So you're sat at your computer again, wondering about how tired and lethargic you feel, how you eyes ache and how you can't sleep at night!

As Coaches, we try to look at a holistic approach to the client's well-being. This takes a number of different forms but can loosely be summarised as Mind, Spirit and Body.

Mind

We all know that learning doesn't end at school or university, it's an ongoing process throughout our lives even when we don't think much about it. Watching a documentary on tv that teaches you something is a good example of what I like to call "Unconscious learning" but when did you last consciously study? Was it for work? How did you study and what lessons did you learn about how you prefer to learn? 

If you are going to learn, it is often worth trying to understand how you best learn. At school you probably had a teacher at the front of a class with a board they wrote on and some books to read (or maybe a laptop/pc to study at if you are under about 25). That doesn't mean that you need that format to learn now though. Many people like reading but remember far more they hear and vice versa. Have you tried an audio book or watching video clips of the subject to see if you retain more using one method than another?

Spirit


Achieving spiritual happiness is often seen as the pinnacle of human life and in some theories is at the top of the tree in terms of our requirements (see our page on motivation). Spirituality does not have to mean religion (though for many it does). As a coach I prefer to think of it as finding that state within yourself where you are at peace with who and what you are. This may mean understanding the principles and motivations that drive you as well as the things that have the opposite effect. Self questioning is always a good place to start trying to understand what aspects of your life are leading you to be less effective and why! Only when you have identified some areas to work on should you think about WHAT to do to make the changes that you desire.


Body

This is often the forgotten element and one that maybe should be the first we address since it impacts so much on your mental well-being and spiritual health.
Rather than paraphrase work that has been done by many many others into this field, here is an article that seems to us to sum up nicely along with some basic suggestions as to how to go about making physical change in your life.
http://www.medicinenet.com/senior_exercise/page5.htm 

As always, comments are very welcome.

I don't know how many times I have been talking with a client and they have said something like 'Oh I'd never be able to do that.' or 'I can't do that it's too difficult.'

My usual response is to ask them why they think they can't do whatever it is and their answers are usually quite enlightening. 
'Well I could never learn that', 'I tried that once and couldn't get the hang of it', 'I was rubbish at remembering stuff at school', etc. etc.

WHY do we say this stuff?
Well, there are any number of possible reason why people feel that they 'Can't do' something. Maybe they have tried and been told the results were not good enough. Maybe they don't want to try because they feel someone else is better than them. Possibly they have tried to learn in a way that didn't suit them or someone has tried to teach them by their preferred learning method instead of the learners.

The simple fact is that if you think you can't do something, you won't be able to do it and may never try!

Part of the coaches role is to help coachees understand that the greatest barriers and also the greatest aid to their learning is their own self belief. We can do this by teasing out of the coachee their reasons for the belief and then helping them understand how we can shift that to a more positive level. We need to shift their thinking to a 'Can do' rather than 'Can't do'.  

Some techniques within NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) focus on this by providing positive imagery and sounds to the coachee. It is important that the environmental factors surrounding the coachees learning are as conducive to learning as possible. Trying to learn a language while listening to pumping rock music is probably not going to help most people (there are always exceptions though).   

Another factor is to identify and then focus on some small positive steps. Teaching someone to learn a language does not start with complex phrases and colloquialisms but with individual words and simple sentences. It is also imperative to have an idea of WHAT you want to learn and some sort of FRAMEWORK for getting there including a way of measuring progress. Goal setting is essential!

So, you have helped the coachee to realise that they CAN learn, try a new activity, they have identified what they want/need to learn and they have set some goals to allow progress to be measured. Now what?

Remembering stuff, the way the brain works!

All our brains basically work in the same way. Information is absorbed via our senses and the brain creates or expands neural pathways with this new information. Studies show that when we already have a start to the pathway, expanding it seems to be easier than creating new ones, so a technique that has been developed is to link whatever it is you're trying to remember with something you already know. I remember doing a memory exercise once where we had to remember 50 random items then recount them all after 20 minutes. The way we did this was to create a story about the items so for example:

Pen, sword, t-shirt, headphones, paper, photo 

could be remembered in the following way:

Today I saw a man listening to music through some headphones. 
He was wearing a t-shirt which had "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword" written on it.
I wanted to remember it but couldn't write it down or take a photo as I had no paper or a camera.

Another technique is to use as many senses as possible. Say you want to learn Japanese. Learning by seeing images, listening to sounds, tasting and smelling Japanese food and even touching items you need to remember are all more effective than just reading a list of words in a book!

We all have preferences in the way we learn, so if something isn't working, it probably is just the method that is not right for you rather than the subject being 'unlearnable'!


As always, please comment, esp with any experiences you have.

Steve