Barbara Lane is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with her. She is a certified life coach and she impressed us with her vast experience of doing this work, over 29 years! Her approach is strongly based on a human to human connection, kindness and empathy. She truly finds great happiness and honor in seeing her clients transform themselves and their lives into a much better version. Here is what she said.

Meet Life Coach Barbara Lane:

Name: Barbara Lane
Pillar: The Heart
Who is this coach for: Anyone who wants to remove anxiety, transform their negative perception, and find hope to make a positive transformation.
How they can help: By using different tools like CBT, breathing techniques, guided imagery, visualizations, reframing techniques, to name a few.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these Pandemic times?

The pandemic has been hard for all of us. It is a huge collective trauma that will be felt for a long time.

Thankfully, my family and I have not suffered devastating loss as some have suffered. I have had a couple of family members who got very sick, one for a few months, but never requiring hospitalization or had significant long lasting effects.

I hope this stays the case as the pandemic continues, to be alive and well too.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?

Many of my clients had to leave their employment and stay home with their children as the kids were schooled virtually. This has put a strain on people’s finances as well as their relationships and their mental health.

The isolation and uncertainty have increased depression and anxiety. I know myself.. it was difficult staying away from family before we had the availability of vaccinations.

I have adult children and a granddaughter that I am great buddies with and being apart for so long was heart wrenching.

We wrote letters back and forth which is a great skill for her, read the same books so we could call and discuss them together. It was a way for us to remain connected and to share in something together without being together.

Also not being able to see my elderly parents was hard but getting them sick would have been harder.

What are the biggest lessons that you learned in this pandemic?

Clearly, this pandemic caused me to re-evaluate what is important in my life.

It has shifted my focus to spending more time with who matters most to me.

It has also caused me to become more self reliant.

The Origin:

Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?

This is a story that spans a 29 year journey!

When I went to school for nursing, I thought I wanted to be a trauma flight nurse. I was an EMT and loved helicopters, so I thought it was a good fit.

That all went out the window when I did my psychiatric clinical rotation. I immediately felt as though I had stepped into an old comfortable shoe. Everything seemed to come very natural to me. I knew this was it!

After nursing school, I worked in an inpatient psychiatric nurse position, where I spent 7 years caring for the acute side of mental illness.

After that, I took a position as an outpatient community mental health nurse, where I would work the next 14 years before going on to obtain my master’s degree in psychiatric mental health in the nurse practitioner focus.

After earning my degree and certification, I worked as a nurse practitioner in the private psychiatric practice arena for a few years. There I conducted group therapy, individual therapy, and medication management.

My favorite part, the part that really excites me, is watching my clients transform.

When they use the tools I have given them along with the changes in mindset or perspective, they begin rapidly improving and moving towards living their best lives.

This brings me joy and I feel so honored to have been let into my client’s lives.

It is courageous to put trust into another like that, so allowing me to come along as a guide on their journey is a true honor. This is what I want to do with the rest of my career.

What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?

My biggest obstacle was myself!

It took me awhile to believe in myself and my abilities. It has been a process and a journey I am grateful to have experienced.

Until you believe you can do something, you won’t be able to do it. Getting rid of the fear of failure, learning to roll with it and learn from it, has taken me far in life.

The Coaching Style:

How do you innovate with coaching your clients?

I take a very individualized approach with my clients.

I assess each client’s needs then pull from my vast resources of tools, skills, techniques, and modalities depending on the needs and desires of my clients. I use some CBT, motivational interviewing, and solution focused modalities.

It is eclectic and evolving as I continue to study and gain new tools, those are added into the tome of tools collected over 29 years of practice.

What’s unique about your coaching approach?

I think my unique background of training and experience both in the field of mental health, but also body and spirit give me a very holistic focus to my coaching.

I have very genuine love and acceptance of people and I think that fosters our connection.

What benefits do your clients get after working with you?

Most get the benefit of hope after the first session.

Hope is necessary for moving forward in change. If you have no hope that things will improve, there is no motivation to put in the effort to make the changes necessary for transformation of your life.

Along with feeling hopeful, clients gain a clear sense of direction and feel motivated to make changes in thinking and behaving. They gain skills in coping, communication, relationship building and maintaining.

They also gain a different perspective that helps them with their own insights into their own problems.

The skills learned provide them with grit to get through adversity and come out on the other side better for it.

Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?

I use breathing techniques, guided imagery, visualizations, reframing techniques to name a few.

Many times, I discover the client is operating on a mind that anxiety has run away with and created scenarios that are not even based on facts or reality.

Getting the client to remove emotion from the circumstance and function on the facts only is a helpful process to move the client forward.

The Impact:

If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?

We are all one and here to love one another!

What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?

I had some experiences in my life where I was given knowledge that we are all of one spirit.

Seeing everyone from that perspective has been one of my greatest gifts given to me.

We are all brothers and sisters and her here to learn to love one another, period.

Your final thoughts?

I think coaching has the capability of changing the world, and not just for the current generation of the person being coached.

When they make changes, others notice, they model the changes and tools, and skills are passed down to their children for their use in excelling at life and it goes on and on.

I am hoping to affect generations that come well after I am gone. It is a ripple effect of resiliency and is a beautiful thought.

Where Can You Find Barbara Lane?

If you resonated with this interview and would like to connect directly with Barbara make sure to send her a message at Barbaralane@waypointscoaching.com. She is more than happy to help.

If you want to learn more about her coaching check her website at https://www.waypointscoaching.com. Or, follow her page on Facebook. It was an honor having this interview with her.