What is zen life coaching? What is zen? What does zen have to do with life coaching and why should we care?

Zen is an attitude, a state of mind, a place of being. It is all about finding a peaceful and satisfying place in this world. It is about becoming one with something besides yourself. One with the world, one with life, one with your life coaching career.

What is Zen Life Coaching and Why Does it Matter?

Zen life coaching is both an attitude about your own career and an attitude that you convey to your clients. Find zen for yourself and then help your clients find their own zen.

For your career, it is all about finding that sweet spot where you have both passion and skill. Who do you like to work with? Who do you work best with? Do you work best with executives and do you have a passion for working with them. Is your sweet spot working with athletes? Or women? Or with a certain type of professional? Once you find where you want to be and with whom, you have found a place of zen.

For your clients, it is all about finding their sweet spot in life. They come to you to achieve certain outcomes and you try to help them reach those outcomes. The twists and turns that it takes to get to these outcomes, is a journey seeking zen. This may sound too much like a metaphysical concept, but reaching zen is merely reaching that place of happiness and contentment.

Zen life coaching is all about seeing the forest through the trees. People often get preoccupied with the little things in life, the details that can cloud the big picture. Your job as a zen life coach, is to help them pull back their lens on the world and take in the entire forest. Seeing the big picture will help them focus on what is important and what really matters when they seek to achieve their goals and dreams.

The spirit of zen and the work of a life coach go hand in hand. A life coach is there to help guide clients toward their goals and dreams. Reaching goals and achieving dreams usually brings some sense of accomplishment, a feeling of contentment, and the all-encompassing emotion of joy. Accomplishment, contentment, and joy – there can be no better expression of zen in life.

How to Turn Your Life Coaching Practice in to a Zen Life Coaching Practice

• Continue to do what you already do. A life coach already seeks zen for themselves and for their clients.
• Read more about the concept of zen. There are many books on the concept of zen. A great read is Not Always So; Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, by Shunryu Suzuki. Though this isn’t a beginner’s book on zen, it is quite enlightening about finding peace and contentment in the world.
• Practice the spirit of zen in your own life. You can be an example and a role model for your clients.

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Fred Philips
Business Coach
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