Life Coaching is a hot topic these days! How did you become involved in this area, Dr.?

Most of my young adult life, I felt an angst about not knowing my life purpose. (That’s what the Pathway to Purpose for Women 4-book series is all about – my journey toward purpose that I discovered was a universal cry of most women’s heart.) When secular life coaching came into vogue in 1992, I knew that the developers had good intentions for mentoring others toward living a better life, but I grew increasingly frustrated that they were promoting humanism and New Age thinking. So in 1995, I founded Mentors Inc. and began a Christian practice as a Life Purpose Coach® and Life Purpose Facilitator to help fellow believers discover and fulfill God’s plan for

• Christian Life Coaching…is a series of heartfelt, God-driven, woman-to-woman or man- to-man conversations, whether written (email or old-fashion letter) or spoken (face-to- face or over the phone) about God’s purpose for one’s life and how that affects every possible domain of life (personal, family, faith, vocation, and community).
• Christian Life Purpose Facilitating…is a one-time, 2-day, God-driven, woman-to-woman or man-to-man, intensive coaching conversation, done face-to-face. It utilizes the globally-tested Your Life on the Movie Screen technology with a laptop and flat screen (19” – 50” ) about God’s purpose for one’s life and how that affects every possible domain of life (personal, family, faith, vocation, and community).

How did character development within life coaching become a passion for you— personally and professionally?

For me, it became evident after analyzing life patterns that I sometimes experience a gap between understanding my God-designed legacy and actually realizing that magnificent purpose. I self-sabotage by succumbing to well-worn patterns of defeat, woundedness, insecurity, unworthiness or self-centeredness that kept me from God’s best. And this is true for my clients.

We can know everything about ourselves, our potential and our goals, but if we don’t develop the character qualities needed (such as humility, generosity, and confidence) to fulfill our godly dreams, we will find ourselves derailed at every turn. Because here is the bottom line: God cares more about the character we bring to our life mission than he does about our ministry’s strategic plan. He cares more about our Christlike integrity than our kingdom-building productivity.

How did you choose the eight character qualities featured in Character Makeover?

With literally dozens of character qualities to choose from, I selected these eight (humility, confidence, courage, self-control, patience, contentment, generosity and perseverance) because the flipside of these traits are the most prevalent strongholds I see in women’s lives today. Strongholds are those areas where our enemy, Satan, has set up camp and dug in, creating a fortress from which he tries to destroy us. These are the places where we repeatedly experience discouragement, defeat and damage that keep us from our God-given dreams. I firmly believe that strengthening these particular character qualities will transform those destructive strongholds into areas of victory.

Which character trait do you consider to be foundational for all the rest? Why?

Of all the character qualities we work on in this new book, humility is not only the most endearing quality, but it is also the foundational character quality to all the others. Without humility, we’ll all turn into highly principled overachievers who are not closer to true Christ-likeness than when we started. Jesus described his own character only once—using just two descriptors. He said, “I am gentle and humble in heart.” As G.K. Chesterton writes, and Jesus illustrates, “It is always the secure who are humble.”

So how does one go about developing the character trait of humility—without becoming proud of one’s progress?

The problem with working on humility is that it’s impossible to achieve by working on it directly. The prescription for humility starts with working on increasing your vision of God. Let me give you an example.

Jesus named one person as the greatest ever born: John the Baptist. Humility was a primary characteristic for John the Baptist. He was the one who said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And this is exactly the prescription for developing humility—we must increase our vision of God. There is a natural phenomenon that occurs when God takes up more of your field of vision: your focus on yourself automatically gets smaller. The more “God-conscious” we become; the less self-conscious we can remain.

So what is the goal of a character makeover?

The ultimate end of a character makeover is to help a woman become more like Christ -- to equip her for her unique personal destiny. God explains in His book that learning to be holy is the bottom line (I Peter 1:15-16), so we know he will bless the character makeover process. Not only that, He empowers it!

Dr. Katie Brazelton and Shelley Leith are the co-authors of
Character Makeover: 40 Days with a Life Coach to Create the Best You
Available from Zondervan, January 2008

For interviews, contact Pamela McClure, McClure Muntsinger Public Relations
615-595-8321 or pamela@mmpublicrelations.com