“I’ve had enough life experience I can just start life coaching – I don’t need training…”

I apologize if I squash your dreams in this, that said this is absolutely not true and those who begin to coach and be a facilitator or guide without training are lacking integrity. This lack of integrity will be what they spread through everyone they work with and their business.

I get it, we all have some crazy life experiences that we’ve grown through because we are in evolutionary times of karmic purging, which means storylines are getting crazier and crazier as we collectively heal.

Your ability to move through these periods is so valuable for YOU! I am super proud of you for showing up to your life and healing, truly. That said, there is more to facilitating for another than going through your own journey can possibly provide.

As more people begin to seek out coaches, healers, shamans, teachers, facilitation for their growth, healing and evolutionary journey the rise of this industry is only going to continue to grow. We must ensure that integrity is laid in the foundations or else this industry will become oversaturated and will be a field that no one takes quite seriously except the few who are devoted to it.

When you are hired by someone to coach or facilitate for them in some way, you are holding their life in your hands. They are trusting you to be honest, integral, wise, compassionate, empathic, connected, heart-centered, and able to hold space with a bountiful of tools and practices that can guide them through whatever shows up as they journey into the deepest parts of themselves. Likely, parts they have not even gone into on their own, and here they are now, trusting you with their deepest darkest parts. This is to be seen with absolute reverence and devotion, in total integrity.

It feels aligned to share with you that when I speak to integrity in the coaching and healing arts field, integrity implies that the person is trained, practiced, and growing more deeply in their skills and embodiment of their life’s work every single day. You must be living the life you are selling to people, and you better be sure you have the training to show up to people’s lives fully because the karmic implications for one who just starts coaching so they can leave their 9-5 job and think it’ll be easy and can make a lot of money doing it, are karmic ties I assure you, your soul would not choose for you.

If you are feeling this resonance for being of service to the consciousness awakening of humanity, and feel that you are aligned with being a guide and a coach through this process, amazing! It is a great privilege to heed this call, it is the call of your soul who is lit up and ready to serve. That said, is your humanness on board? Meaning, has your human caught up with the overall intelligence and wisdom that your soul is holding? Has your humanness taken actionable steps to develop the skills and practice on the physical plane to step into this greater role?

We get to bring our soul and human into alignment first, this is where we thrive, this is where we live out our great dharmic missions. This is being in integrity as a facilitator, guide, healer, and coach.

For those who are on the receiving end, now that we are all aware of the growing lack of integrity in this ever-expanding field, I would love to share with you the 6 questions you must ask the next facilitator that you are thinking of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of your life force energy on.

How to choose your next coach – 6 questions to ask.

