Every man must learn to stand in front of the mirror, raise his eyes, and confront whatever beast it is that stares back. Failing to look in this mirror is settling for a life of mediocrity and mundanity–a slow crawl to an inevitable and inconsequential death.
The scary part? You don’t have to look in that mirror.
Many men go their whole life without looking in that mirror. They pass each day and cover their faces, shielding their eyes from the reality of what they have become. They never take intentional control of their life; because of this, their life isn’t theirs.
You can’t change and transform when you don’t look within yourself. To become something better than you are, you must first acknowledge what you are. Throughout my ten-plus years as a men’s dating coach, I’ve seen this act of looking in the mirror as perhaps the most sacred event of a man’s life.
A transformational coach could be life-changing if you are ready to accept what you are and move forward.
What is Transformational Coaching for Men
The goal of transformational coaching is to root out the causes of your struggles–failed relationships, limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, lack of confidence, etc., and help you find ways to fix them.
Transformational coaching is about sustainable change rather than quick fixes–incisive surgery rather than anesthesia to cover the pain and bandaids to cover the visible wound.
It’s about taking your past failures and giving you a reliable game plan so you feel empowered to create a new future as the powerful, connected man you can be.
Transformational Coaching vs. Therapy/Counseling vs. Traditional Life Coaching
While a transformational coach is a form of life coaching and falls on the therapy spectrum, a few key points and practices set it apart from these traditional practices.
Picture a long spectrum of self-improvement coaching ranging from more practical forms of coaching to more philosophical/psychological.
On the practical end is traditional life coaching. A life coach‘s job is to listen and observe the areas of life in which you are struggling and give you strategies to overcome them. They give you things to do, and you do them because you assume they know better. Simple!
On the other hand, therapy and counseling focus on digging up junk buried in your past and bringing it into the light so you can see if it’s still affecting you. They help you understand and accept why you are the way you are without actually giving you instructions to “fix” your life.
While both forms of self-improvement are viable and will likely lead to improvement, transformational coaching will be the most impacting for most men because it is the best of both worlds; transformational coaching combines the incisive practicality of life-coaching and the critical self-reflection of therapy to make the biggest impact possible in the right way.
Rather than directly assigning you a checklist of strategies or offering advice, a transformational life coach helps you shift your perspective on your life so you can grasp what is REALLY going on.
Once you know what you’re up against (and it’s usually something entirely different than what you assumed), you (aided by your coach) can come up with ways to combat it.
Transformational coaching can be the spark that helps you reach your full potential and succeed in life and relationships.
Oftentimes traditional life coaching comes up short because it assigns solutions to the wrong problem. If it does work at all, and it may not, it will only be a temporary solution.
Life coaching cuts down the tree at the base and says the problem is fixed, only for it to grow back in a few years. Therapy finds the roots of your problem but leaves the falling of the tree to you. Transformational coaching finds the roots and helps you dig up the tree from there.
5 Signs you Need Transformational Coaching
Transformational coaching has the power to turn your life around.
You can only begin restoring your life and healing from your past when you recognize that you are bleeding and understand why–that is what a transformational coach helps you do.
Here are five sure-fire signs that a transformational coach would be a game-changer in your life.
1. You Lack Confidence
Despite what the world likes to teach, success in life (whatever that is to you)–getting the girl, making six figures, retiring at sixty–is not primarily determined by the school you attend or the brand of suit you buy.
Success is the result of confidence. Confidence is the key that unlocks almost every door on the planet. It gets you jobs you don’t deserve, women who are “out of your league,” and a life beyond anything you could imagine.
Confidence is a prerequisite for success, so if your life feels empty or you feel like a failure, you likely lack confidence.
A transformational coach will help you process these feelings of inadequacy and create a holding space for you to work in.
Rather than giving you confidence exercises in blind hope, a transformational coach will help you understand why you lack confidence.
You’ll get a complex understanding of self-esteem and how it relates to the establishment of your values and your identity as a valuable person outside of others’ thoughts about you.
Once you unlock this confidence, you’ll be unstoppable.
2. You Feel Empty Despite your Material Success
So, you got the job, the girl of your dreams, a house, and all the materialistic possessions you dreamt of.
We like to think that material success is everything in life, but we are often left feeling empty once we get it. The realization that the satisfaction and fulfillment we expected to experience “once we succeeded” is nonexistent is a hefty blow to the stomach.
Recovering from this blow is often impossible alone. If you feel empty despite your material success, a transformational coach could be exactly what you need to get a deep sense of what will create meaning in your life.
A transformational coach will help you process this confusion, struggle through the realization and understanding, and develop strategies to overcome your pain and create lasting change.
3. Your Romantic Life has hit a Dead-end
Romantic relationships, like all relationships, require constant commitment and understanding.
If you find your romantic life has hit any dead-end, you likely have some deep-rooted misconceptions about what a relationship is and what makes it work.
A transformational life coach will help you understand what makes a relationship work, helping you get your relationship out of survival mode and become a more connected man and partner.
4. Your Life is Driven by Fear Rather than Desire
Do you ever feel as if your life isn’t your own?
