What first comes to your mind when you hear the words well-being and coaching? Maybe just another buzzword? Reflecting on both of these words could have an important impact on our lives, so – let’s try to demystify them together. 🙂
When you google well-being – you will run into many different explanations, and definitions, but the essence is in the very word – being well, feeling good about ourselves. So when do we feel well? We can say we are in that state when we feel comfortable, energized, socially connected, fulfilled, and what is most important healthy – in a physical and mental way.
Tchiki Davis, Ph.D. in Psychology Today emphasizes the importance of building overall well-being by considering 5 major types:
- Emotional Well-Being which implies our ability to manage stress and build resilience, practice relaxation techniques and nurture self-love
- Physical Well-Being considers the ways we take care of our body, by nurturing healthy habits and exercising
- Social Well-Being is our ability to communicate, develop, and nurture meaningful relationships
- Workplace Well-Being implies our ability to develop professionally in line with our interests and values
- Societal Well-Being is the ability to actively participate in a thriving community, culture, and environment.
So when we think of all these types we ask ourselves a question – which is the most important to us and how to work on growth in that field?
Although we can see that well-being is a universal challenge nowadays, there is no universal recipe for all of us. We all experience different situations in a variety of ways and have diverse perspectives and not the same activities and techniques make us feel well. So, based on our unique contexts, some of us are going to enjoy meditation, or mindfulness techniques on our own, and for others it is essential to surround ourselves with people who have similar interests, creating a kind of accountability group.
Also, another question that arises is: how to measure progress and achievement in the field of our well-being? How would we know we improved?
Here is where the word “coaching” from the beginning of our story enters the scene.
International Coaching Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. If we try to simplify this we can say that coaching could be an opportunity to pause, look inside ourselves, reflect, and become aware of some of our potential and ways to overcome challenges. To understand ourselves better so we can boost our self-confidence. What could be also important, coaching helps us to think of desired outcomes and set goals which are important to us.
Results of BetteruUp research from June 2021. showed how coaching could be effective in building well-being and mental fitness. BetterUp Labs followed 391 Members with access to unlimited BetterUp coaching with certified, best-in-class BetterUp coaches over a period of 8 months.
This research suggests that improvement in well-being is going through three phases:
1) understand our emotions, define goals, and become aware of our capacity
2) improving stress management skills, improve relationships, and resilience
3) refining our sense of purpose and making changes that elevate life satisfaction
Coaching truly helps people move through these phases of well-being improvement by building the skills to adapt, recover, and grow from challenging situations, as well as predict an improvement in life satisfaction, feeling more prosperity and sense of purpose. We can say that increasing our well-being is simple; we somehow know what we should do. But it is not easy because we should create some sustainable habits to achieve it. And in order to do that we should think of:
What is most important to us and how do the changes we want to invite will impact our life?
In the process of coaching, you think about yourself as a person, your values, and beliefs, and decide about the activities you want to practice. It can be mindfulness, breathing technique, building self-compassion, or practicing gratitude through journaling, but what is most important is that it is aligned with your desires and makes sense to you.
Because of all those reasons and important insights, we gathered, our project WellBE is committed to making a difference in the training modules, equipping a group of trainers from different countries with coaching skills, and spreading coaching culture by bringing well-being feelings to trainers but also participants.
About the author: Adrijana is representing the Serbian partner in the project, Koucing Centar
Connect with her via LinkedIn:
Adrijana Milosavljević, ICF PCC
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrijanamilosavljevic/