Achieve Your Balance in Life With Personal Coaching
Roberta Herche, LCSW
Families are returning to the dinner table! That was front page news last year in the New York Times. In this article parents vividly described their struggle to maintain a semblance of family life in the face of overwhelming demands of work, school and everyone’s extra life activities. If you have one of those crammed calendar families, or even if you don’t have children or live alone, the issue in modern life is increasingly this: How do you find the balance? Where does work end and personal life begin? And in your personal life how do you make time for family, friends and yet carve out some totally selfish time just for yourself?
A major focus in personal coaching is life balance. Individuals come to coaching because something in their lives just isn’t right. This feeling of discontent seems at odds with their apparent success on the job, in their personal life, in the community. Working together we uncover what that something is and very often there’s an indication that life is clearly out of balance. Too much time is spent on some areas while other areas languish, leaving individuals caught in this cycle depleted, dissatisfied and yearning for something more.
Taking time to reflect on your life in a structured fashion can be a very constructive first step in ultimately making changes to achieve a greater level of balance. One of the first tasks I undertake with my clients is an exploration of their personal values, to find out what is important to them. Very early in the process I ask them to complete an exercise that leads them to clarify their values and to create a personal mission statement based upon those values. When our daily life reflects our core values, our level of life satisfaction is high. When there’s a gap between our values and our life choices, that realization can be the beginning of a new focus to achieve life balance.
Several additional exercises help clients identify their specific areas of greatest satisfaction and those they would like to work on. One exercise is a satisfaction scale where the many explicit areas of each of our lives is considered and rated by the client on a scale of one to ten: career/professional, financial, health, exercise, spiritual, family, friends, intimacy, community, physical, learning/growth, play/fun, creative expression. The thoughtful completion of this self-reflection can vividly reveal to a client those areas on which focused work could improve satisfaction.
We all know when we’re out of balance. More often than not we accept that this is just the way it is. Life will get better with the passage of time or when external influences disappear. Coaching helps individuals take control in the face of external influences, to stop wishing their lives away until some future point in time. Coaching can help you create a clear vision of what you want your life to look like, feel like on a daily basis and then take steps to turn that vision into reality.
Roberta Herche, LCSW
With over 30 years experience in the human services field. Roberta Herche is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker offering comprehensive personal counseling services in Upper Manhattan. Psychotherapy or life coaching is provided based upon individualized needs and goals in a supportive and optimistic environment. Feel free to call to discuss your interest.
Phone: 212-927-7942
Email: robertaherche [-AT-] gmail.com