you can’t do for yourself?