I received complimentary coaching sessions in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was received. All opinions are 100% my own.
Coaching isn’t just for sports anymore, well, unless you consider life a sport. Some people do, and I suppose in some ways it is.
Life coaches come in all shapes and sizes. There are coaches to help you with motivation, productivity, careers, organization and more. I had the opportunity to work with Erica Frye at The Stork Scientist for three complimentary sessions and I loved all of them.
What is a Life Coach?
In case you’re not familiar with life coaching, I’ll give you an idea of what it’s all about. Usually a life coach is going to be someone who specializes in helping individuals with a certain area of their life. For example, Erica is a pregnancy and new mom coach. She’s adding a new area onto her specialties though by being a mom coach, sans the new, as well. A life coach, such as Erica, isn’t a therapist. They aren’t there to diagnose a mental illness or help you work through challenges that stemmed from past experiences. Instead they are looking to provide you with guidance, motivation and tips to organize the specific areas of your life you need help with from where you are right now and moving into the future.
My personal belief is everyone can benefit from a life coach at some point in their life. The feeling of not being good enough as a woman or mother because women in this day and age are held to unattainable expectations of perfection is something a lot of mothers experience. When I first spoke with Erica she asked me to describe a typical day. I did and she sounded flabbergasted with all that I do in a day yet manage to not squeeze in any time for myself. I’m sure part of that was me trying my hardest to fit into the mold of the perfect woman that society has established.
My Experience Working with Erica
I’m not a new mom. My kids are six and eight, so I’m not the typical client Erica takes on. She learned quickly that the challenges new moms have look a lot like the challenges more tenured moms have. We’re all busy, a lot of us put everyone in the family before ourselves, we sometimes get disorganized, we get overwhelmed, and we sometimes lose out on who we are at our cores because we put the mom hat on and forget to take it off every now and then to wear one of the other many hats that makes up our being.
When I went into this coaching sessions I originally wanted to work on time management. Not because I wanted to make time for myself, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but because I wanted to better organize my time for all of my other obligations. I wanted to make more time for work, for cooking, for homeschooling, and for housework. Erica quickly caught on to this and while we did work on my time management, we put a huge focus on creating time for myself.
Erica uses dynamic coaching techniques to guide clients toward their end goal. She gave me assignments to do, such as creating a space for myself, listing out all of my daily tasks and scheduling them, then looking to see where I could either delegate, reduce time, etc. I found an extra 4 hours a day once I started prioritizing. It didn’t take long for Erica to get me into a routine of making time for myself to do the things I love. Finally she moved focus to making time for my husband and I to spend more quality time together.
What did I learn?
One of the biggest lessons I learned in my coaching sessions was that I need to make time for the high priority things in my life. My priorities were all sorts of confused and I’d managed to drop my own interests as well as my relationship with my husband lower on the list without realizing it! Don’t worry, those priorities are back at the top of the list where they belong.
It only took me three sessions to create more time and space for myself, to reprioritize my life, and start finding more quality in my life. Three sessions with Erica. Three! That’s it. Can you tell I’m impressed. I still have a lot to work on and I’m sure Erica could easily find more for me to work on if we had more time, but I’m leaps and bounds ahead of where I started.
How to work with Erica
Erica offers a free consultation so you can find out if her sessions are going to be right for you. She’s easy to talk to and has great advice. I highly recommend her services. If you are pregnant, a new mom, or even a tenured mom looking for a little bit of guidance or motivation, schedule an appointment with Erica today. Her contact form asks if you’re pregnant or a new mom, but give her a shout even if you’re a tenured mom. She’ll have some great advice for you as well, I know she did for me!
If you’re not near Erica you can still work with her by phone. We’re a time zone apart and were still able to connect. It was great to work with her from the comfort of my home.
When you contact Erica, make sure you mention that you heard about her through Living a Sunshine Life. She’ll give you a discount!
If you were working with a life coach today, what is the one area of your life you’d like a little guidance on? Mine was time management. I’d love to hear where your challenges are so we can all offer up a bit of support to you in the comments.
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