Life is a Highway

For one life coach, reaching the pinnacle starts with nutrition.

By Patrick Dougherty

January 2008

Far too often in life, a vast chasm separates hopes, dreams and aspirations from actual daily practices. When you’re bogged down with the minutiae of day-to-day living, your energies are scattered—making it challenging to realize or even remember personal goals.

Enter life coaching. Increasingly, this red-hot holistic health trend is utilized to reconnect people with their dreams, focus their energies and elevate them to a “higher vibration” of existence. More than a refuge for those who are down in the dumps, this resource is a favorite tool among the rich, famous and successful. Luminous celebrities including Oprah and Madonna, esteemed athletes such as Tiger Woods and countless high-powered CEOs are turning to life coaches in an effort to elevate above the head-spinning din of too-busy days and achieve their greatest true potential.

So why would those who’ve so convincingly succeeded in their endeavors need the help of a life coach? “Even the best player on a team full of great players can always benefit from the advice of the coach,” explains Cydya Smith, AADP, founder of the New York-based Xuberant Life! health counseling and lifestyle coaching practice (www.xuberantlife.com). “It’s like having another pair of eyes that are part of your life team; eyes focused on you to provide what is needed at the right time and to help you to see around your ‘blind spot’ on life’s highway.”

Though different life coaches take different approaches, most begin with open, honest dialogue intended to clarify the client’s values and identify that person’s goals. Over subsequent ongoing sessions, conducted either in person or on the phone, the life coach guides clients along many pathways that lead to success, encouraging constructive introspection by asking for answers to challenging questions. Working from the core of individual values and goals, the life coach’s scope of influence expands to many facets of existence: vocation and career choices, familial and other relationships, daily exercise, education and mind expansion, finances, spirituality and more. The life coach motivates clients to explore these areas and then actively change their daily practices.

Instead of telling you what to do, the coach helps you tell yourself what to do. “For the most part, everyone is the expert on their own lives—if they allow themselves to be,” Smith explains. “I help clients focus consciously and passionately on strategies and solutions that will ultimately provide the desired outcomes to achieve success and make them happy.”

Food Foundation
In her practice, Smith integrates healthy eating and good nutrition as a critical part of the counseling. These elements, she says, form a foundation from which clients can build inspiration and motivation.

“The human body is like an expensive, intricately designed, high-powered vehicle; it is our ride while we are in residence on the planet and as such, it needs the best fuel inside it to help it function at optimum levels,” Smith explains. “If we give our high-powered vehicle the best, nutritionally dense fuel it requires, it will fire on all cylinders and give us the ride of our lives.”

In Smith’s philosophy, our bodies are trained to read foods that are nutritionally dense—whole foods with a genetic structure that our DNA is accustomed to. By contrast, processed foods are foreign and confusing to the body, leading to obesity, allergies and chronic disease.

“Many of us don’t get nutritional value from the things we eat,” Smith says. “But putting the right foods in our bodies is an important part of reaching the pinnacle of existence.” At her Xuberant Life practice, Smith reinforces this point by offering clients tours of health food stores and green markets, followed by hands-on cooking classes in which she teaches clients how to prepare convenient healthy meals. Her philosophy: When clients are armed with the right nutrition, health concerns become less of an issue. “With the right nutritional foundation, my clients have a real possibility of achieving everything they want,” Smith continues. “A good multivitamin is also really important; I advise clients to find out which is the best that they can afford and buy it.”

Positive Results
For the CEO, life coaching might bring about enhanced career performance; for the athlete, more victories; for the emotionally detached, more loving relationships. But these individual successes are unified by universal results: renewed interest in life, greater satisfaction with one’s existence and more vibrant health.

While coaching can be a powerful motivator to achieve these ends, Smith points out that ultimately it is up to the clients to achieve the life they are after. “Take it upon yourself,” Smith advises. “Each person has to take responsibility for their own health, because nobody knows you like you do.”

For help finding a life coach in your area, visit www.lifecoach.com.