Heartfulness Meditation

Latest & Ongoing research in the field of Meditation

Heartfulness Meditation

Hi, This is Mahesh Sharma, Founder, and Chief Mentor, Know Your True Self® Research Academy. I welcome you on this page of our life coaching services. As you are on this page I believe you are thinking about some change, improvement, or enhancement in your current state. Though I believe you already have some idea about what coaching is in general and life coaching in particular and what it can do for you, I will still try to give answers to most of your query and curiosity regarding life coaching so that you can make the informed decision to take the next step towards your desired goals and see whether life coaching is right for you or not.

I encourage you to explore this page in its entirety and feel free to be in touch for any further clarification or suggestions. I will be glad to be personally available to you. You can reach me personally by sending a connect request to me here.

Why do people choose life coaching for them and in what areas life coaching can help them?

Let me start here with a fundamental question that why do people choose life coaching and in what areas life coaching can help them. People opt for life coaching for various reasons, especially when they need a change in their present state. We have heard about coaching in the sports and fitness arena more often than any other field. But now coaching is making its presence felt in various aspects of a person’s life and is termed as life coaching.  Whether it’s getting out of a bad habit or to develop a new one. Whether it’s about getting direction and clarity in business or profession or to manage self and get the lost confidence back. Whether it’s about dealing with stress, anger, and anxiety or facing a difficult situation. And whether its high levels of stress, anxiety, and pressure in this fast-changing world, as we are witnessing now, life coaching can help and assist a person in almost all areas of life.

Here are a few examples of the areas where Life Coaching coaching can help : 

  • Low self-esteem and low confidence

  • Identity crises, passion, and purpose related challenges
  • Relationship challenges (Couples, Parents, Students, Professionals)

  • Dealing with  Fears & Phobias

  • Depression, Anxiety, and nervousness issue

  • Emotional Health and Wellness Challenges

  • Anger, stress and anxiety management

  • Dealing with Grief and loss

  • Dealing with negative self-talk (the critical voice)

  • Dealing with life transitions, managing change

  • Dealing with Workplace conflict

  • General and specific behavior-related challenges

  • Teenage-related challenges

Let’s explore Life Coaching a bit deeper

Before moving forward to discuss the modes of life coaching and other important aspects of life coaching for you to decide when and how to take your first step towards experiencing life coaching for yourself, I would love to share with you some deeper information regarding life coaching with a hope that it will help you become acquainted with life coaching, its process, its various types, and benefits.  

You can jump to your selected piece of information from the tabs below or you can continue exploring the page further.

HEARTFULNESS MEDITATION : FAQ

Everything you want to know about Heartfulness Meditation

In simplest of words, Life Coaching is a process of helping individuals in moving from one stage of life to the next one. Life coaching takes the whole person into account. and  is an umbrella term and encompassing many specialized coaching areas like career coaching, relationship coaching, life transition coaching, etc.

Life Coaching helps in many ways but some of the main areas where it helps are,

  • Bringing clarity in the thought process
  • Giving a different or unique perspective
  • Co-creating and co-designing a road map
  • Establishing accountability
  • and make sure the consistency and commitment towards the mutually created and designed roadmap are maintained.

Therapy and counseling are different than coaching in many ways but if we want to compare the major differences, they are like this :

  • Therapy is intended to help people recover from emotional or other psychological disorders such as depression or anxiety and use a predefined process to achieve the result
  • Counseling is focused on providing advice about the ways a problem can be solved
  • Life Coaching, on the other hand, is intended to help normal, healthy individuals achieve personal goals such as increased happiness, enhance self-esteem and confidence, improved work-life balance, move from one stage of life to the next higher stage, discovering passion, building courage etc.

This question is very important to ask yourself as Life Coaching is not for everyone. The easy way to find out whether Life Coaching is for you or not is to ask yourself :

  • Am I ready for the change?
  • Do I feel that I can achieve things but don’t know where I am stuck?
  • Do I feel that I can achieve things but don’t know where to start?
  • Do I need clarity in my goals or actions towards those goals?
  • Do I find a need to have a different perspective on my current situation?
  • Am I ready to move towards the next step?

Though the discovery session (a brief chat about your goals and expectations) with your coach will further help you in identifying this for yourself, if the answers to the above questions come in affirmative, Life Coaching is most likely to help you. 

