Do Personal or Business Coaching Clients Ignore Your Advice?

Do Personal or Business Coaching Clients Ignore Your Advice?

I’ve been teaching coaching courses in Sydney for half my life, and in that time, there has been one constant frustration that I’m sure you will be able to identify with.

Family, friends or even business coaching clients ignore your advice!

Have you ever had people tell you that you’re so ‘lucky’ to live the life you do, then ask you for advice on how they too can lose weight/afford to travel/grow their own business/achieve other dreams they don’t want to work for?

There’s one question you need to ask them…

Commitment To Change

At Live it Now, we talk about the 5 Steps To Rapid Change. A lot.

What’s Step #1?

Commitment.

When your friend asks you for advice, you need to find out how committed they are to change. To change something in your life, you actually need to change something in your life!

So when anyone tells me about a new business they want to launch or asks me for advice on health, finances, relationships, I ask them, ‘how committed are you?’

Now, if the answer is ‘I’m so committed, I’ll do whatever it takes!’ this person is ready to change.

If the answer is ‘I’m committed, but…’ then the person you’re speaking with is not committed. In our NLP courses we study the language of the mind. Anytime someone uses the word ‘but’ it negates everything that came before it!

You may have heard this before.

‘I want to lose weight, but I’m so busy at work.’

‘I want to start my own business, but I don’t have time.’

Stop. Just stop there. I promise you, you will go to hell and back trying to give advice to help this person, and they won’t listen. You will get angry! Sometimes those closest to us just want to feel encouraged, they want validation. Give them some positive words, and move on!

Take Action

We judge people’s commitment by their actions, not their words.

You may have heard me tell the story at Live it Now of the lady who threw her credit card on my desk and told me to fix her.

Now, was she committed to changing herself? No! She wanted me to wave a magic wand and fix her, give her advice on what she could do to get healthy, then ignore every word and say it didn’t work.

So I set her a challenge to do the Manly to Spit walk in the rain, twice. That’s 20 kilometres!

For someone who was very unfit, it was a massive challenge. She wanted to give up, but something in her changed during the walk. She found her commitment to change. We then had a place of commitment to work from, and we achieved incredible results. Within months she reached all her health goals, attracted the partner of her dreams, and doubled her business.

Now I’m not suggesting you set such an ordeal for your family and friends before you give them advice, however, if we use finances as an example, you could suggest they track every cent they spend for a week and call you to discuss the results.

If they don’t call you, it’s safe to say they didn’t want your advice, because they didn’t take action!

Towards vs Away Motivation

We all know what we need to do to change. For health, we know we need to eat well and exercise. For finance, we know we need to save more than we spend. So why do we reach for the ice cream or buy the shoes?

Because it’s not that bad, yet.

Often people will wait for the crisis before taking action. While the jeans still fit or the rent can be paid, it’s not that bad, yet.

By learning NLP techniques we’re able to put together a personal development plan that helps you identify what it is you want, and start running towards it.

There’s a saying in the Special Forces that goes ‘when the crisis hits, we don’t rise to the occasion, we stoop to the level of our training.’

This is why they are pushed and pushed to the extreme. They’re taught to thrive in the toughest conditions. By completing NLP courses such as Excellence Now, you can develop the same mindset. It’s why we have the lifetime re-sit policy!

People want to help, and we especially want to help those closest to us. What we need to understand is that the best techniques, the best strategies, and the best advice you can give someone won’t work until the pain of staying stuck where they are becomes worse than the pain of facing their wounds and committing to change.

I hope this helps you next time someone asks for advice, let me know how you go!

Kindest regards,

Matt Catling.

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