By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland, CEO of International Coaching Academy

I am about to board a plane from Chengdu to Shanghai. I have just spoken to 50 people about coaching and how we need trained up coaches who can speak Chinese.

Last week I was in Taipei and Kaohsiung in Taiwan speaking to 30 coaches, of which most were students and graduates of ICA. We spoke about the future of coaching and business and the nexus between the two.

In June we are planning a trip to Malaysia to speak to students and people interested in coaching and in July travelling to Australia to speak to staff, and more students and potential coaches.

In October a trip to India is planned, again to meet students, graduates and future coaches. In December a trip to the States to attend a coaching conference.

Now to some people this might sound like a lot of travelling and to others it might sound like the dream job.

To me it is the dream job. I decided some years ago that I wanted to travel to many places around the world. I wanted to meet up and connect with coaches and people doing business in this area. So I made it happen.

The way I made it happen was committing to a weekly one hour coaching session with my coach. Each week I call my coach and begin immediately to work on the areas I am focused on. The speed at which we move through things is dependent on me focusing on my coaching session throughout the week, thinking about what I need to work through this week or what I need to bring to the coaching conversation.

If my coaching session is not powerful or I leave feeling not so resolved then this is usually because I was not focused to begin with. I need to carefully plan out what I want to bring to the coaching conversation each week. Some weeks I feel as though I am too exhausted to have my coaching or don’t really have anything to work on. However I am committed to coaching and achieving my goal of growing greater self awareness. So I prepare and on those weeks of tiredness or seeming lack of focus, I leave my coaching session feeling motivated, focused and excited to be moving forward.

I have come to learn that to cancel a coaching session is to lose energy for a week and to lose focus. My coaching sessions are a way of clearing out any feelings or uncertainties in my week. They are a way of moving any negative energy from within me as talking out loud helps how I am feeling and where I am at and to stay present.

I often hear myself telling my coach that it’s painful sometimes to have to be brutally honest with myself and as he always explains, it’s best to be honest with your coach as they are a sound board for you. Let’s think about this concept for a moment. If I didn’t have a coach then this conversation would be going on internally, with my inner self talk. As we all know inner self talk goes round and round and doesn’t actually go anywhere except in a negative energy field. It spirals down into a conversation of justifying and explaining why I shouldn’t do something. Controlling our inner self talk takes great skill.

Thus is the purpose of a coach. It is a conversation that is directed outwards and when we hear ourselves speak we gain clarity as to where we are going and what we are thinking and feeling. My coach asks me questions that get me to explore depths to my thoughts and to my feelings. He allows me a safe and supportive space to test ideas and thoughts.

In the last 12 months I have achieved more things than I have ever achieved through regular, decisive coaching. To not have coaching feels like not eating or nurturing myself. Its just not possible

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