I think there's a strong desire for most everyone to make a greater difference for others. . .where someone lets down their guard and really opens up their heart and shares what's really going on in their lives. . .

The misconception might be however that if someone presents a problem or dilemma to you they're facing, they want you to fix it or for you to give them advice, but it's almost always that they just want to be heard and that's it.

But how does one turn themselves out to work with others in that way where they really open up their heart? and others can recognize that in you and want to hire you for that?

Becoming this sort of coach isn't so much about learning gimmicky techniques, flashy marketing, having to "sell" someone on something, etc. but rather "cleaning oneself" out of erroneous beliefs, unexamined ideas that get in the way of just hanging with someone where it's safe for them to open up without you reacting / having some sort of emotional reaction to what they're sharing.

It's not about addition (adding to what you know), but rather subtraction (of the stuff you know that doesn't serve you / gets in the way).

For example, if I had a strong opinion about vaccination or relationships and my client had a belief that was opposite that. . .unless I'd done the work of getting to a really neutral place about the whole thing, it would be really challenging or even impossible for me to just listen without reacting emotionally, wanting to fix or change them and it wouldn't be a safe space for my client to open up and reveal what was going on with them to just be heard.

Essentially the work for me to get to that place would be to examine my own position and question is this real or not. . .this is not easy work by the way and requires a different sort of willingness to really see what's real and what isn't. . .in my experience very very few make it a conscious effort to do this. . .cultivating the ability to discern "is that my head/mind/ego doing the talking or is it my heart?"

Here's a video interview of Buckminster Fuller some might find useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elVGz_VR3eU You might want to read up on Buckminster Fuller and see what he accomplished in his lifetime. . .totally unreal. If you listen carefully, he talks about how he spent 3 years not talking and examining his thoughts and asking which ones are true and which ones aren't and how pretty much everything he'd been taught in schools, ideas about money, relationships, work, how the world worked that he'd been told - turned out to be limitations that got in the way of accomplishing his goals and dreams.

Now - the seductive thing might be to take what I said above and say "I'm not ready to do the work with clients because I haven't got enough of my life in order or "I need to change, fix, or develop myself more BEFORE I am ready to take on clients or do the sort of work I really want to be doing in the world". So they embark on a journey of trying to heal, fix, change themselves - taking more courses, going to more healers, more seminars, reading more books. . .you could get lost for years or even a life-time going down that rabbit hole of constantly thinking you're not good enough, trying to fix or heal yourself, etc. etc.

However, this is not necessary at all. . .you can learn and be "cleaned out" by moving forward and taking action. . . and everything you need will happen in the process of moving forward.

One thing I learned awhile back is that clients are a reflection of us. . .that is, if someone is jammed up about something, it's probably something I need to look at in my own life as well. In that way, clients show us more about ourselves and where we're still not loving or neutral about something in our own lives.

My mentor used to say - when starting up a coaching practice, the ONLY thing to focus on is taking on clients. . .don't worry about other things (i.e. business structure, accounting, having to have everything just right or just perfect. . .it's not even about how much they pay you (although I think it's important for them to pay you something). . .but by working with them, you'll learn what you need to know about yourself.

The process of working with clients will have you encounter what you need to work on yourself naturally. . .and to let go of the erroneous and inaccurate and unexamined beliefs, judgments, etc in the process

Essentially you learn by doing. . .kind of like the "on-the-job-training" / "throw them to the wolves" and see if they sink or swim approach except this time it's with life coaching. Businesses in past years used to have this sort of approach with their employees and few were required to have a university degree to do a job. My father worked for the Chevron corporation and designed the very first commercial cardlock system for Chevron North America . . .when he joined the corporation he had a high school diploma. . .By the time he retired, the person they were looking to replace him had to have a PhD as a job requirement!

Consider you are as ready as you'll ever be right now in this very moment. . .the only thing to do is to get practice working with others - doing whatever it takes to pick up clients to practice with and you'll learn all you need to in the process of taking action now. Don't worry about trying to get it right how much they pay you in the beginning. . .the important part is just having people to work with - and the #1 goal is having clients to work with. . .the money will sort itself out in the process. . .

The more you get "cleaned out", the more effective you'll be as a coach and the more that clients will give you to work with (opening up more and more about what's going on in their lives). . .