To be successful long term, life success coaching involves identifying your client’s limiting beliefs early on in your work with her. Of course, that is only the first step. Once the two of you have gotten very clear on her goals and on the beliefs that are getting in her way, you want to help her find and take on better, more empowering beliefs. When the limiting beliefs include an identity belief—one that starts “I am…..”, the challenge of making that shift becomes even more dramatic. As a life success coach, here are some strategies you can use to help your client leave her disempowering beliefs behind.

3 Strategies For Changing an Identity Belief

1. One of the most powerful strategies of life success coaching is simply asking the right questions to open up possibilities that your client can’t see for herself. An identity belief makes it hard to see any alternative way of being. If your client believes she is worthless, for instance, every possibility is filtered through the lens of worthless and she can’t see how she could be any other way. To bypass her filter, ask her “Who could you think you are?” When you set it up as a hypothetical, you get past the defenses and allow her subconscious to begin to accept the possibility of a different belief.

2. Work with your client to find what the belief is covering up. It will be protecting her in some way from losing out on meeting one or more of her 4 basic needs of certainty, variety, significance and love and connection. When she understands the purpose of the belief, she can begin to look for other ways to serve that purpose.

3. Have your client commit to taking some action that flies in the face of her limiting belief. It won’t be comfortable, but it will prove that the limiting belief is false. Explain that this is necessary no matter how she feels about it, and make sure your life success coaching includes holding her accountable in a powerful way.

Life Success Coaching For Long Term Change

Changing an identity belief, or any limiting belief for that matter, is a long term proposition. The techniques above will start the process, but your life success coaching has to include strategies to help prevent your client from slipping back into old familiar patterns. The core transformation process, which we’ll discuss in another article, will embed the changes. Then on an ongoing basis, encourage your client to act from her new beliefs and hold her accountable powerfully for doing so. Have her visualize and get into the feeling of her new empowered beliefs every night within half an hour of going to sleep. Have her keep a record of each action she takes from her new beliefs, how it changes her life, and how it makes her feel. Remind her to acknowledge every success verbally or with a pat on the back.

Helping someone eliminate a belief that is holding her back from what she wants in life is an amazing experience for both coach and client. Life success coaching is a great opportunity to make this happen.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works. If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach