A Visit with Transition Life Coach Yana Stockman

A couple weeks ago I heard an inspiring talk by Yana Stockman on the topic of career self-sabotage. It was interesting on a number of levels as she briefly outlined the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back. After offering a prescription for overcoming our self-defeating behaviors she closed with this quote from Zig Ziglar: "You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness."

Her personal life story began with a happy childhood in Ukraine. Since then she's lived in several countries, and visited at least 25. Academically she laid a foundation in psychology, but found her special interest was more in helping people who were on a career path but who had gotten stuck along the way.

EN: What is life coaching?

Yana Stockman: Coaching is a partnership that helps a person create and adapt to change to live the life they desire. Coaching can be focused toward leadership coaching, transition coaching, or overall life and career coaching. It is designed to create a personal or professional change or help a person through a change that’s already underway in life. All coaching is based on a premise that you already have the necessary inner resources to make the changes to which you aspire. By working with a coach, we are able to more clearly identify those resources and put them into actions to achieve desired goals.

EN: How did you come to pursue life coaching as a career?

YS: My personal development journey started over 10 years ago when I received my MA in Psychology and Coaching certification from Europe.

I came to Minnesota as a counselor to pursue International Social Work, transferred to Duluth through the University of Maine. I was exploring the psychology field and coaching was in the early stages at the time.

This industry has grown 12 percent from 2012. It is valued at an estimated 2.4 billion and growing. I truly believe in human potential and through the last several years I keep coming back to coaching by educating, motivating and creating more awareness about personal development.

Coaching applies psychological theories and concepts--its aim is to increase performance, achievement and well-being in individuals, teams and organizations.

By focusing on a familiar niche – my life transitions, what brought me across continents several times in the first place, living through them, learning from them -- I re-discover strong needs from people that are going through life changes and life transitions on a daily basis in their personal and professional lives.

It's also well aligned with my mission to contribute into people’s lives. In addition, the coaching practice fits my personality. I live by it daily. I believe that self-discipline, positive thinking, goal setting and applied actions could unleash power within anyone who will set their focus on it.

EN: What kinds of clients do you serve?

YS: Motivated individuals who feel stuck, uncertain and have lost their motivation while facing life transitions.

I serve many men and women in their thirties and forties, business owners, operational managers, new to a city area, region, or country. For men who work under pressure and women in leadership roles who want to achieve the life they really want and deserve, my role is to be as a support while breaking through and staying on as an accountability partner to maintain their success.

As a life coach I am motivated to create productive sessions, so that people feel more confident and productive and carry that energy through the rest of their transition process. The happiness associated with having a clear vision and witnessing them achieve their goals is extremely validating and a rewarding outcome that results from life coaching sessions.

EN: What are some of the problems people bring you?

YS: The focus of each session is based entirely on the aspect of your life that needs to be improved. A better question might be: “What is on a person’s mind lately and what would be the ideal outcome?” General topics are:

Personal Growth:
• Gaining clarity on where you currently are in life and what your purpose is
• Discovering solutions to life’s challenging events
• Increasing life satisfaction level
• Positive mindset

Professional Growth:
• Change in job status or career
• Ways to increase your energy level
• Using your strengths and talents to accomplish work projects
• Finding sources of motivation

Goals:
• Defining goals and developing a plan for making them a reality
• Creating and implementing new habits, systems, or patterns.

Relationships:
•Changes in family structure or new family role.
•Getting through the transition when a relationship is ending or starting

EN: What are some transitions that are especially difficult to deal with?

YS: It is very individual how transitions look for each person, but when going through transitions what is common for all is Uncertainty. Loss of clear vision on what’s next leaves most people paralyzed and anxious. We usually face life changes without warning and a transition during that period could be unexpected and dramatic.

Loss of sense of where persons fit in their career or in life in general, a new role as a parent or owner, the loss of a home, moving to a new place, a new economic status such as bankruptcy or unexpected increase of lifestyle level, fame, illness. Whether the transition has a positive or negative impact on one's life, it gives us a chance to learn about our strengths and redirect us to perspectives that we did not recognize before. They let us reflect on new choices, stability, and personal discoveries we could make even when they force us to leave the familiar behind and adjust to new ways.

EN: One of the things you focus on is helping people get unlocked or unstuck.

YS: Find fuel, drive, potential or benefit from the situation or for the situation.

Each circumstance or life obstacle has both a positive and negative impact on our lives.
We tend to get stuck in a paralyzing, non-driven mode, simply out of self-defense to protect ourselves from being hurt and exposed. But inaction doesn’t generate progress or traction to move forward. Our comfort zone and non-productivity spiral back into a habit that will not resolve the “stuck” feeling.

EN: What are some of the things that hold people back?

YS: Here are just some of the things holding people back.

• Not taking responsibility for the choices people could/can make. It's up to us to make empowered choices and adopt winning beliefs. Otherwise we keep self-doubting ourselves and get victimized by situations or by making wrong choices.

• Fear of letting go of the familiar. In order to grow and start new/fresh we have to test and learn what works and what does not.

• Lack of skills. If we've never been in this new situation before it doesn’t mean it's never been done or lived before us. In an era of information and experimental sources and services we are 100% fortunate compared to 100 years ago.

• Feeling vulnerable and exposed. Asking for help takes courage. Having the courage to share with a friend, coach, someone you know well could offer constructive advice and an objective ear. It also relieves us from carrying it all inside and gives us self-confidence to acknowledge your true-self.

EN: Why are people so afraid to dream?

YS: It boils down to simple fear of judgment: what people around will think about our dreams, fear of never having those dreams, and fear of letting ourselves down because of it. Often, we tend to over-analyze and make false future predictions about what might or could happened.

Don’t let anything talk you out of your desired state of mind. Vocalize your dreams. Create a vision and follow it. Apply small action steps to be closer your dream and find a like-minded community that maintains ideas which relate to your dreams. Experiment with opportunities and simply believe in what you wish and let it lead you wherever you want to go!

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To learn more about Yana Stockman and life coaching, visit her website at www.yanastockman.com