You can expect Life Coaching to help you with the following aspects :

  • Identifying the real challenge, goal or problem areas where you need to focus
  • Co-creating and designing the way forward
  • Ensuring the consistency om your actions towards the chosen goals
  • Providing you with an unbiased or non-judgmental active listening
  • Regularly reviewing your progress towards the chosen goal or identified path
  • Making sure you are able to take steps in the right direction

The role of the coach in this Life Coaching relationship will be of :

  • A facilitator for your journey ahead
  • An observer
  • A guide
  • A cheerleader
  • An additional mind
  • A non-judgmental and unbiased active listener
  • Someone who asks tough, thought-provoking and soul searching questions
  • Someone who remains available when you need to share your experiences
  • Someone who is equally or sometimes more dedicated and committed for your chosen goals

People opt for Life Coaching for various reasons, especially when they need a change in their present state. We have heard about coaching in the sports and fitness arena more often than any other field. But now coaching is making its presence felt in various aspects of a person’s life, which is called Life Coaching. Whether it’s getting out of a bad habit or to develop a new one. Whether it’s about getting direction and clarity in business or profession or to manage self and get the lost confidence back. Whether it’s about dealing with stress, anger, and anxiety or facing a difficult situation, Life Coaching is there to help and add value.

Life Coaching sessions do not work on a set parameter and are customized according to the progress, improvement, and the current situation. But still, a typical Life Coaching session has the following elements to it, where you and your coach mutually work on the following :

  • Setting up of focus goals to be achieved within a set time
  • Reviewing the progress of previous set goals
  • Addressing the challenges faced during the sessions
  • Brainstorming of and discussions for the ideas and perspectives
  • Determining a success criterion for achieving the goals
  • Suggestions for new ways of thinking and doing

The Life Coaching duration is entirely subjective. Yet in the general following are some of the frameworks under which Life Coaching works :

  • The duration of the Life Coaching assignment can vary from 1 month to 6 months to a year
  • Generally, the session of Life Coaching happens once a week but it can vary from two sessions a week to one session every fortnight
  • Each session is of 60 minutes duration
  • There is a review after a certain time period like after every one month or every  4 sessions

Yes. And as we discussed above there are different kinds of coaching under the umbrella of Life Coaching. Though Business Coaching and executive coaching seem to be entirely on the professional side they also fall under the umbrella of Life Coaching. Here are a few different kinds of coaching you generally come across and choose according to your needs :

  • Career Coaching
  • Relationship Coaching
  • Passion or Purpose Coaching
  • Business Coaching
  • Executive Coaching
  • Financial Coaching
  • General Life Coaching
  • Holistic Coaching
  • Leadership Coaching
  • Life Skills Coaching
  • Mindfulness Coaching
  • Small Business Coaching
  • Sobre Coaching
  • Spiritual Coaching
  • Transitional Coaching
  • Wellness Coaching

Insight and learning from Various modalities used in life coaching 

Here through The Academy, we offer the following under the Life Coaching umbrella to individuals and groups and try to help them in various challenges they may be facing at different life stages :

  • Personal Performance Coaching
  • Relationship Coaching
  • Stress Management Coaching
  • Passion Coaching

Modalities we use in Life Coaching

In our Life Coaching offering we use the insights and learnings from well-established modalities to provide the best from the world of energy psychology, behavioral sciences, mind-body connection, and heart-centered personal coaching. These modalities are used in combination, if required, with the best practices of Life Coaching, counseling, and mentoring to get the desired results. Following are the modalities which we personally think are very impactful and effective in dealing with the above-mentioned challenges :

  • EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques
  • NLP – Neuro-Linguistic Programming
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Heart-centered Personal Coaching
  • TimeLine Therapy
  • Personal Performance Coaching
  • Relationship & Behavioral Counseling
  • Solution-focused therapy
  • Meaning-focused therapy (Logotherapy)
  • Energy psychology
  • Integral coaching
  • Passion and Purpose focused coaching

