What is Life Coaching with a Side of Adventure
My life has been a rollercoaster but not every adventure was filled with happy memories. Over the years all the seeking made me become besties with all my stress hormones and it burnt me out. I've always leaned on the side of finding the positive outcome for every situation in life so the adrenaline junkie in me set about trying to turn a life of stressful adventures into a life fuelled by what brings me feelings of peace, joy, contentment and achievement.
It’s called balance, look it up!
A few years ago my life had a major plot twist. I thought I was about to become an art teacher in the local university and I loved the outdoors and spent my spare time in the Lake District, life was great. But all of a sudden it took a turn and I decided it would be more fun to become seriously ill. My health spiralled and I was unable to walk or even leave the house.
To make the whole thing extra spicy, a few years into my illness, shit hit the fan and my husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer. We were both in a bad place and I longed to be able to do the things I loved, but even standing up to make a cup of tea was impossible and it freaked me the fuck out! I always loved being active and creative but one day that just stopped and it was terrifying. During those years in bed I spent so much time dreaming of getting my life back and I focussed my attention on goals like getting healthy and being able to walk so that one day I could go hiking again. I wanted to be excited about life again and plan all the adventures for me and my husband so we could really make the most of life.
It took a lot of trial and error and even more patience to get to where I am today. When I started to recover I realised my purpose was to help other people create a life they loved too. I’m an adventurer at heart, so not being able to have those adventures was heart-breaking and I just knew that there were other people out there who had experienced something that had stood between them and their freedom. So, I made it my mission to get better and let myself have all the adventures I want so that I could show other people that it is possible to “whole ass” your way to a new future (never half ass multiple things when you can whole ass one) I love nothing more than helping other amazing people embrace their own adventurous mindset and see that when you go after what you want in life you increase your happiness and wellbeing and create a more authentic and fulfilling life.
What inspired me the most to combine life coaching with adventure is knowing from my own experience that when we stop living life based on what we think we should do and instead focus on things we want to do, the things that excite and thrill us we make huge changes within ourselves. As the saying goes, “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
What Even Is Life Coaching?
Traditional life coaching is like having your own personal cheerleader, someone to recognise your strengths, unlock your potential, help you step into growth, and cheer you on as you embark on a journey of self-improvement. It's about peeling back the layers to reveal the best version of yourself. A life coach is your partner in setting markers that define success for you, offering insights and strategies for not just surviving but thriving.
I specialise in helping you find purpose in life, and we’re not just talking about what you do to pay the bills, although that can come into it. Working with a coach is an opportunity to really take the time to invest in the true you, all the dreams you have and the areas of life that you want to nurture. Maybe you’re a recovering people pleaser, maybe life has led you to burnout and now it’s time to really commit to yourself or maybe you’ve been through some stuff in life that’s really thrown you and you’re not sure what’s next. When you focus on the parts of yourself you want to nurture, you become more confident, authentic, happier in yourself and able to see that you are more than just your job role, diagnosis or whatever label you feel like you’re bound by.
How can Life Coaching help me?
If you want to try out a simple coaching technique that I swear by, download this free mapping tool to help you break down big dreams into achievable steps. Creating a roadmap gets you there with more ease and makes navigation much easier as you launch into your journey. Having a life coach by your side is like having an electric bike; you still have to put some effort in to get up the hill but you’re not working your arse off and turning into a big sweaty mess to get there all on your own steam. You have some help which means you're able to enjoy the ride too, instead of just powering through and missing all the scenery.
Through life coaching you are empowered to unleash who you really are and what you really want from life, because you can go on the journey and get to the destination, but isn’t it better to do it as the most authentic version of you. It's not just about ticking off accomplishments; This style of coaching is about experimenting with life. Finding out what brings you overall well-being. By letting yourself explore in a relaxed, non-judgemental and encouraging environment you are able to accomplish more goals and enjoy the ride too.
We explore your wants and needs, finding what makes you tick, what brings balance to your life, finding the right ways of managing stress that work for you, and weaving positivity into your daily routine. It's about crafting a deeply fulfilling life and seeing that it’s all just one big adventure. Imagine life coaching as that best friend who's got your back, offering wisdom and a game plan to make your journey through life exciting and purposeful.
