Recovery coaching is re-connection to self

I started my journey into recovery coaching at a time in my life when the chips were truly down. I had just come out of a terrible period in which I had:

• Lost my father & my uncle
• Lost my business after a long battle to save it
• Almost lost my wife and my unborn child
• Was fighting the recurrence of addiction

All of this happened at the same time and it was a crushing pressure. I was also battling addiction at the time which meant that my own unmanageability coupled with the unmanageability of life was truly oppressive. I can remember thinking that the world was truly against me, and that I was not going to make it. I was also looking after my 3 year old son at the time, and with my wife being pregnant and getting sicker by the day, I simply didn’t know how I was going to hold on. I never thought of suicide but I did think that maybe it was all coming to an end somehow. This was when I decided to start writing about what was going on. This was when everything started to change.

It was off the back of some of my writing online that I was contacted by a remarkable man, David Collins, who offered me a free place on his recovery coaching program. I was very surprised at this because I felt that given the position I was in it was the last thing I would be able to do. I felt truly useless. He convinced me to come along so I did. I attended the 3 modules and found them incredible. Not only was I learning about something I have always been interested in but it was also helping me to start recovery in my own life. I have been in recovery before, more than once, but this time it was different. This time I was truly fighting for my life, and for my family. I threw myself into the process completely and gave it my all. This was most definitely the turning point for me. I realized that I was naturally able to be a coach, and that my personal experiences in addiction gave me even more understanding and relevance to the role. It is important to note that my work history has always involved personal development & training work so I came from a solid educational and practical base to make the transition to coaching.

(2016)

After the course was completed I was required to do 60 hours of practical coaching for my accreditation. I decided to offer free coaching to anyone who was interested to my online community. Within 48 hours I have 10 people who were interested. This was how I started. While I did my free coaching for these people I was also trying to keep my head above water financially. The fallout of the past couple of years had been so great that I was very lost. I had come from a solid career in content marketing & branded content and gone from bang to bust in a period of months. I was now in the slump and I was not making enough money. I did odd jobs and did whatever I could to make ends meet, but for a while it was truly terrifying. It felt like I was on a sinking ship. But I carried on working and doing free coaching. Soon I got my 60 hours, then I progressed to 100, and soon after this I began attracting my first paying clients. In a relatively short time I was coaching 10 people a week at R750 per hour. The people I was coaching also seemed to be getting real value from the coaching, and they also seemed to connect strongly with my personal openness about my own challenges, which is not part of the coaching process directly but was part of my online writing. This is where many of my clients came from. I then got to 350 hours within my first 12 months and I started to receive referrals from people I had coached, and this then began a new client flow for me. At the same time as my coaching was picking up I also started to focus much more clearly on my other work potential. I went back to facilitating training workshops and quickly developed work for one of the big banks. I also got an amazing opportunity to deliver leadership immersions for another business, which has been something I have always loved doing. Things overall were looking very good. The past chaos seemed to be dropping away behind me slowly but surely. It was still hard but I could cope. By the time all of these work opportunities had come together I was starting to have hope again; hope in the world and in myself. I attribute a lot of this course correction to the power that was awoken within me from becoming a recovery coach. It was fundamental in my own recovery as well. The process of personal renewal took 2 years and it was hardcore. It was nothing easy and it tested me to the edge, however, it did not present anything I could not handle.

(2019)

Fast forward to now and I am now just past 1000 hours of coaching. My plan is to do a masters in coaching and take my skill to the next level. I have taken the theoretical foundation of recovery coaching and applied it to many different areas of personal development. I use it in business coaching, life coaching, leadership coaching, and for anyone who is battling to recover from something that has badly affected them. Recovery is not just about addiction it is about recovering from life, in all its many forms.

Today my work life is full of a range of different work activities but the one aspect that is aligned across them all is coaching. I use coaching in the various businesses I provide fractional management for; I use it in my training workshops, and on my leadership immersions. I would say it has become the greatest and most powerful skill I have developed. It amazes me that this came along in my life when I was at my lowest and it truly has changed everything.

My focus on coaching is only in its infancy. There is so much more to do and many more levels of skill to build. What I have recognized is that coaching is the best way to connect with people as a leader. It is the best way to let go of authority as a means of getting people to do things and to find a supportive thinking partnership that motivates and supports people toward achieving their personal and work goals without enforcement. Coaching elicits the best potential in people and it highlights the fact that it is up to them to find their own direction, and it is within them to find solutions and implement them.

The combination of work I do has highlighted a few key learning’s for me.

1)  I am definitely capable of a non authoritative and enabling leadership

2)  I am able to use coaching in all the work I do

3)  I am still at the beginning of a journey into what coaching has given me, and will give to countless others.

4)  The combination of facilitation, coaching, training, and practical management experience is proving to be a master skillset, which I can only see as an increasingly valuable skillset going forward

5)  I will always make myself available to help people when they need it, because that it was David Collins gave me when I needed it most. I will never lose this understanding. I will never forget.

6)  I want to continue writing about these experiences until I publish a book.

7)  I will be a speaker on recovery coaching and personal mastery.

Recovery coaching has been a core part of my own recovery. It has sharpened my focus, increased my self-respect and self-love, and it has enabled me to become reconnected to the dynamic and capable person that I have always been, although this time I am so much better at seeing myself for who and what I really am.

Recovery coaching helps people to see their innate and untouchable internal resources and to reconnect to them after long periods of being separated from them.

Recovery coaching is reconnection and renewal of self.