Life Coaching

What is Life Coaching?
A Life Coach calls upon their coaching training and life experience to assist their clients to discover that which they really want.
  • Asks us to be more than we thought we could be on our own.
  • Helps us to gain clarity and focus to produce results more quickly.
  • Provides us with the tools, support and structure to be more.
  • Develop a VISION for our life.
  • Formulate practical steps to help us CREATE our VISION.
Can a Coach help me?
Firstly a Coach will help us discover what it is we really want – our vision for our life. By the use of Coaching specific tools, Coaches help clients to clarify our vision. Our life vision/goal may be to run a multinational corporation, or simply doing the job we want to do, cultivate the relationships with  the people in our life that makes us laugh and bring us joy or may be enhancing our self-esteem or confidence to reclaim our lives.
Note :  it is not Coach’s vision but clients vision. The Coach does not have the answers – we have the answers. The Coach has the questions. Just as a baby in the womb does not need to be conceived, but only to grow and be given birth to, the vision is already alive within us as a part of our values, dreams, desires and life experiences. All it needs is to be re-discovered, developed and delivered.
The coach believes that everyone’s life has a vision and a purpose. However, if we have dirty glasses we will not be able to see our vision. The Coach will help us clean our glasses so we can see what it is we want from our lives  and also see the enormous potential hidden inside of us.
How does the Coach help me?The Coach will use coaching tools that will not only helps us see our vision clearly, our present situation in perspective of our life’s goals, our attitudes and beliefs but also empowers and equips us to move ahead in directions of our goals with enhanced self esteem, new found confidence and clear vision.
By engaging with our coach in the unique coaching conversation we together discover new and unique possibilities – new paradigms for positive life action.
Participating in the coaching conversation for the first time is a unique and often profound experience for anyone. The focus is solely on us and our wants, desires, needs, dreams and sometimes our disappointments and failures.
At what other time in life does someone devote their whole time and attention on us? Coaching achieves profound life changes however, it is not therapy or counselling and it is important to be aware of the differences.
What’s the difference between  coaching, counseling, consulting, mentoring & therapy?
Many people confuse coaching with counseling, consulting, mentoring or therapy. All these paradigms are distinctive yet similar. Practitioners often employ techniques from either of the paradigms when dealing with clients. These fields can coexist and benefit from each other when used in harmony.
COACHING
Coaching is a fine art of facilitating commitment, meaningful engagement, learning and development. Coaching helps us build our own awareness, understanding and decision making. A good coach co-creates collective and cooperative partnership to unlock our potential by invigorating our inner power, values and creativity. Coaching unlike therapy, which is focused on ‘what has happened’ and ‘the problem’, focuses on what is possible. It is future focused, action oriented and supportive in helping clients move towards their goals.Coaching helps us make fantastic achievements over a range of topics from relationship management, personality development, personal performance enhancement, productivity and career paths.
COUNSELING
Counselors  offers counseling to those who are facing adjustment or developmental issues. Counseling is closely allied with Therapy.  Counselors come from variety of backgrounds namely nursing, psychology and social work. They specialize in areas such as family counseling, career counseling, couple counseling, relationship counseling and de-addiction counseling.
CONSULTING
consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a specialized area. A consultant is usually an expert or a professional in a specific field and has a wide knowledge of the subject matter. The overall impact of a consultant is that clients have access to deeper levels of expertise.
MENTORING
A mentor tends to be offering their own experience as guidance, and may or may not use a coaching style. So mentors are usually not trained in listening or questioning skills, or in techniques to aid confidence, self belief, etc. Mentoring therefore is limited to areas of the mentor’s experience.
THERAPY
In simple terms, most forms of therapy, including counselling, focus on ‘what has happened’. They are concerned with ‘the problem’ and with regaining mental balance and perspective. A therapist is a qualified professional who uses psychological interventions with the client. A therapeutic alliance between the client and the therapist is formed with the purpose of helping the client overcome certain psychological dysfunctions that disrupt his/her personal, social, occupational, cognitive and emotional functioning.  The therapist-client relationship is terminated once the psychological contract is over. Related Articles : Types of Coaching.
Coach is not someone telling us how to live your life.
Only we know how we should live our life. No one knows more about us than we. We set the agenda and the pace. We are in control at all times. Coaching is a profound tool that will reveal our potential because our potential is what drives the process.
What is the Coach’s role?The Coach is someone who is in our corner at all times, and who believes in us. Through keen observation, training and experience, and by means of the coaching conversation  our Coach will help us reveal our inner potential and then supports us as we build on this to create the life you want.
We could consider our coach a co-driver who sits besides us with the life map and destination we have chosen and who then encourages and supports us on our journey toward the life we want to live.
The Coaching Process
The coaching process begins with our phone call or email where we ‘touch base’ and get answers of any questions we may have. It also gives s the opportunity to state what our expectations are and to outline what we would like to achieve from coaching. If, following our initial contact with the coach, we feel we must move on with the coaching then we plan to have a pilot session.
How do I know that coaching is right for me?
If we feel ready to make beneficial changes to our life, want to get rid of limiting beliefs, enhance our self esteem, move ahead to a higher level then coaching can help us achieve those results. Coaching is not a therapy; though many a time a blend of therapy and counseling are applied to benefit the process of coaching. It’s a way of helping ordinary people do things differently, better and more effectively. It can help us deal with difficult situations and think more positively about ourselves and our abilities.
How does a coach know what I should do with our life?
They don’t, but they know how to help us do our best thinking, come to thoughtful decisions and make things happen. Many coaches will offer various exercises and techniques that can be helpful with respect to positive thinking, confidence, self-belief and effective communication.
What are the ways and  benefits of different  coaching specially telephone coaching?
There are various options we can choose to have coaching, such as one-to-one or face-to-face coaching, telephone coaching, skype/video coaching, cafe coaching. All the various options are designed to facilitate client to use this incredible tool to help achieve their desired results in their life.
Out of all telephone/video  coaching is an incredibly powerful way of coaching. Out of these two, Telephone coaching even offers a unique blend of intimacy and anonymity that helps clients feel comfortable and empowered (we can choose to be totally anonymous while choosing phone coaching) – with none of the distractions that can come from face-to-face or even video  coaching. It’s also convenient – no stress of travelling, and no wasted waiting.
One other benefit of telephone/video coaching is that you get to choose from a wider range of coaches without the geographical restrictions.But the main reason telephone coaching is so popular is because it works, it doesn’t require special equipment, specific place or any special preparation.
I personally recommend Telephone Coaching.
 