WTF is Life Coaching for Adventurers?
It’s an ethos to live life by. It teaches you to see the adventure in every moment. You’ll build the confidence to know that you can absolutely smash whatever it is you put your mind to. Who doesn't love a good old tale of adventure? The twists and turns, the parts where you don’t know what’s going to happen next, the redemptions and those big ballsy moments that make your heart come to life and you can’t wipe that big grin off your face! Life is already one big adventure, so we might as well choose the ones we want to go on. You never know when life is going to throw you a curveball, so taking matters into your own hands and creating what YOU want to experience is part of the journey too. You can’t just wait for life to deliver what you want, it might never happen.
Adventure isn’t a destination, it’s a choice to go on a journey; one that will bring you moments of growth, realisations, and achievements that mean something to you, not just hustling and grinding for the sake of it. Embarking on a journey of self-acceptance is an adventure that leads to self-development, not the other way round, and that can be in any area of life. The goal, the destination might look different to each of us, but we all go on some kind of adventure to get there.
Why Do I need An Adventure?
Because it’s adventure that helps you grow! Adventure is all about opening your eyes to what’s out there, what’s available for you and what you can do with the tools you acquire along the way. Every adventure is an experiment, it's a lesson in creativity, courage, passion, commitment. Anyone who has been on your typical kind of adventure whether that be up a mountain, backpacking, traveling the world, will tell you that those adventures gave them valuable skills on how to navigate everyday life. Adventure teaches you a lot about yourself, it brings you face to face with your fears and somewhere along the way, right inside yourself you find the exact answers you need to know about how to overcome them. You become closer to yourself, creating this unshakable faith and confidence that you know you’ve got your back. That’s why I developed life coaching with a side of adventure, because by teaming up with someone who’s going to show you how to infuse this ethos into your life, and is invested in supporting you and helping you grow, you are able to start really seeing what you're capable of. When someone else invests in you, it's easier to invest in yourself and that will begin to open your eyes to the possibilities that are waiting for you. You’ll start to see you’re worth the investment. When you’re old and grey you’ll realise that the biggest adventure was yourself all along.
What makes adventure life coaching different?
Regular coaching is boring! It’s rinse and repeat and some of us have had enough of people like Tony Robbins and the motivational self-help industry telling us to to do it a certain way when we’re all vastly different people. It’s not one size fits all and not everyone is here for the hustle, I know I’m not, so if you’re here for that, I ain’t the coach for you. Life Coaching for adventurers is for people who see life differently, it’s for the one’s who want an amazing life on their terms, not follow the crowd and succumb to all the things society tells us we need to be, or have or achieve.
What makes this type of coaching different is that when you switch on your inner adventurer you become more accepting of yourself. You stop trying to fit a mould. You unleash your free spirited, wild hearts and stop trying micromanage every single part of life. Instead you learn to embrace all the twists and turns. You become more fluid and accepting of all the surprises that unfold before you. I don’t like the phrase “expect the unexpected”, I think it’s mildly threatening and a bit dull tbh, I much prefer ACCEPT the unexpected, it allows life to breathe.
I’m a big fan of making “mistakes” too, I learn more that way and sometimes what I thought was the “wrong” turn that ended up bringing me the most spectacular moments. When we drop our expectations of how we think life “should” be and encourage ourselves to be open to all the possibilities, we learn to find more things to be in awe of, more moments that inspire us and in doing that we expand our horizons.
As an artist and an outdoor wanderer I’ve encountered my fair share of “happy accidents” along the way, no I’m not talking about all the times I’ve tripped over a rock or fallen off my paddleboard or spilled paint water all over an almost finished piece of art I’ve been working on (I’ve done that a lot). I’m talking about those moments where things didn’t happen quite as you intend them to, but they actually turned out to be way better than you could have imagined.
As we traverse the paths we set out for ourselves and encourage ourselves to not just bulldoze our way through to the end goal but to really savour the journey we tend to spot more clues that lead us to understand ourselves and what we want from life on a much deeper and more meaningful level.
Life coaching with a side of adventure isn’t just about flying through life, ticking everything off the list and then moving on to the next thing. Think about it like this, if you visit a new place, would you run through it all really quickly just so you could say you experienced it all? You could do that, but would you have really got to take in the richness of the experience? No, you wouldn’t.
