Exploring values and beliefs

Exploring values and beliefs 

As a professional coach, your clients may ask you to support them to review their values and beliefs, misconceptions or any unproductive behavior patterns they may have. This can be a real opportunity to help them start the process of making some long-lasting changes they may not yet know are even possible.

However, to be truly successful, you will need to challenge, encourage and support them in equal measure every step of the way. Then guide them to really achieve their full potential. So, instead of using your initial coaching sessions to look at their current and future state to help identify and clarify goals, you could instead try a different approach and start by talking about their values and beliefs.

Our values and beliefs were written into the story of our lives long ago, without us even knowing, so the main issue may be that we have never really even thought about our values and beliefs, yet they tell us what to do, what to fear, what to want and what to hate.

Limiting Beliefs

As children, we are like sponges and copy what we see and hear, so may of us will pick up any limiting beliefs held by our parents, teachers or other authoritative figures we interact with in our childhood. Helping your clients review their values and beliefs will shine a light on any limiting beliefs they may have and will be the first step in a journey towards lasting change.

However, it can be easy for somebody to slip back into their old habits and behaviors if they are not supported on their journey towards lasting change, so working with your clients to identify who they are and what they think, will help them understand why some things in life really bother them and other things don’t.

Showing them how to listen to what their inner voice is telling them, will help them unlock many of those limiting beliefs or life scripts that were established when they were children. They may not yet understand how much these beliefs and life scripts guide how they think, feel and act. Plus, not all of our beliefs or life scripts are negative and not all of our inner voices are telling us we will fail.

So, if one of your clients is looking for help to understand or break their existing habits and bahavior, or wants to start the process of developing positive beliefs or life scripts, talk to them about their past, explore what motivates them and use a simple coaching tool to uncover their values and beliefs. It can be truly enlightening, help them achieve life goals, build respect for themselves or others and provides the motivation needed to go on and make lasting changes or learn new life skills.