As if you’re the main character in a play, you have no clue where the plot is heading. The criticisms and expectations of your audience are directing your life.
You went to school because you knew that’s what would make your parents happy. You got that job because it was a good job and, well…you needed money. You bought a house because that’s what everyone does with their money.
Pretty soon, you’re in the play’s second act, and you don’t even know why you’re there.
Isn’t this supposed to be my life? you think to yourself. What about what I want?
If this sounds familiar to you, you need transformational life coaching sessions to regain ownership over your life.
Your life is driven by the fear of failure to please others rather than your wishes and desires.
5. The Life Advise of Your Friends and Family isn’t Going Anywhere
Insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
Many men make the mistake of repeatedly trying to patch up their life with the advice of a few close friends or family members.
While the advice of these loved ones is doubtlessly insightful and necessary, at a certain point, relying solely on their words is insanity.
If you have been leaning on these people for years and aren’t seeing improvement, it’s time to get a third opinion from someone who’s not so emotionally connected to your issues and your broken life.
You can’t reuse bandaids to fix a cut.
The Transformation: What Transformational Coaching will do for You?
The goal of transformational coaching is to transform you–to provide a safe space to conquer the pain of your past and discover the possibilities of your life.
To give you an idea of what coaching sessions will look like and what topics will be discussed, here are five things a life coach of this sort will do for you on your journey to self-mastery:
1. Kill People-pleasing Behavior
Men have become weak. In our fear of stepping on a few toes and facing the scowling face of an infuriated world, we have become people-pleasers–puppets on the strings of others’ expectations.
The only way you will ever be proud of the man in the mirror is by destroying people-pleasing behaviors and facing the world as you are.
The scary part: you’ll have to step on more than a few toes to do anything important in the world and become a new man.
Establishing your values means going against those of others. Ask anyone in history who did anything of import, and they will tell you just how many enemies they had.
A transformational life coach will help you become this new man.
Don’t be a tip-toeing man, afraid to bump into anyone and disturb the peace. History never hears of the tip-toeing man.
2. Provide you with the Tools to Mend your Relationship or the Courage to Start One
A transformational coach is the best kind of relationship coach. They’ll help you understand why you struggle to create or maintain intimate relationships and support you on your journey to express your emotions.
Finding and staying with the woman you dream of requires intentionality. Without this intentionality, you’ll wander the world of sub-par partners for years until you finally decide you’ve done enough wandering and settle down with someone who’s “good enough.”
If you don’t want this to be you, it’s time you took your romantic life seriously and got a transformational coach.
High-quality, intelligent women aren’t looking for the wanderers and the settlers.
3. Destroy the Victim Mentality and Negative Self Talk
The chains of victimhood bind so many men.
Rather than taking the initiative to restore their life, they adopt the mentality of a victim, pointing fingers at their past and childhood and wandering the world in search of other victims who will empathize with them.
The scary thing is, finding friends as a victim is one of the easiest things to do in this world because their kind is thriving in the modern world.
So you had a hard childhood? How are you going to give your kids a good one?
Your parents had a bad marriage? How are you going to make yours the best one on the planet?
To change your life, you have to change your mindset.
4. Help you Rediscover Healthy Masculinity
The world needs masculine men, but healthy masculinity is dying out. Men don’t know how to be men.
We’re so afraid of being aggressive that we’ve stopped being assertive altogether. We’re afraid of being arrogant, so we’ve abandoned confidence.
To become a well-rounded man and live a fulfilling life, you must rediscover your healthy masculinity.
You must learn what it means to be a man and what it means to be a leader and learn how to face adversity head-on.
A transformation coach can help you understand why you’ve adopted people-pleasing, victim behaviors and change your perspective on what it means to be masculine.
5. Help you Direct Life Rather than Letting it Direct you
People say go with the flow, but sometimes the flow isn’t something you want to go with.
When the flow of your life is heading in a direction you aren’t pleased with, it’s up to you to make a change.
Too many men shrug their shoulders and submit themselves to the struggles of life. They think to themselves, well, life’s tough.
If you are looking to take control over the direction of your purpose and existence, you need to act with intentionality. A transformational coach will help you do this.
Takeaways
If you are looking for a change of any sort in your life, you must enlist the help of people who know more than you. While the advice of your friends and family can go a long way, adding the influence of a professional coach is oftentimes the difference-maker.
A transformational coach will help you overcome the crippling victim mentality, mend your relationships, reignite your romantic life, and put you back in the driving seat of your life.
You’ll learn to be a man of confidence and charisma who knows what he wants and where he is going in this world where there rarely seem to be simple answers.
If this sounds like the man you want to become, it’s time to change. It’s time to work with a Knowledge For Men transformational coach. Here at Knowledge for Men, we have created the best coaching practice on the planet through years of experimentation and careful analysis of the world of self-improvement and human psychology.
We have a dozen experienced men ready to help you get where you want to get–men who have seen the worst of life and emerged with the knowledge to change others’ lives.
Space is limited, so if you’re going to act, now is the time. It’s time to look in that mirror.
