A Life Coach encourages and counsels clients on a range of professional and personal issues and can help you with specific projects, goals, and life transitions. A coach helps you grow by analyzing your current situation, identifying limiting beliefs, potential challenges, and obstacles you face. Coaches help by devising a plan of action designed to help you achieve specific outcomes in your life.
The relationship between a client and their coach is a creative partnership that seeks to:
Identify, clarify and create a vision for what the client wants
Use coach’s expertise to modify goals as needed
Encourage client’s self-discovery and GROWTH
Nurture and evoke strategies and a plan of action based on what fits best with the client’s goals, personality, and vision
Foster client accountability to increase productivity
Who Works With a Life Coach?
Entrepreneurs, executives, business leaders, actors, musicians, creative people, managers, small business owners, start-ups, professionals, and home-makers all reach their goals with the help of a life coach. If there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, there is room for life coaching. Not only will your life coach help you close the gap, your life coach will help you break through your limited beliefs and challenge you to think bigger.
What Do You Work On With a Life Coach?
Setting and achieving goals and objectives
Planning — business, career, and life
Blasting through blockers (like fear & self-sabotage)
Clearing clutter
Financial security and independence
Balancing all areas of your life
Making key decisions and designing strategies for success
Communicating powerfully and effectively
Becoming a problem-free zone
Building powerful relationships
Breaking through the glass ceiling
Getting promoted
Finding the ideal career/work or business
Finding the ideal partner/love/relationship
Getting "unstuck"
Making an important life transition
Starting a business
Growing a business
Living an ideal life
Identifying core values and passions
Fulfilling personal and emotional needs
Pursuing your purpose
Getting organized
Making more money
Time management
Learning to enjoy life
Playing, having adventures, and a lot more fun
And much, much more
1) Accountability. Most life coaches have three calls a month with their clients. This regularly scheduled call prompts clients to get more done than they would if left to their own devices. Think about it, if you work out with a personal trainer at the gym, you work much harder than on your own. Clients take bigger actions, set bigger goals, and think bigger when they work with a professional coach.
2) Expertise. The trained life coach knows how to help you set the right goals and give you tools & encouragement to reach your goals. You’ll achieve more in less time with the input of a life coach on your side.
3) Delivery. A well-trained coach knows how to use the right words so that you are naturally motivated. It doesn’t take brow-beating or nagging when you are working with a skilled life coach. Coaching typically works best with a weekly session so clients have time to integrate new ways of thinking and take action each week toward their goals. Life coaching is done in person, by phone, and via video communication services. The experience is challenging and uplifting. You’ll look forward to your weekly calls with your life coach.
4) Speed. Most people find that things start to happen very quickly after hiring a life coach. This happens for a number of reasons: you start taking more effective and focused actions immediately, you create momentum so it’s easier to get results, and you set better goals that are based on what you really want.
"Coaches have the ability to view things from afar — in what some call ‘helicopter vision’ — and to shed new light on difficult situations. Often they can act as a sounding board through tough decisions, help sharpen skills, and motivate.”
How does life coaching differ from consulting, therapy/counseling, sports coaching, a best friend?
Consulting - Life coaching can be considered a form of consulting however, consulting is often information and expertise based. Life coaches, on the other hand, are experts on helping you develop all areas of your life, business, and personal. Unlike many consultants who propose a solution and leave you to implement it, the life coach stays with you to help you integrate the changes, new skills, and goals to make sure they really happen. This is one reason why coaching is so effective–it is one thing to have the information and quite another to actually make the change!
Therapy/Counseling - Life coaching is not therapy or counseling. Coaches don’t work on past-based issues or traumas. Life coaches are not psychologists or psychotherapists. Instead, life coaches focus on the present, the client’s goals for the future, and encourage personal development.
Sports - Life coaching often includes principles from sports coaching, such as being your best, doing more than you think you can, going for the goal. Your life coach will help you win in your own life!
Best friend - A best friend or two or three is wonderful to have. But is your best friend an objective professional who you can trust to advise you on the most important aspects of your life or business? Sometimes our friends can’t tell us the truth as much as they would like to because they don’t want to risk losing the friendship. A good life coach is never afraid to tell you the truth and is willing to be fired at any time. Why not have a best friend and a life coach?
Do life coaches work on personal goals or business/professional goals?
Usually both. The life coach is the only professional trained to work with all aspects of your life. This is handy because very often if something is bothering you at work, it is affecting your personal life as well and vice versa. Some clients prefer to spend more time focusing on their business goals, while others may want to focus on personal/ family life goals. How you use your coaching call is up to you!
Shouldn’t I be able to reach my goals on my own?
We’ve been taught that “hard work and doing it on your own” are the keys to finding life, success, money, or happiness. Most people believe they must sacrifice something to attain what they want. Some people sacrifice their health, their time to enjoy life, or their relationships. None of this is necessary. You can have it all, but maybe not all right this minute! With life coaching, you’ll find you don’t have to sacrifice as much as you may think when you learn to create BALANCE in the 7 key areas of your life.