I recently listened to an audio book Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen,the Houston based Christian televangelist.  The book is also available in paperback and as a certified life coach I was interested to hear the advice, recommendations and coaching that a Christian leader could provide on how to ‘Live your best life now’.  Most people know that life coaching as a profession is geared around goal setting, taking action, and overcoming your barriers but many fail to recognize the spiritual components that accompany making progress in uncharted territories often surrounding these actions.  A number of coaches including myself consider themselves to be highly spiritually oriented, but most (unless they advertise as such) shy away from discussing a specific religion with their clients. 

This article discusses my personal experiences growing up as a Christian, and shares my perspective on the philosophy and impact of faith based coaching. 

Growing up Christian

Listening to Your Best Life Now was a breakthrough experience for me.  Not because the messages shared or the stories told were new or overly powerful, but rather that I allowed myself to participate as a listener and accept the philosophical principles underlying words that were spoken.  This opened up the opportunity to connect with what was being said in a way I had never allowed myself to do before. 

I grew up in a Christian family.  I went to church every Sunday, did not eat meat on Fridays during lent, and my mother (a devout Christian) made sure that my life was participating in and focused around the Christian faith.  As a child, I was never particularly fond of going to church, and as soon as I had enough control over my life (ie: when I got a car), I began hiding the fact that I was no longer going to mass by leaving the house during church time - visiting with friends and running errands, only to report home stating that it was a good sermon.  I began to resent having to go to church, and my family’s pressure on me to do so.  Clearly this was not my mothers intent with the way she brought me up as a child.

Living the Values and Becoming a Coach

In what I consider to be my ideologically formative years (from 18 years up until now), I’ve lived life with an open mind.  I have come to a personal conclusion that there is no one  correct religion to live by, and that it is important for people to find the spiritual foundation that is correct for themselves.  I must admit however that its  been difficult to forget the constant pressure from my family to lead a strictly Christian lifestyle when fundamentally I did not believe in so many aspects that made up of its institution.  This is in part why listening to Your Best Life Now was a powerful experience for me.

When I borrowed this audio book from the library, I decided to listen to it with a different approach.  I decided to imagine Joel was a coach, and to understand the principles of what he was saying rather than the way in which he was saying it.  Joel uses the word God throughout, and his understanding of what God may be different than mine, but I decided to let that go and hear what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it.  I had some significant observations for myself.

Firstly - we all have our faults and we all make mistakes, but by and large, I’ve been living my life well in alignment with the Christian principles that I grew up with as a youth.  I may no longer go to church, but the deep seeded spiritual beliefs which guide my actions are well in alignment with the teachings that I had as a child.  Furthermore, I see so much good in my friends, co-workers, family, and community - that I am inspired in knowing that there are baseline spiritual principles that help guide us all.  Whether or not they are learned through a formal Christian upbringing, those principles are by and large shared and communicated via family, community and those within other faiths. 

Secondly, listening to Joel Osteen from the perspective of being a coach was a really phenomenal experience.  He speaks of all the same principles that a life coach does.  That action is the source of change, that you must change yourself before changing others, that you have an unlimited potential, and that focus, direction and a faith in your inspirations will lead you to achieve your goals.  He also pays mention to the fact that we must live life in the now as many of us get too caught up in living for the future.  The most significant difference that I found in his philosophical approach and mine was that the source of all in he described was faith in God.  In contrast, a life coach might ask an individual to have faith in their inner wisdom (if you asked what the source of inner wisdom was perhaps one might find that this is the same thing?). 

Coaching within your Faith - Picking the right Coach

In general a life coach is non-denominational and accepts people of all faiths.  For some clients (and I have had quite a few that fell into this category), being of a particular faith was very important coming to our coaching.  I’ve had experiences that once we got into the coaching, they had great experiences and fantastic results with a non-denominational approach.  With others we had completed our relationships with feedback that they wished we could share in the same faith during our coaching (this is a much smaller percent). 

If you are considering coaching and feel that it is very important that your coach shares in the same faith as you, and that you want that faith to be part of your coaching, I do recommend you seek for coaches that actively advertise their faith based coaching as many coaches that prescribe to a certain faith will not coach within the context of that faith.  Finding such a coach should not be difficult if you are considering phone based coaching.  A simple search for Christian Life Coach in Google returns 455,000 results and the top 10 are all relevant to that faith. 

On the other hand, if you are open to different philosophical and spiritual approaches (notice that I am not referring to religion here), then a trained life coach might present you with numerous tools/principles that are in alignment with your faith, but wrapped around a different verbiage which may connect with you in different and equally powerful ways.  This is what I’ve found for myself in listening to Your Best Life Now with an open and new perspective.  For those of you that prescribe to the Christian faith and are looking for guidance and coaching on how to create the life of your dreams, I highly recommend this book, and for those of you that are looking to open your mind to a different set of faith based coaching principles, I also encourage you to approach this book as I did - with an open mind. 

• Audio Format: Your Best Life Now (Audio Format)
• Paper Format: Your Best Life Now (Paperback)

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Written by Doug Nau, The Wellness Coach, i-grow.net