A Life Coach is your strategic partner to guide and support you in a creative deep thinking process to discover more about your best qualities, take on big projects, meet your special someone, learn your real purpose, get in shape, make scary changes and so much more. A life coach is an active & objective observer & listener, seeing and hearing things about your life that you may be too close to observe yourself.
A life coach is not a counselor, a consultant or a therapist.
Instead, a life coach is your confidential listener who helps you clarify your specific goals, create a plan of action to reach—and often surpass—those goals.
Having a Life Coach feels like a warm blanket when you’re cold, a breath of fresh air, like having a good angel sitting on your shoulder, or a mentor handing you an invitation to an influential party you didn’t know existed. They are only a text away with the encouragement and inspiration you need.
Is hiring a life coach something that might help you and your life? Read on for more information:
What does a Life Coach Do?
A life coach does so much, and their role depends mostly on what you are up to, which goals you want to reach or if you even know what your goals are.
Here are a few of the roles a coach plays in your life.
A Life Coach Listens to You
Seriously, a life coach listens to you, maybe better than anyone has listened to you. They make it a point to pay close attention to hear your words, tone of voice, body language and “tells” you may have, all to understand you as best they can.
As Stephen Covey says in his books: “seek first to understand then to be understood”, your life coach needs to understand what you are trying to communicate so they can help you on many levels. Sometimes it’s hard to put into words what you are trying to say and it takes a few tries.
Your life coach is listening so they can put all the little pieces together to hear the big picture.
First and foremost, to feel heard by your coach is a high priority when choosing your person.
Your Life Coach Helps You Define Your Goals
Identifying and clarifying your goals is very important on any quest for change and betterment. A coach will listen to all of your many ideas, random thoughts, big dreams, and help you organize them to make a clear picture of what is possible…or not.
Sometimes hearing your ideas back in an organized manner from someone else can make a huge difference in your thought process. Also, having your big dreams spoken out loud can make them finally feel real and doable.
A coach can help weed out goals that might not work for you, and create new ones that do. To finally clarify your goals can be a huge missing piece for many people.
When you define your goals, magic can happen.
Your Life Coach Helps You Clarify Your Values
Just as important (or maybe more important) than defining your goals is to clarify your core values! These can seem so easy to list and figure out, but to do the work and define your values might bring you some shocking insight.
There is a Native American parable which tells the story of values very clearly— about which wolf will live: the good wolf or the bad wolf, the elder answers simply: The wolf you feed. (Fine parable)
This is true for most things in life, and also brings consistency to mind.
You can have “productivity” as a value, but if you “FEED” procrastination instead of productivity, then which one do you REALLY value?
Your coach can help you become very clear about your values so you can choose your path and goals based on these values.
With a Life Coach, You Learn to Align Your Values with Your Goals
This is a huge piece to your success with your life coach, so they can help you align your top core values to your top goals.
Do they match?
Have the conversation with your coach to discover these truths behind your chosen goals and path to success. If you are having trouble reaching your goals over and over, maybe your values are what you could consider.
What are your core values? The Clarity Method by Coach The Life Coach founder Tim Brownson is a great place to start.
A Life Coach Encourages You
Being your cheerleader is a fun part of coaching. Though the word “cheerleading” can seem over the top for some, encouragement is an important part of coaching, even if it doesn’t involve pom-poms.
Once you have your goals defined and a path planned out, your coach can keep you on track and remain a positive motivator.
If you have a coach, you can count on them to inspire you to do your very best.
A Life Coach Helps You Reach Your Goals
Reaching the goals that you write down and commit to is a big part of coaching. Your coach is there to support your efforts and help you notice behaviors that might stop your forward motion. Sometimes your goals need to be readjusted after careful consideration and/or observation of how you respond to your plans. This is one of many places where “the outside perspective” your coach can offer, of how you respond or react, can be invaluable.
A Life Coach Notices the Best You Have To Offer
Another fun part of coaching is looking for and finding the super hero in each client. Often we don’t see our own awesomeness. A coach is looking for these signs right away, which you may try to hide. Interesting, isn’t it? That we sometimes hide our best selves?
Your coach is looking for the flashes, and once we find them, that conversation is sometimes life changing for you: you may not have known what they find…even if you think right now that you would.
Who Works with a Life Coach?
So many different people work with Life Coaches now! It’s really about improving adulting and being a good human. If you want to achieve more in your life and feel stuck at times, hiring a life coach is a great solution.
Coaching is for you if you want to:
- Increase your confidence
- Make more money
- Be more productive
- Communicate better
- Get in shape
- Do what you love
- Start something new
- Find your special someone
Life coaching is personalized to you, for what ever goals you are up to. The Who of life coaching is expanding because putting skin in the game by paying to hire someone to focus on your goals turns out to be very effective.
