As a certified coach who walks my talk by always having my own coach I get to see the coaching profession from both angles – that of coach and client. One of the biggest questions that are always being asked is “Can I afford it?” If you’re someone looking toSelf-Esteem and Self-Knowledge is Gold make the most of your finances, career, and life in general, the real question is “Can you afford not to?”

Now that might sound pretty presumptuous of me since I have my own coaching business. I’m happy to lay that disclaimer on the line and clearly say that I earn money and build a portion my business by coaching others. However, even if I never earned another cent in my lifetime from the profession of coaching, I would still feel just as strongly about the value and overall ROI of hiring a coach. Let me tell you why…

Self-esteem and self-knowledge are the #1 differentiator between a successful life and a mediocre (or miserable) one. Think I am making it up? There is a truckload of real evidence to back me up in addition to my personal experience. Penelope Trunk makes several great points in her take on “Using self esteem as a career tool”:

Some of you will argue that celebrity status has nothing to do with self-esteem. But I can’t help thinking there is a connection between one’s ability to live in front of a web cam and one’s ability to hold onto a sense of self no matter what is going on around her.

So maybe the best training for being successful at work is to learn to think about yourself in terms of celebrity before you get there. Because the people most secure with themselves are the ones who stand out in the workplace.

Whether you’re a celebrity or not, the truth of the matter is that wherever you go, there you are. The truth is the people most secure with themselves are the ones who stand out. You can’t get rid of yourself nor can you get rid of the parts of yourself you don’t like. Sure you can make empowering choices and change behaviors but as human beings we all contain the totality of what it means to be human within each one of us. What that means is we are everything and live a paradox. We are both “not good enough” and “good enough”; “dumb” and “genius”; “successful” and “failure”. The good news is this takes the pressure off for hyper-critical perfectionist types like me. The bad news is that there is more to mastering our lives than what meets the eye. If you want to delve deeply into what it means to acknowledge and embrace all the parts of who you are so you can live your best life check out the book “Dark Side of the Light Chasers” by Debbie Ford or contact me to experience a visualization exercise that is guaranteed to be life changing.

You may have career aspirations to climb the corporate ladder, be a wildly successful entrepreneur, or use your talents to further political or charitable causes. Whatever you choose, in order to stand out, be effective and achieve success you need to be secure with who you are on the inside. People respond positively to REAL and authentic people.

Do the words self-esteem and self-knowledge sound too woo-woo to you? Feel like it doesn’t pack enough real ROI for the hard hitting bottom line game of business or personal wealth building? Give it another spin then. That is how the whole Emotional Intelligence field of study came about from what I can tell. Your EI (sometimes called EQ as in Emotional Quotient to parallel that whole IQ, Intelligence Quotient thing) is “The one skill you need for three key areas of career growth” according to Penelope Trunk.

At some point, if your EQ is too low, you will hit a wall. Most people notice the wall when they can’t get a job, because today, the job hunts that are most successful are based on networking skills ‘” in other words, EQ. But here are other areas of the workplace that are becoming more and more important. And success in each of these three areas depends heavily on EQ.

We all know how important networking is. Over 75% of jobs are found through networking. Anyone who has run a business knows that networking leads to customers. Even if you’re an introvert like me, it can be done successfully with the right mindset and approach as John points out in his recent “Networking and Self-Marketing the Thriving Introvert Way”. And EQ is not just about some soft social skills. It has a direct impact on three key areas of career success: Project management and business analysis, Connectivity and creativity, Personal productivity. Most of us have had the misfortune of working with someone who is a genius but lacks common sense and cannot relate to other people to save his life. They are brilliant but wonder why they don’t get ahead. A lack of EQ and the wisdom to have deep self-knowledge is what keeps them stuck.

What Does This Have To Do With Coaching?

While there are a myriad of different types of coaches, one common denominator is that unlike mentoring or some other skill development paths, coaching focuses on the WHO more than it does that WHAT. What that means is that who you are as a person comes first. Then the more practical details – the what – like goals, action plans, habits, behaviors, skills, and the like come second to support who you are.

Nothing happens in our lives without it first originating inside of us. At some level our intentions, thoughts, feelings, and desires are directing the course of our life. The decisions we make, the people and events we attract to us, and the reality we experience comes directly through who we are. That is why success and happiness is an inside out job. Even our finances are an inside out job. Your relationship to money is far more important than any tip or technique you could ever employ. It is the foundation of your financial life. We’ve all heard stories of millionaires who are miserable and broke. Money doesn’t buy happiness or a feeling of “enough”. Money is energy and flows like water and your relationship to it determines how your financial life will look and feel.

For many Baby Boomers and older, a point is reached in mid-life where they wonder “Is this all there is?” With traditional career paths full of paying dues, long hours, and conformity in pursuit of someone else’s definition of success, they often hit a wall. While not everyone experiences this, many do especially after a job loss or hitting a career dead end. The trend with Gen-X and Gen-Y appears to be different. Their personal brands are different. According to Employee Evolution :

Gen-X has had to work much harder to figure out who they are and what mediums they can leverage to accomplish their goals. As a matter of fact, the majority of Gen-X only understands and is comfortable with using few tradition tools, while Gen-Y is ready and willing to try new methods of communication.

While they are talking specifically from a technology and personal branding bent, this point is worth noting from a personal side as well. These generations of folks are already showing the world that they don’t want just the “same old” and want more from life than a ladder to climb and a big mortgage to pay. For an in-depth look at this mindset read “Brazen Careerist” because it certainly opened my eyes to a whole new mindset and generation I was clueless about. These folks can ramp up their exploration and personal branding and add velocity to the results they want to achieve through coaching too. While wandering and exploring is a great path to self-discovery, adding some structure, accountability, and proven processes to the journey can make it much richer and shorten the learning curve. A good coach can help you do just that.

How You Can Dip Your Toe in the Water

Don’t take my word for any of this. I have always been and continue to be someone who needs to experience something firsthand in order to believe it. I wouldn’t want anything less for you. My personal journey meant little until I took the plunge and attended one of Debbie Ford’s Shadow Processes. That was in June 2001 and it literally changed my life. I know in my own life if it weren’t for hiring my own coaches, I would still be sitting hopeless in a cubicle experiencing daily dread and passing time until the weekend, retirement, or death came, whichever showed up first. Not an inspiring way to spend the precious time we have on the planet, right?

That’s why I want to offer you a low-cost way to dip your toe in the water of self-discovery. My personal brand is the Comfortable in Your Own Skin(tm) Coaching Process. The truth of this harkens back to the self-esteem and self-knowledge angle — if you are comfortable in your own skin wherever you go you WILL stand out, achieve more success, and design a career and life that align with who you are and what you value. Starting October 29th I am offering a four-week teleclass on “The Mysterious Missing Link – Comfortable in Your Own Skin and the Law of Attraction”. This 4 week in-depth teleclass series is guaranteed to turn your anger and frustration about having to compromise who you are into a new leash for living a life by your own design. If you’ve ever felt strangled with the conflict of being in or out of the closet you know all about the deep pain and frustration that comes from not being able to show up fully as who you are. Not sure if it is right for you? Want to dip your toe in the water with a complimentary conversation first? No problem… just contact me as I’d love to help guide you to the perfect next step for you.