Life coaching assists individuals in many ways, including helping them make decisions, achieving goals they have set themselves, and dealing with any problems they may have. A life coach will help by guiding their clients away from old barriers preventing them from achieving things and assisting them in creating new practices that will enable them to attain their goals successfully. But how do life coaches know how to assist their clients effectively? We look at the science behind this, along with the positive results it elicits.
What Is Neuroplasticity?
Also known as “brain plasticity,” neuroplasticity describes the brain’s ability to adjust to a new environment by devising neural pathways or connections. Neuroplasticity describes how the human brain can make these adjustments, master new skills, store information, and potentially recover after a traumatic brain injury like a subarachnoid hemorrhage. These adjustments occur in response to environmental and/or structural change, and because they can adapt, they are labeled “plastic.”
What Does Neuroplasticity Have to Do with Life Coaching?
Quite a lot. Considered groundbreaking in the field of neuroscience, the popularity of neuroplasticity in life coaching is gaining traction. As described at www.coaching-online.org, coaching can help you grow and achieve goals you once thought unattainable. This is achieved partly by helping individuals discover why and how they can positively change their lives. Most life coaches are not versed in the science surrounding neuroplasticity, and they don’t need to be, but their work is connected to it in some way, including:
Rewiring your Brain to Change the Way you Think
This is a fundamental aspect of life coaching. If you have confidence issues, your life coach will help you overcome them. Experiencing hostile dependency in a relationship? Then your life coach will help you break free from it. During coaching, temporary changes are made to your neural nets. A neural net consists of a group of neurons that are wired together.
These neural nets become relatively permanent when new practices are learned in coaching and used outside of sessions. Your brain rewires itself to create effective opportunities to enable resilience, amongst other things. A life coach can help you alter how your neural nets work, which then positively impacts areas of your life you want to work on.
Your Mind and Body Work Together
Once considered separate entities by Descartes approximately 300 years ago, we know that your mind and body are closely connected via chemicals and physical structures. Ever heard anyone mention they listened to their gut or had a heart-wrenching moment? Well, these are real feelings that your brain interprets from these body parts.
Both your gut and your heart contain many neurons. These can create sensations that provide you with the feelings you experience in these areas, like that gut feeling you had. Life coaching helps you manifest these feelings positively when you experience these authentic messages.
Using Oxytocin
Also known as the love hormone, because it is released into your bloodstream in response to feelings of love, oxytocin works with the vagus nerve to create a feeling of being connected to people in many ways via social bonding. For instance, your love for your partner will differ from that for your child or friend. Life coaching helps use this hormone to create specific behaviors and trust integral to your sessions.
How Effective Is Life Coaching?
The International Coaching Federation discovered that an impressive 99% of individuals who underwent life coaching found it rewarding, with 96% stating they would do it again if the need arose. Additionally, 80% of individuals stated their confidence improved after these sessions. So it’s pretty safe to say that life coaching is extremely effective, and those that have used a life coach are overwhelmingly telling us so. You can also learn much more about life coaching from the experts at Mindstream.
With society increasingly experiencing mental health issues, many of us are ill-equipped to deal with the array of issues these may manifest by ourselves or as support for another person. Life coaching can help us develop the tools we need to overcome these issues and rejoin society as stronger and more confident people, both professionally and personally.
If you are questioning how to do something or why and cannot find the answers, perhaps it’s time to seek the advice of a life coach. If you’re looking to make a positive change in your life, don’t know how to do it, or believe you can, they will help you realize your potential to achieve what you thought impossible. Not only will a life coach help you grow, but they will also support you in doing so along the way.