Coaching is a service that supports you in identifying goals, overcoming barriers, and moving towards accomplishing whatever it is you have hired a coach to do. There are numerous types of coaching services. In the business world there are executive coaches, business coaches, leadership coaches, and team coaches, to name a few. Each niche area coach helps advance the interests and skills of their clients. For example, an executive coach focuses on executive management-related issues in making decisions about employees or working with a board of directors. More personalized coaches, such as life coaches and career coaches, focus on the personal goals of their clients. Lifestyle coaches, which are most closely related to relationship or life coaches, focus on their clients personal interests, goals, dreams, and desires related to growing within their lifestyle choice (e.g., swinging, polyamory). Lifestyle coaching helps clients (individuals, couples, poly relationships) work to improve their relationship through communication development and exploration of needs, desires, and preferences.
If you search the term coaching, you will find a lot about what coaching is not. We think this is because coaching services are very diverse and meets the diverse needs of their respective clients. There are also many styles or approaches to providing coaching services. For us, we approach coaching from an educational consultant and mentorship approach. This means that we will listen to you and learn what experiences you want to get from your lifestyle choice and the barriers you face in experiencing what you want with a judgment-free and worry-free experience. Leveraging our education and scientific background in doctoral and masters level studies in human development and healthcare with an emphasis in human sexuality to ensure that our support is grounded in science. We do not give you an opinion. Rather, we ensure that we are up-to-date on the latest research in the area of your needs and provide you with information that is useful in your journey. As mentors, we can share personal experiences in our journey to an open relationship. These experiences only help provide you feedback as you explore open. You and your relationship(s) is/are the center of the coaching experience. It is about you!
Why Coaching Works
Fredrickson (2013) found that coaching provides the client with positive emotion (e.g., inspiration, hope, joy, gratitude, pride) when working with a relationship coach. Coaching creates a safe space to explore your emotions and move towards your goals. Now this is where you might be saying “this sounds like therapy or counseling.” There are indeed some basic skills shared between therapists/counselors and coaches, but they are distinctly different services. Therapy and counseling are geared more towards overcoming past issues and trauma in order to move forward emotionally as an individual, within a relationship, or professionally. Therapy and counseling are extremely important and useful services for couples, for example, who must address complex relationship challenges before being able to move the relationship in a needed direction. Lifestyle coaching does not explore the deep emotional aspect of the relationship(s) as a therapist would. Rather, lifestyle coaching focuses on the how you can continue to grow within your relationship(s) through exploration of your goals, dreams, and fantasies to identify what barriers are preventing you from experiencing those goals, dreams, and fantasies, and then help you explore skills to remove the barriers.
Positivepsychology.com contributor Kori Miller stated in her post 30 Proven Benefits of Life Coaching & Mentoring that clients of coaches are better able to identify their strengths, attain their goals, and are more satisfied with various aspects of their lives through coaching. Here are some additional reasons why coaching works.
- Practical Solutions: You get to be heard through the coaching process. Your coach uses active listening techniques to ensure you are able to fully explore your thoughts and support you in identifying ways to solve challenges you are experiencing.
- Find Your Honest Space: Your coach helps you identify skills that will enhance your ability to be honest with yourself and in your relationship(s) as you explore your desires, needs, and fantasies for living an open lifestyle.
- Get Unstuck: As a neutral partner, your coach will encourage you to work through those nagging or difficult conversations or thoughts that hold you back from moving in the direction you prefer.
- Authentic Support: Your coach wants to see you succeed in overcoming whatever challenges you are experiencing, even if you think they are small or silly or maybe you even think they are unimportant. Sometimes the smallest thing becomes the biggest barrier. I mean even elephants are afraid of mice and have to navigate them to go forward!
Quick Story: Addressing Jealousy through Lifestyle Coaching
As coaches and lifestyle participants, we have become very familiar with jealousy as an incredibly common barrier to many couples (and polyamorous relationships) being able to get the fullest experience desired from the lifestyle preference and choice. Lifestyle coaching helps identify the jealousy triggers, practice ways to navigate feelings (e.g., inadequacy, relationship loss) of jealousy when they occur within the relationship, and then practice effective communication skills related to jealousy in a judgment-free, safe environment. We personally have had to learn and apply these skills. We have been able to learn more about the science associated with jealousy and are able to help people (and ourselves) move forward when these feelings pop up.
We navigated our jealousy by writing down what made us jealous. We learned that it was not really about seeing our partner have sex with another person, which is often what we hear from people unfamiliar with the lifestyle. In fact we learned that, in many cases, seeing and hearing our partner with others enhanced our sexual arousal and attraction to each other. We learned that our jealousy was mostly about fears we had of “losing our partner” to another person and personal inadequacies (e.g., body image). We worked on communication methods, based on communication science, and discovered “triggers” that provoked those insecurities and, thus, our jealousies. Over time, we practiced methods, based on counseling concepts and skill development training, that enhanced our communication about the “triggers” and identified other ways to manage these feelings when they occurred. We read a lot about this and more as jealousy was related to living an open lifestyle. Now, we want to use that knowledge to support others who are exploring open.
Why a Pleasure Ambassador is a Great Lifestyle Coach Choice for You
Simply put, we have the educational background and lifestyle experience that you want in a lifestyle coach. We decided to become coaches because we wished someone would have helped us navigate this journey, especially when we were still new to the lifestyle. We want to be that support for you on your journey to open and as you explore your open lifestyle. We have years of experience in coaching-like services, are well educated, and very open minded. We want to support and encourage you!
All of our services are virtual. We provide a free initial consultation before offering you the options that might best support you. All of our lifestyle coaching services are offered in 3-month packages, each designed to fit exactly what you need including video chat, email, and texting support. But you do not have to end your coaching support after three months. We can provide ongoing, annual virtual support as well as offer additional support packages based on your needs, wants, and desires. Let us support your journey as you explore open. Email us (joe@openogamy.com) to schedule your free consultation.
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