Life coach or personal trainer? Can either truly motivate a lasting change in you?

If you’ve been working with or paying for a life coach or personal trainer to help you, but you’re not getting positive lasting results in your life, it might be because your coach isn’t qualified to motivate or teach you how to change.

Life coaching is a relativity new industry, so understanding why hiring a coach is beneficial and what you should expect from a personal development coach is especially important. Life coaching began as a formal profession around 1950. Today the International Coach Federation (started in 1995) recognizes 15 coaching specialties, including health and fitness, spirituality, relationships, and business. When you think about it, these are all that we call Life Areas; sub-categories that comprise your life as a whole. This is why they can give the name Life Coach to anyone coaching you in any one of those areas of life.

Most coaches specialize in a specific area of life. For example, they are marriage coaches, business coaches, or fitness coaches, but having a different coach for everything can get very expensive. We think that’s a problem. We believe a considerable gap in the fundamentals of behavior change knowledge exists in the industry, and it is doing a disservice to the client. There are life basics, the art, and the science of success, that apply to everyone, and most of us can and should be achieving personal growth and happiness on a much higher level through mastery of these basic skills and techniques.

At MotoMe we are working to build an online resource for personal development in its entirety, which concentrates on the fundamentals and patterns of achievement in each life area. Physical fitness training plays a significant role in our lives for physical health. However, it does little to serve our clients if they can not concentrate because they are too depressed, stressed, or financially burdened to think about scheduling extra movement into their day!

Multidisciplinary Model Approach

Many industries benefit from separating into specializations. I’m quite glad that I didn’t have to go to my mechanic for law advice. However, there is something to be said for the lack of multidisciplinary models used in the professional and educational world. We see this coming to light strongly in the medical field as research proves how much more interconnected the body is with the mind and how a holistic approach is necessary. More and more data supports that many mental health issues can be prevented and expunged by taking care of the body as a whole in a certain way. A person’s physical movement (biomechanics) can directly affect their mental health (biochemically). Is your personal trainer only worried about reps, weight, and diet? Are they educating you on the necessary mental changes needed to maintain new habits over time?

It seems that often the fitness industry neglects the challenges of behavior change both physically and mentally and how it applies to personal development and growth long-term. Typically a personal trainer only focuses on an individual’s physical body changes and neglects the habitual mental behaviors and motivational stability that a client is likely to struggle with when seeking personal development.

At MotoMe our resources are there for you to use not only for physical health but also to better your relationships, financial health, intellectual learning, spiritual maturity, purpose/mission mapping, and overall progressive happiness within yourself.

If you are not getting results in your life, or even if you are, think about this, there are 5 Stages of Change no matter what area of life you are working on; What stage are you in currently, and what would it take to get you to the next level?

The 5 Stages of Change

1.) Pre-Contemplation Stage: People in this stage of change usually say things like “I don’t have a problem.” We typically aren’t considering changing our behavior at this stage because we do not consider our behavior a problem. Or we have not considered in what ways we could improve our already good behavior. We’ve usually made previous attempts to change without success and think, “I’ve tried everything! Nothing works. It’s not worth it.” In our minds, the gains (Pros) of changing do not outweigh the costs (Cons) of changing our behavior.

2.) Contemplation Stage: When people are in this stage, they usually say things like, “I don’t think I need help, but my doctor says I am at risk.” We are thinking about doing something different but are not fully motovated to take action. This is where most of us get stuck! We all know the basics about eating right and exercising, but we’re ambivalent about changing. We hesitate, still unconvinced that the effort we’re about to put into changing our behavior is worth it. F*** it mode.

3.) Preparation Stage: I love this stage! When we finally believe that change can happen in our lives and that it will be worth it, we decide! We are MOTOvated! We begin to plan and learn the how to change part and make minor adjustments in our lives like choosing to drink more water, wake up earlier, save some money, and make time for ourselves. In this stage, you must begin to define and map a clear plan for your life goals.

Friends, don’t get confused! It DOES NOT need to take years to get to this point. Deciding to make a change (stages 1–3), can be made in an instant! It tends to feel like this when we get to the end of an inspirational movie or song. We feel inspired and think to ourselves, “ Hell yes! I can, and I want to do this!” Making the plan will take some time, but it is time well spent! Especially once we get to the Maintenance Stage and have a plan in place to deal with setbacks, roadblocks, and relapses.

4.) Action Stage: When we’re in this stage, we are taking action! Our actions are different from our behaviors in the Pre-Contemplation Stage, and we are attempting to do things differently while avoiding old habits and triggers. In this stage, you’ll say things like, “I’ve lost 3 lbs!” “I made an extra $100 this week!” and have other documented results. The client is usually seeking new friends who live in ways that they want to be living at this stage and are celebrating by telling others about how their goals are going. The journey is still exciting, and the newness and rapid change results are usually incentive enough to keep going.

5.) Maintenance Stage: This is “The Grind.” This stage is the rinse and repeat process. It’s LIFE! This can be the best and the most challenging part of living a new lifestyle because we have to keep going even when we have slips and bad days. Maintaining new habits until they become habitual and ingrained into your way of life takes learning and time. It takes character, perseverance, and self-awareness. It takes tolerance and forgiveness because we must let go of old versions of ourselves to make room for whom we are becoming. This is the journey that never stops. It’s the day-to-day intentions where we get to create and find happiness, love, and challenges that help us grow.

We may have to find ways to fit our new choices within our lives that didn’t go to plan. You are uniquely you, and finding ways to live your best life next to others whose best life may look different from yours is important and very possible! It’s imperative at this stage to be using all your hard and soft commitment models and your reward/celebrate systems. You would have learned and planned these systems in the Preparation Stage.

Stay MOTOvated! Live MOTOvated!