One of our roles as Christian Life Coaches is to help clients overcome barriers that hinder them from walking in all the Lord’s blessings.
One life-draining barrier clients may experience is self-sabotage. Consider some of these terms used to describe self-sabotage in the thesaurus:
· Not caring for oneself
· Self-defeating behavior
· The act of damaging oneself
· Setting oneself up for failure
When clients encounter self-sabotage, they are often confused about why they can’t make progress on the goals God has impressed upon them.
As their coach, you can help them recognize signs to be aware of, identify the root cause of the problem, and strategize to overcome the barrier of self-sabotage after renewing their minds.
1. Recognize Signs of Self-Sabotage
To overcome self-sabotage, the first step is to help clients recognize it’s happening. Some signs include:
· Negative self-talk
· Procrastination
· Perfectionism
· Feeling “stuck” or unmotivated
We all function from what we believe, so once clients know that they’re manifesting self-sabotaging behaviors, we can help them uncover the lies they believe.
2. Expose the Lies Driving Self-Sabotage
Nothing can be healed unless it’s brought into the light. For this reason, it’s essential to help our clients understand what lies are driving their self-sabotaging behaviors.
For example, imagine you’re in a sinking boat, and you keep bailing the water out but don’t fix the hole that’s causing the boat to sink. Once you stop believing the lie that bailing the water will rectify the problem, it’s much easier to take the correct action needed to accomplish the goal of preventing the boat from sinking.
In the same way, our role as Christian Life Coaches is to help our clients discover the root cause of why they self-sabotage. In another example, if you have a client who’s stuck in a pattern of procrastinating and you spend a coaching session focused on them creating a calendar to stay on track without addressing the root cause of their procrastination, they will not experience sustained victory.
After asking good questions, the client may realize that the cause of their procrastination is fear of making mistakes. In that case, you can ask the client what they believe will happen if they do make a mistake. Their answers may cause them to realize that they don’t have to fear mistakes after all.
Or maybe a client feels inadequate because they’ve forgotten their identity in Christ and His power that they have access to.
3. Renew the Mind
After a client has recognized their self-sabotage and exposed lies driving their behavior, they can begin to renew their mind to align with the mind of Christ.
As a Christian Life Coach, you can guide your client in prayer. This can include worship, declarations of God’s truth, breaking off agreements, repentance, and anything else the Holy Spirit imparts during the coaching session.
Once a client has renewed their mind by rebuking lies and embracing the truth, they can successfully create new behavior patterns that are God-honoring rather than self-sabotaging.
Christian Life Coaching: Helping Clients Be Overcomers
1 John 5:5 says, “Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Christian Life Coaches have the privilege of helping clients overcome barriers like self-sabotage to step into all God created them to be.
If you would like to learn more about becoming a Christian Life Coach, reach out to the Center for Christian Coaching today.
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