• Where were they trained? What professional training do they have in the said field? This is so important as it lays the foundations for integrity and respect of their work. It’s important that you first know the standards of training in the field you are seeking facilitation in so you know what sort of training is qualified. For instance, a shaman and a life coach would have very different training. Where the shaman may have spent 5-10 years as an apprentice in Peru with a shaman, receiving no certification and being incredibly trained and skilled, a life coach would go through a year or longer certification and accreditation program.
• How long have they practiced their craft? I’m not specifically talking about how many paying clients do they have; some highly trained coaches have gone through training where they are working for a whole year seeing people for free (this is what I did). The question is really about how many hours have they worked with clients (paid or not). You do not want to be any one’s guinea pig when you are spending thousands of dollars. The more practice they have, the better equipped they are to hold space for you. This does not mean to not support a newcomer to the field. It simply means your investment should match their degree of practice and experience.
• How are they currently growing their skills and practice? You are seeking out a coach to support your continued growth and expansion, which means you want someone who is also continually growing and expanding. Ask your prospective coach what they are currently learning, how they are currently supporting themselves. A great coach will have their own coach, or two because holding space for people takes a lot of energy, it’s incredibly important that facilitators have space holders for their process too.
• Are they a legitimate business? Are they taking the growth and expansion of their business seriously? Are they a legal entity? If they are not taking their business seriously as a coach and are not focused on growth and expansion, they will not take their clients seriously. If they are only half committed to their business, they will be only half committed to you. You want someone who is fully committed and growing their business, who knows this is the most important way they can spend their time and are devoted to it.
• Do they have a background in the field of coaching they are in? For instance, if you wanted to hire a business marketing and sales coach, you wouldn’t hire someone with no background in marketing and sales. If you wanted a mindset coach, you wouldn’t hire someone without a background in some form of psychological training, be it NLP or cognitive therapy or another branch of psychology. If you wanted to evolve spiritually, you wouldn’t hire someone who is wavering in their faith.
• How do you feel when speaking with them? Do you feel connected to them? This you will discover on your consultation call with them, or you may already know this if you’ve been following their work for a long time. It’s natural on a consultation call to be nervous, maybe even a little fearful especially if this is the first time that you are thinking of investing hundreds to thousands of dollars on yourself. We were taught that it is selfish to invest all of our money on ourselves, breaking free from this belief often comes up the first time you invest in a coach. That said, beyond this natural nerve and slight fear of investment, how do you feel while speaking to them? Do you feel connected to them? Do you feel they are fully present and connected to you? Most importantly do you feel heard and listened to fully in a way that is valuable and supportive to your growth? This is most important after all you are making this investment for you, not for them. There are a lot of incredible salespeople in the coaching world, and a lot of great hypnotists who can lead you to believe you need them by the end of the consultation call. I had this happen to me once. I was completely hypnotized on this call with a coach who I felt I needed to work with by the end of the call, who I invested in and who did absolutely nothing that they said they would on that call. I ended up getting half of my money refunded. Looking back, I realized I was not listened to, I was not heard, I was hypnotized by someone who was trying to make a sale, who wasn’t trying to make a connection with me.

The intention with these questions is that you save them and use them when you are on those consultation calls with potential new coaches and facilitators of your healing and growth. I’ve been in this business for 7 years now as a spiritual life coach and mystic arts teacher and the number one thing I wished happened more often is that prospective clients asked me questions on the consultation calls.

I don’t feel that people don’t have questions, I feel they just don’t know what to ask as this is a newer industry and people were not taught what is important to know about their coach. As a high-level coach with over 17 years of skill building, and training I am selective about who I take into my coaching container because I want them to be as devoted as I am.  I find that when potential clients don’t have questions to ask (unless they’ve been following me for a while and have just *known* they are to work with me beyond questions – this does happen,) they are not taking this work as seriously. It’s not just about the coach being in integrity, it’s about the client as well being in integrity with truly wanting to change their life.

It’s not the coach’s job to answer these questions without them being asked. In order for us to ground this industry as a genuine profession that is taken seriously by the mainstream world, we all must be in integrity both coaches and people who are benefiting from this work.

I write this because I’ve witnessed first hand in my own life and in the life of clients I serve and who my closest allies serve, investing in a coach, a great coach, one who answers all of the above questions with confidence, grace and ease and who meets you fully, is hands down one of the best investments one can make in their life. This industry changes people’s lives for the better when it is in integrity.

I had a prospective client show up and tell me how scared she was by her previous coaching experience, I’ve been there before too. I don’t wish for this to continue happening, and for it to stop we all must be in integrity and take this profession seriously because it is the future. We are evolving, growing and expanding rapidly. The time is now to care deeply for our lives, so deeply we are willing to invest in support.

That said, if you are wanting to be a coach, a shaman, a healer, teacher or guide, be certain you are answering all of the above questions in a way that if it was you asking someone, you would want to hire that person too. Get trained, get practice, grow your skills and get support.

Humans are valuable, honorable, loving, and caring beings, our lives are incredibly valuable. Being a life coach, healer or facilitator is an incredible honor that is to be respected with the utmost of integrity.

Thank you for your willingness to grow.

May We RISE Together and Gift our Presence to the Earth.

Ahaumna Ah Ma Yah

|Spiritual Life Coach, Speaker, Mystic Arts Teacher|

www.LovesMission.com

My yearlong Spiritual Life Coach and Mystic Arts Facilitation and business building certification and accreditation program will begin in 2019. If you are interested in taking your life and career to the next level as a coach and guide, and you want to know the details of this training click the link above and use the chat box to start a live chat with me to explore what’s possible.