I encourage you to explore at your own pace, making sure to remind you when to take a moment to pause, look around, embrace how far you’ve come and keep you balanced and prepared for the path ahead. Encouraging you to delve into your dreams, knowing when to take leaps and when to slow down, and create them in a way that’s sustainable, allowing you to really redefine what success looks like to YOU.
Redefining Success & Embracing the Adventure - Client Stories
-
Emily, a talented artist, struggled with self-doubt and fear of failure. Life coaching with a side of adventure became her palette for transformation. By using the core ethos of adventure coaching and allowing herself to experiment she became more comfortable with exploring all the possibilities for where she could take her art business. Setting a goal to take part in her local arts market, Emily embarked on a journey of self-discovery through her paintings. Each stroke became a step towards building her courage and overcoming a fear of showing her art, and as the exhibition opened, Emily not only showcased her art locally but also made sales too, which showed her that by putting herself out there her creations brought happiness to other people too. Unveiling her newfound confidence and purpose to create art that brings a smile to people's face, Emily created a long lasting shift in her life that has propelled her to keep creating a life that fits her. The adventure of expressing herself through art became a catalyst for embracing her true potential.
-
One of my clients was dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic event. They knew they wanted to seek solace in nature but they were afraid to take the first step. Through life coaching with a side of adventure they learned to identify the reasons why these first steps seemed so scary and started to really understand what was going on inside their nervous system and mind that was creating the blocks that needed to be overcome. Together we set a goal for them to immerse themselves in the outdoors one bit at a time with continuing support from myself and other people. By finding a local walking group my client was able to start the journey to getting outdoors with other people who were learning too, which helped them to have other people to grow with. This client chose hiking as their path to healing. With each trail conquered, they found a renewed sense of strength and peace. The natural surroundings became a canvas for their recovery, and they learned that sometimes the most profound adventures are the ones that heal the deepest wounds.
-
Meet Sarah, a client whose life felt a series of fast paced routines, leaving her feeling anxious, unfulfilled and stuck in a loop of moving on to the next thing. When I met Sarah she was unable to even articulate her passions, she was frantic, panicky and results driven, but the results she thought she wanted turned out to be far away from her truth. Through life coaching with a side of adventure, we worked on using experimentation to define her true desires. Sarah had never been outdoorsy, she grew up in a city but never felt like she fit, the city life didn’t inspire her at all. We worked through uncovering the things that piqued her interest in life and found that she had always loved watching nature programs. She liked the idea of living in the sticks and having more countryside around her. City life was too fast for Sarah and she felt frazzled by it all. After encouraging her to spend some weekends away and experience being in places that felt more slow paced and spacious, Sarah found a fascination with the mountains.
So together we set a goal for her to climb a mountain, both metaphorically and literally. As we mapped out the steps, she found herself overcoming self-doubt, fears, and learned valuable lessons in finding her own path in life. Standing at the summit, Sarah realised she had not only conquered the mountain, it had also allowed her to start discovering her own path away from the life she had always known. Sarah is now in the process of selling her house and searching for somewhere more picturesque and remote to live so she can follow her dream to live life in the slow lane.
What are the key benefits of life coaching for me?
Well, you can expect to be off your tits with happiness!
Seriously though, I like to think of adventure as a kind of therapy, no that doesn’t mean you can ditch the therapist. Coaching and Therapy are two very different things. If you’ve never worked with a life coach before and want to find out if coaching is right for you give me a shout. What I’m trying to say is adventure in itself is a form of self-therapy, it allows us to discover ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t normally. Coaching with a side of adventure is your companion and compass throughout that that journey.
Though committing to your inner adventurer you get to work on yourself in a more care-free and fun way. Life can be pretty serious and hard to navigate sometimes, and doing all the self-development and inner work can be a real slog. Adventure therapy is something you can offer yourself that makes this crazy journey through life more enjoyable & less pressured. We’re always learning and adapting through life but sometimes we don’t realise that maybe we’re doing it in ways that don’t serve us or fit our true inner desires. There ‘s so much choice in this life that it can get confusing to know which way is the right way for us. Adventure coaching helps keep you on track and also teaches you that there is no right or wrong way, only opportunities to explore.