How much does life coaching cost?
Life coaches charges are depending upon lots of factors like experience of coach, length of sessions, the nos of sessions or even the gravity of the challenge.
How do I  generally pay?
Most coaches offers various payment options like we can  can  pay by cheque, bank transfer or credit card (via PayPal). Some business clients pay via their company invoicing system.
Coaches offer a complementary session – what’s that like?
It’s a friendly discussion with our the coach to find out more about the challenge or to initially understand the issue. Firstly the coach looks at the challenges and issues that are concerning us. The coach than will explain the way how his style of coaching may help us achieve the changes we desire and the different approaches he could adopted.
It will be a 15-20 minutes no-obligation, free coaching call with our coach  and will help us decide whether coaching is right for us, and also whether the coach is the right coach for us.Finally the coach will ask very simply that if you would like to do more work with him/her. There is no obligation to say yes and at no point during the call. Book Your FREE Discovery / Initial Understanding Session Here
What does it feel like to be coached?
Exciting, intense and powerful – yet safe, confidential and supportive.  It can feel strange at first to have the focus of a conversation on ourselves and our life situations. As we commit to new actions and set ourselves new compelling goals we will feel determined and purposeful. Confidence and self-belief are some of the benefits from our new achievements.
Is the coaching service confidential?
Yes, completely, provided we are not discussing current criminal offences or anything like that! All personal information and details are kept securely and no information is disclosed to anyone in any form. Even the testimonials which we can provide after the successful coaching are not disclosed without our consent.
Do coaches have to be qualified?
Regrettably not – so do take care in choosing a coach. Even ‘qualified’ coaches can have done massively different courses. Experience and testimonials are invaluable in helping us choose a competent coach. Of course certification and qualification add value to coaches credibility.
PS : The above FAQs have come out from my own personal coaching experience, the books I referred about coaching, other coaches experiences and also the reading material available from other coaches on the net.
I hope the above FAQs and their answers helps you to understand coaching more deeply and also will assist you to consider coaching for your goals or challenges.
Truly Yours
Mahesh

Modes of life coaching

Though there are many modes of Life Coaching including in-person, off-station, cafe, etc, its to note that now as of today when the world has been going through an unprecedented situation and is completely shut down, the online, virtual and telephonic coaching has taken the front seat among all coaching modes.  There are two other modes we provide for engaging in Life Coaching apart from the above mentioned virtual modes. These two modes are Email coaching and Chat coaching.
 
