What is mental training?

When looking for a mental trainer or coach, there are several factors to consider.

Qualifications and experience: I cannot emphasize this enough. Be sure to check your background and education! Because mental health trainers and coaches are not a protected title (like psychologists), it's very important that you don't get fooled by words like "certified" or "graduate". When you see those words, your first question should be "In what?". In other words, you should look up the training, check how long and comprehensive it is, whether it seems serious, professional and so on.

Am I saying that mental trainers and coaches without the most extensive training in the world are completely useless? No, absolutely not. Just as I'm not saying that a trained mental coach is guaranteed to be the best thing that ever happened to you. You can see the training more as a quality assurance that increases the likelihood that this person knows what they are doing.

Objective: What is the purpose of the relationship - what do you want to achieve?

Personal chemistry: One does not work for all. If you don't feel that your personal chemistry is right for you, keep looking.

Location: Will the sessions be held in person or online? If only face-to-face, how will this affect you when you are busy or away from home? It's no secret that I personally find phone or video calls more beneficial to both parties than face-to-face sessions. Physical conversations are of course also good and above all pleasant. But in my experience, it is mainly inexperienced coaches who are convinced that "it gets better" with physical conversations and that conversations cannot be done digitally (I said the same thing at the beginning of my career).

Guarantees: Where is the coach's guarantee? Many coaches would probably think I am crazy when I write about guarantees. Is it even possible to guarantee change in a coaching process? For me, it is obvious that the coach should be able to guarantee that there will be change (provided that you as a client take responsibility for your part of the relationship and the process).

Fees: 

Here comes what for many is the most important question - the cost. Which of course is understandable, as a client you don't want to have to sell your kidney to afford your change. But this is where most people miss one of the most important questions of all. You get in touch with the coach, you talk about what you want to achieve and the coach says they can help you with this. Then you hear the price, which is often per call or per hour. Depending on whether this fits your budget or not, you get started, or you might look further afield.

Can you guess what the problem with this is?

First of all, this is like comparing apples and pears. You come to achieve a change, a result. But the conversation ends up being about what the coach's time costs - rather than what the change costs. So before you go to a coach, think about what the change you're looking for is worth. you. What is it worth to you to be happier, more present, perform better, have better relationships with others and yourself? What is it worth today, in one year, in ten years? What will be possible for you when you have stronger self-esteem and self-confidence?

Then you can look around to find the coach who you think will be the best and most effective support on your journey.

A few years ago I had a woman come to me for coaching. She felt that her opinions and words didn't matter in her relationships and that everyone was stepping on her. We had an intro and her first comment when I told her what it cost was that it was expensive, and that it certainly cost a lot more than going to a therapist (I can add that I have almost doubled my prices since then). Despite this, she chose to start a process. At that time I was running shorter processes so we booked a couple of sessions.

During her time as a client, she mentioned a couple more times that it was expensive. Three or four conversations into the process we had a breakthrough and I didn't hear those comments again, except at the last conversation. But then she said that she had thought it was expensive, but compared to what she had gotten out of our conversations, it was worth the price many times over. Then she told me that the therapist she had previously been seeing had cost SEK 750 per session, once a week, for five or six years. Even if I exclude a few weeks per year, that bill was between 180-216 thousand SEK!

I asked curiously, what she got out of that process. Her answer?

”I wonder too!”.