Embarking on a journey of life coaching is a form of self care. It’s a commitment to yourself, to show yourself that you matter and you deserve to expand and evolve. Adding adventure to the mix keeps you engaged, it keeps you present, it allows you to really see, feel and take in the changes you’re creating for yourself and celebrate them every step of the way. It gives you passion.
With life coaching with a side of adventure you can expect to really see yourself evolve and change in ways that are sustainable and true to you. You can expect to revel in the journey of experimenting and allowing yourself to transform and evolve through your own unique way. You can expect to be supported and encouraged to be the real you and explore anything and everything that makes you really appreciate being alive. You can expect to learn a lot about yourself and dive into how to create a life that feels like it fits your uniqueness. You aren’t cookie cutter so stop pretending to be.
How Life Coaching With a Side of Adventure Works
Think of me as your tour guide, you might have a rough idea of the things you want to explore and experiment with in life, you might have no idea at all and need someone to work on the whole itinerary with you.
There are always a few different routes you can take to the summit, which you’ll find here on Guided By Kate.
If you’re looking for an entry level way to dedicate a small amount of time each week to your own personal evolution journey, join one of my somatic movement classes.
Maybe you have that big idea but you’re looking for a partner to help you put down some plans to reach the goal, if that’s you book in for my Adventure planning session - A 90 minute session to bounce ideas around and co-work on getting some solid plans in place.
Or maybe you’re ready to dive deeper into your yourself and start taking all this self exploration stuff more seriously, in that case my 6 month (minimum) Free Spirit Coaching program is the one for you
Why Life Coaching Works
Life coaching helped me get my life back and I can honestly say, I’ve been where you are and it’s confusing AF!
In the grand adventure of life, where every twist and turn can leaving you feeling like a hot mess, I've found the most fulfilment in focussing on my what makes me feel the most aligned. Making it all one big adventure is what kept me going.
My own transformative experience, from the depths of illness and adversity to reclaiming the joy of living and introducing loads of new activities into my life that I LOVE (like paddleboarding), was partially thanks to the help of a life coach.
Having that level of support in my life inspired me to be brave and go after what I love, and it inspired me to become a coach myself. All the burnout, the trial and error and the struggles I went through on my own were hard going, so having someone there by my side to support me while I found my flavour of happiness inspired me to craft a coaching service that isn't just about ticking off accomplishments but about embracing life as a grand experiment.
Life coaching with a side of adventure is NOT your typical self-improvement journey; it’s about tuning the natural evolution of you! It's a dynamic exploration of your dreams and desires, a roadmap to uncover the most authentic version of yourself. Making the uphill climb more enjoyable, my coaching provides the support needed to break down big dreams into achievable steps, ensuring you savour the journey rather than just powering through.
Adventure isn't a Destination
It’s a mindset. You can choose to see life as an adventure or not, either way there will always be challenges.
It’s your choice to use life as an opportunity to expand, evolve and make it all into one big tale of adventure. To be an adventurer is to be experimental, and you can be an adventurer in any area of life. Hell! learning to bake a cake can be an adventure if you want it to be. The secret sauce is in the mindset. You don’t have to travel the world to gain wisdom, you just have to be willing to test the waters. One of my favourite sayings is “it’s either a good idea or a good story”. So choose to be the innovator AND the author of your own life!
Life is about opening your eyes to the possibilities, developing valuable skills, and discovering answers within yourself. The success stories of individuals who embraced this adventurous coaching approach, whether conquering artistic self-doubt, experiencing post-traumatic growth, or finding an entirely new way of living, reflect the profound impact of embracing the adventure. My own personal journey reflects it too.
Life coaching with a side of adventure is your companion, offering acquired wisdom and a game plan to make your journey through life exciting, purposeful and experimental. Embark on this adventure of self-discovery, where every step is a celebration of your growth, and revel in the journey of creating a life that truly aligns with your authentic self. Because in the end, the biggest adventure is discovering the extraordinary within yourself.
So my question to you now is, are you ready to pack up your kitbag and start taking the first steps on the trail of self evolution? Is it about time you put down the rule book as to how you think you “should” live your life and instead pick up a brand new sketchbook and start experimenting with all the ways you can design a life that fits the real you?
