I’m a huge proponent of coaching and mentoring as a means to living the life you want.

A coach is someone who can help you identify your specific goals in any area of life and then work with you on an action plan to make it happen. A coach holds you to be accountable for your commitments and can provide the wisdom of an outside perspective when we stumble or are challenged by our own internal thoughts and patterns of behaviour.

A mentor is someone who shares his or her experience in a particular area with the intent of helping someone more junior reach their aspirations in a particular field. They are available to give specific advice and relate their experience.

You wouldn’t expect an Olympic or professional athlete to be able to learn the skills necessary, have the determination and tenacity required to push through the pain, the peaks and valleys of learning and the inevitable stresses of competition, without having a coach to help them get there.

So why do so many people think that they can be a professional human without the assistance of someone coaching them along the way?

It’s true that coaching can be expensive, particularly if you’re already low on funds. It’s one of the reasons that I created The Monday Mentor - to be able to provide people with a resource that they can rely on each week to help identify possible potholes on their road of life with enough time to be able to swerve to avoid them (worst-case) or even to be able to repair those potholes so that they never have to worry about them again (best-case).

It’s also the reason that I participated in the book, “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 3?. I don’t necessarily believe that one person has all the answers and in this book you get insights and ideas from 101 different personal growth experts.

I love this book series because whenever I am unsure what to do, or feeling challenged by something in my life, I can open one of these books up and get “instant insight” just by thinking of the question or challenge I am faced with, then opening up the book to a random page. More often than not, I can find at least the beginnings of a solution in whatever text I come across.

If you haven’t yet purchased your copy of “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 3?, visit http://www.paulkeetch.com/101ways/ right now.

There is another resource that I want to share with you that can absolutely create a dramatic sense of change in your life, in the area of coaching. It’s a program called “Simpleology” and the first level - Simpleology 101 - it is available absolutely free at www.simpleology.com.

Simpleology is a self-guided daily coaching membership program - more like a home study course you might buy from one of the many “gurus” out there as opposed to formal coaching.

I did the Simpleology program over a year ago, prior to getting my personal coach, and I noticed a dramatic improvement in my time and energy resources. It’s about time I went back to my Simpleology practice and I want to encourage you to check it out as well.