Amira El-Naqeeb on life, love and the pursuit of happiness What on earth does a life coach do? Much as I hated the notion of someone telling me how to live my life, I decided to find out. And Islam Abu Qandil -- the coach I consulted -- didn't turn out to be as crazy as all that. A coach doesn't tell you what or what not to do, he was quick to explain. Through a set of "tools", rather, he facilitates the process of self improvement for his coachee. Alright then, I thought. But it wasn't until he said, "any person has the power to achieve all they want," that I dropped my guard. Life coaching dates back to 1981, he went on, when Thomas Leonard -- "father of life coaching", introduced it in the United States, founding a coaching university in 1992 and the International Coach Federation in 1994; the latter has 130 chapters all over the world. Let's have a go then. Which is when I was told that, as a coachee, I must decide which aspect of my life I want to focus on. "Usually the client shouldn't expect any results before three months," Abu Qandil added, somewhat ominously, but I went ahead with it anyway. Rule number one: you must focus on one aspect of your life at a time, which is why it was necessary to make a choice. Relationships, I almost yelled, and -- on Abu Qandil prompting me to -- went on to define what that mean from my point of view. My God, this is therapy! I sighed inwardly. What do I want in a relationship? What do I not want? But before too long I had noticed the difference between this and therapy, which Abu Qandil went on to spell out: coaching relates to the future, not the past. "In psychiatry, the client talks, the therapist analyses and prescribes a cure. In coaching talking is not important, you focus on the action -- and the coach never gives direct advice." Psychiatrist Ahmed Abdallah has since agreed with this distinction, adding that a coach is not authorised to prescribe medication; but neither is a therapist not medically trained; although psychiatry can properly deal with severe mental disorders, many patients of Abdallah's could benefit equally from life coaching or other kinds of therapy, since they are neither schizophrenic nor suffer from severe depression or obsessive compulsive disorder. Nor is coaching concerned with disorders per se; once again, more like therapy, coaching could benefit the healthy and the unhealthy. Abu Qandil gave the example of a four-year-old who, eager to learn bicycling, fell off and was injured; at the age of 25, now, every time he gets on a bike he feels the same pain. This person requires therapy. Coaching, on the other hand, would involve questions of "why this person wants to cycle, what he hopes to achieve by it and how it feels to him" -- it would be irrelevant to treating the childhood trauma that prevents it. A life coach uses structural and transactional analysis to understand the behavioural patterns of his coachee; he will take everything step by step, to ensure that it is precisely what the client wants, hence the importance of asking why: "coaching depends on the client's values, not the coach's. That's why it is very important to define the client's values, and clarify them..." Abu Qandil explains that, while he is qualified to become a coach, he studied, among other "tions", "value clarification, mission formulation, vision implementation and in- depth communication". A course begins with an "intake" session in which the coach finds out about the coachee's point of focus -- followed by an action plan with set targets, and then the implementation of that plan. My own intake session helped me a lot -- and there is no irony intended -- with Abu Qandil drawing the following out of me: by overseeing core needs and marginalising indispensable criteria for the sake of compromise, I have been unable to achieve what I want in relationships -- my focus point. "We habitually behave in ways that contribute to an outcome we don't want," Abu Qandil went on. It could have to do with complex beliefs or identity issues. Time, he declared, for an action plan... I went off to see a female life coach, to gauge out the range of this relatively new profession: Yasmine Abul-Hassan assured me that anyone could do it; a comprehensive life coach like herself will most likely have gone through, and got over, some painful experience, because it is then that they have the drive to help others. Her approach made the difference between coaching and counselling even clearer. We discussed the course of action required regarding a single decision to do with my partner; she probed every angle, every possibility, never once offering advice even as she made me see the pros and cons of each option. I was perfectly comfortable with the decision I made in the end. "Coaching is about empowerment," Abul-Hassan said. "A coach's work is done when the coachee can function independently to their own satisfaction." One of the coach's most important skills is to be a good listener, and a neutral one who does not judge. But what to make of something that can go on for many months with the evidence of but two intake sessions, I wondered. Shaimaa Khairallah, head of human development at the Raghad charity association, had found out about life coaching for the first time in a community magazine in Maadi. Khailrallah describes herself as a rational, practical and discreet person. "I rarely trust anybody's opinion, and always rely on my own judgement and analysis." When she had personal problems, she sought professional help rather than talking to a friend. "And after two months with my life coach, I felt a great change in my life. I've become a more focussed and stable person. I have better communication skills, I've learned about how to handle different personality types. Now these skills help with my professional life as well." Khairallah explained that though she has good connections with many psychiatrists she was never tempted to go to one of them: "life coaching gave me the tools to have a better quality of life, so I felt empowered which is what coaching is all about." As for Reham Youssery, an administrator in a multinational company, she found out about life coaching reading books that praise life coaching to the skies, and most of them are written by life coaches. "I wasn't happy, I knew that I wanted many things out of life, yet I did not know how to achieve them. I bought self-help books, I took courses in Neuro Linguistic Programming, which deals mostly with sending positive affirmations to the subconscious to alter negative or destructive beliefs about self and others. I did hypnosis, meditation, and Tai Chi, to manage stress." According to Youssery, all such practices helped, but only as far as making you aware of your ability to achieve what you want; they don't help you verify whether you really want and how to achieve it. Through coaching, Youssery took tests that helped her find out about herself, including other people's perception of her. "You cannot work on your flaws if you are not aware of them, and the coach gives you the right tools to develop in whatever direction you require." In Youssery's case one of her challenges was communication, "which has progressed a lot".