Unlike the virtual, online, and telephonic mode Email and Whatsapp chat coaching mode provide an environment where written mode takes preference rather than the verbal or visual mode. This is especially effective for people who find themselves more expressive in writing than in speaking. This mode is also becoming popular for availing Life Coaching services. 

Benefits of virtual, telephonic, and instant message mode of Life Coaching

  • Saves time & money – Availing virtual telephonic coaching sessions saves money and time on traveling, boarding, and loading
  • Provides Comfort – These sessions can be taken right from the comfort of an office desk, home or couch and that also at a convenient time
  • Convenience – No need to spend valuable time on travel or fight traffic. Bad weather, lack of transportation or inability to leave home or office or any other comfortable location for any reason should not prevent one from taking regular counseling or a coaching session
  • Confidentiality – Completely avoid the waiting room filled with strangers and office staff. See or hear only the coach at your online, phone, video or chat sessions

Physical one on one sessions

Having said all about virtual sessions and the benefits associated with them, there are some instances or individual preference where people want to connect one on one with their coach. To make sure we are able to provide that mode also, we at The Academy arrange for one-on-one sessions on special request. These sessions either happens in our office or any other chosen location of the client.  In special cases, the arrangement of the sessions is made on specific locations preferred by the person who is availing the coaching services. These are all on request and these services are made available only in some very special cases.  

Currently,    we are providing physical one-on-one sessions only around our location in Surat, Gujarat, India.  Our phone/online/chat services are available throughout the world. You simply have to send your query to us for a phone/online/video/chat coaching session and we will get back to you within 24 hours or sooner to set up a suitable time for an initial discovery session.  This discovery session aims to understand the exact nature of the challenge and to find the suitability of our services and your expected solutions and of the duration of around 20 or 30 minutes. We aim to be highly productive and effective during this discovery sessions and encourage you to always come to call or online or on chat prepared beforehand so that we can attain the desired goal of the discovery session. For the purpose of our sessions we use the trusted online meeting platform like Zoom, Go To Meeting and other reliable platforms like Whatsapp calling and cant, Skype, Facebook messages etc.

Free 20 Minutes Discovery Session

To allow us a chance to get acquainted, we offer a FREE 20 minutes exploratory discussion over phone or email or in-person (if you are near our physical vicinity). You can share and discuss your query/concern/challenge and we will review your goals and challenges and try our level best to come to an understanding of the challenge and our suitability to see whether we can be able to address your challenge. It also gives you the opportunity to feel completely comfortable working with us and come to a decision to go further ahead. Just send your request to schedule a mutually convenient time for our 20 minutes initial discovery session. And when you leave a message for us please include the best times of day to contact you. Please know that we will get back to you within 24 hours with the suggestions of the time slot where you can talk one on one with our coach.

Instruction for Life Coaching sessions

Phone/Online/Chat sessions : 

  • If possible use a headset or speakerphone to free up your hands and get rid of harmful radiation of the phone
  • Have clean drinking water available beside you – it tends to enhance the results
  • Have paper and pen handy for possible notes

Instruction for physical one-on-one or Cafe sessions : 

  • Make sure to reach the destination 15 minutes before the scheduled time
  • Have noting pad and pen ready for possible notes
  • Selecting a less crowded place and non-prime time for the session is highly recommended

Meet Your Coach: Mahesh Sharma

Hi. I am glad to introduce myself as Personal Performance and Life Coach and thank you to have visited this page and explored some of the important stuff regarding coaching, how it works, and how it can help you in achieving your desired goals, improvements, and enhancements. I hope the information above has helped you in knowing and understanding coaching better. Now as a next step if you need more information or book a discovery session with me, I am glad to invite you to connect with me personally and send your query, concern, or message. I will make sure that I will personally interact with you at a designated time and date. 

Meanwhile, if you need some more information about me, my approach to Life Coaching, and how can I be useful to you, if you choose to appoint me as your coach, I invite you to explore further by clicking the following respective links. I honor and respect your time you are spending here and it’s my pleasure to share with you my story.

Looking forward to having a meaningful personal or professional relationship irrespective of whether we work together or not.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Mahesh Sharma 
Founder & Chief Mentor