Happiness Coaching

Shift Your Mood ® Coaching will help you identify and maximize your strengths in pursuit of goals that serve your core values.

In the sections below, I’ve outlined my approach to help you reach whatever goals you’d like to pursue!

Inner Coaching and Performance Coaching–
What’s the difference?

Inner Coaching focuses on clarifying your values, and identifying your passion! This process helps you get in touch with what’s really important to you.

Whereas, Performance Coaching focuses on putting your values, purpose, and passion into action. It helps you define goals, structure specific tasks, and follow through.

In many ways Inner Coaching and Performance Coaching complement each other:

Getting in touch with what’s really important to you can help you figure out what your goals are, and provide the motivation you need to stay the course!

Inner Coaching often begins with reflecting on your own sense of meaning and purpose. You might then define goals in any of the following areas:

  • Physical and emotional health
  • Friends and intimate relationships
  • Career goals
  • Social or political involvements
  • Personal growth, spirituality, and fulfillment.

Performance Coaching helps you translate these broader goals into practical objectives.

Here are some areas that clients often look at with Shift Your Mood Coaching, to gain a sense of living a more balanced life:

  • Improve your diet
  • Increase exercise
  • Stop smoking
  • Find a relationship
  • Develop a new career
  • Get organized
  • Reduce clutter
  • Develop financial goals
  • Recreation and travel
  • Prepare for an exam or complete a project
  • Explore your creativity
  • Learn a new skill: such as dance, sports, art, or music
  • Enhance your sense of meaning or spirituality

In addition, we also look at action steps you can take between now and the next time we meet, in order to move you toward your goals.

So how does Shift Your Mood Coaching work?
What if I don’t meet my goals?

We’ll start with Inner Coaching, looking at your own values, sense of purpose, and life goals. If you already have a specific goal in mind, we’ll start with that. If you’re not sure, I’ll help you explore what’s really important to you.

Once you’ve decided what you want to work on, then we’ll move into Performance Coaching to identify some practical steps toward that goal, along with a realistic time-line. We’ll also discuss how to anticipate and overcome likely obstacles. Then you’ll let me know when you’ve accomplished the task, and we move on to the next step.

If you haven’t followed through, you don’t get “punished” for not doing your homework! Rather, we look at whether your stated goal was realistic, or what else may be getting in your way that still needs to be addressed, such as blocks, negative beliefs, or fear.

We do the best we can to counter these blocks with a realistic assessment of your true abilities. Then we try again until you meet your goal!

Sometimes blocks occur because our goals don’t reflect our real values–maybe these goals came from parents, teachers, or from some image we’re trying to fulfill that doesn’t really fit our true nature. If that’s the case, we’ll help you shift your mood to your own inner wisdom, so you can get in touch with what you really want.

Some specific techniques include:

  • Shifting Your Mood
  • Visualization and guided imagery
  • Countering negative beliefs
  • Affirmations
  • Mindfulness, and
  • Re-envisioning your future

So I really do act as a coach for you, by helping you identify your values, purpose and passion! I can help you:

  • Refine your goals
  • Establish practical objectives
  • Break these down into workable steps
  • Counter obstacles that get in your way
  • Challenge self-sabotaging beliefs, and
  • Follow through to accomplish your goals!

Rik is the author of: Shift Your Mood