Alisia Pulella, Lead Coach and Founder of MentalFitnessCoaching.net, is a 28-year Las Vegan and 24-year Summerlin resident. Over the course of her extensive leadership career in gaming, technology, and training, she has helped individuals and organizations achieve lasting results. Alisia is a founding board member of Dress for Success Southern Nevada and an active member of the mentoring committee for GlobalGamingWomen.org. Since 2014, she has been a certified life coach through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching and received her ACC through the International Coaching Federation, utilizing techniques and tools found in the Positive Psychology methodology among others. Red Rock City Lifestyle wanted to learn more about mental fitness and how life coaching can support it, so we asked Alisia to give us some insight.
What is life coaching?
A life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives. Life coaches can help you clarify your goals and identify the obstacles holding you back, and then come up with strategies for overcoming each obstacle. In creating these strategies, a coach taps into your unique skills and gifts. By helping you to make the most of your strengths and build new tools, life coaches provide the support you need to achieve long-lasting change.
What do you specialize in?
I specialize in helping individuals who are amid an injury that is being addressed physically but are struggling with the mental recovery. Medical doctors and physical therapists concentrate on fixing and healing the physical injury, but very often high achievers struggle with the mental side of recovery, an area that medical doctors and physical therapists are not necessarily able to address. Similar to building muscles after surgery, I help clients build their mental resilience muscles in conjunction with the client’s traditional therapies. Mental fitness can be defined as ‘having and maintaining a state of well-being and cultivating awareness of how we think, behave and feel.’ Just as physical fitness provides us with an increased ability to respond to life in all its richness, mental fitness helps in the same way.
Why has life coaching become so popular?
Fortunately, the stigma that was once associated with mental health has lessened in recent years. Today people want to live an optimal life. They want to participate in physical activities at the best level they can attain. Most often my clients have experienced a physical injury that did not allow them to participate in the sport they love and even day-to-day activities they enjoy. They have followed medical doctors’ advice but notice a wave of depression that affects their relationships at home and work. There is also a loss of the happiness hormones - dopamine and serotonin - that come with physical exercise, achievement, and connection.
We work together to uncover strategies to help replace the happiness hormones with other fulfilling activities. Playing competitive tennis in Las Vegas, I learned that this was quite common and have experienced it myself.
When working with clients who are injured who know that surgery is in the near future, I often hear “I am scared. Not of the surgery, but how I will get through this recovery mentally.” It can be a scary time where we feel a lack of control, but it does not have to be this way.
What does it look like when someone works with you after an injury?
A prospective client and I have a 30–45-minute complimentary call to discuss their current issue and the coaching process. If we decide to work together, there is a 6-session package that can be used weekly or bi-weekly. The client will take an assessment from the Positive Psychology methodology, and the results are used along with other strategies to address limiting beliefs and judgments that may be holding them back from creating an emotional recovery plan. Generally, by the end of 6 weeks, clients have a strategy they can execute on and tools that can be used not just for this health detour but other challenges that arise. Accountability to the plan is a part of the process as coaching is about building solutions and executing on them as coach and client. I find that having a coach to be accountable to is a client’s motivating factor to get results. It is also common for a client to continue for additional sessions if they want to build on their new resilience toolset.
What are your 5 tips for supporting mental health post-injury?
1. Commit to the Physical Therapy prescribed; it may be difficult at times, but it will pay off
2. Develop a support group. Reach out to connections you know will add value to your emotional health. Create boundaries for interacting with people who do not contribute to your well-being.
3. If possible, plan activities prior to surgery that you can do while laid up. For instance, take an online class, make a list of books to read, take a relaxing trip. Don’t lose touch with friends who are still active in your sport, as they can be great cheerleaders.
4. Trust that your colleagues can cover for you if you are unable to work. Anxiety about your job will only hamper your recovery.
5. Concentrate on activities that make you happy. Play your happy music, watch favorite movies, get outdoors.
Final Thoughts?
“Life Offers Neither Problems nor Challenges, Only Opportunities.”- unknown.
It may seem that your injury is a roadblock, but it is a detour. We can learn so much about ourselves on the detours when we have the right mindset, strategies, and tools to build emotional resilience.