Time is marching on. Where would you like to be in your life one year from now?
What Happens in a Life Coaching Session?
Each coaching time is very unique based on what your goals are.
Your coach may meet with you in person, have a voice call with you or a Zoom, Line or Skype call. This is dependent on where you are in the world and what is available to both of you. Some coaches are only available through email, and that can work also. You will figure out the type of communication that works for both of you and the timing right away.
The beginning of coaching, when you are getting to know your coach, you’ll establish some starting points:
- Where you are now with your goals and where you want to be
- What is important to you?
- How best do you learn?
- How best do you communicate?
- And many more…
After these basic guidelines are established between you and your coach, then the look of your session is determined by the type of coaching you are doing.
Different Coaching Session Examples
For example, if you are losing weight, getting into shape or getting ready for an event like a marathon, your sessions will be about strength, cardio endurance, flexibility, rest, consistency, diet, etc. For these coaching sessions, you may have more video of what your body is doing, and some worksheets of what your workouts look like. But, there are many options of how the coaching is delivered.
If your coaching is about getting out of pain and finding peace in your life, then your sessions will be about clarity about the lack of peace, and clarity about your pain, techniques to relax, finding ways to relieve or reduce your pain, and much more. Again, in this type of session, video might work best with some worksheets and maybe journaling prompts, for example. But, let’s say you HATE journaling, or you don’t want anyone to see you in a video.
This is where coaching is great, because it can be tailored to your needs. It’s very individualized, keeping your unique personality in mind, and can put your strengths to work.
As you can see, there are many types of sessions, and you get to request of your coach what works best for you.
Types of Life Coaches
There are as many coach types as there are people, because coaching is best when it comes from the unique talents of the coach you choose. Unique talents are endless and there are wonderful combinations in people that make their coaching extremely effective.
One example, you find a coach who is a mom with a successful business, successful marriage, who is in shape, a great encourager and can also teach you how to dance and make a delicious Guacamole. Who knew?
Life creates successes and failures in each of us. Coaching is no different.
Each coach brings their life skills to the table, and you NEVER know which of those hidden skills may help you reach a deep desired goal.
Here are a Few of the Types of Life Coaches
- Finding peace & happiness
- Navigating a big change
- Getting fit & healthy
- Finding your life partner
- Choosing a better career
- Parenting with sanity
- Reconnecting your marriage
- Financial coaching
There are so many more not mentioned here, but what first cam to mind.
Note: if you can’t find the type of coach you are looking for, instead, find a few coaches you like and ask them if they can accommodate what you are looking for you.
What is the Difference Between a Life Coach and Therapy?
The difference between life coaching and therapy or counseling is that life coaching focuses on actions to reach goals in the future while therapy or counseling works with a licensed medical professional to diagnose and treat self-destructive ways of living.
Both life coaching and therapy focus on improving the lives of their clients, while coaching is a more action plan approach and therapy is a more talking through approach.
Life coaching will focus at first on goals to reach and reasons the client isn’t reaching those goals. Therapy looks at past behaviors and reactions to look deeper into why a client thinks the way they think.
How Can Life Coaching Help Me?
If you are reading this and wondering how a life coach can help you, consider if any of these common requests for coaching is a fit for you:
- Find happiness
- Find your purpose in life
- Find or create a better career
- To be more confident
- To communicate better
- To get in shape
- Learn to relieve or reduce pain
- Get through a transition (divorce, a career or house move, starting a new business, starting a new college, etc)
Coaching Can Increase Your Confidence
One of the main areas where coaching helps you is building your confidence.
Many people have confidence in certain areas, then feel insecure in the areas for which they hire a coach.
This is normal and one of a coaches main areas of listening. When I say “listening” here as a noun, I mean that we are listening for specific words and phrases which could effect your confidence or lack there of.
We start with small wins and build your skills from there.
To find the courage to develop a path that leads to fulfilling your purpose. Your purpose can be realized by looking into your values and principals that you want to live by
This leads to confidence.
A Coach Can Offer a Different Point of View
Often we don’t see opportunities or how we block our own success because we are too close to the situation. Your coach can help you see your issues and ideas with a different perspective.
A different point of view can change the game for you.
Coaching Helps Keep You Accountable
Coaching can help you build a concrete, non-theoretical daily to-do list and plan to meet your goals. Again this is based on your values and principals, and takes some homework & several tries to solidify.
You may not have hired your life coach to keep you accountable, or maybe you have a problem with people telling you what to do. Yet, your coach may help you finish your goals without you feeling like you were “told what to do”.
That’s because they are not your mom or your boss. Instead, you give them permission to hold your feet to the fire or not. It’s your choice.
How Does Life Coaching Work:
When you build a relationship with a coach where you believe that the coach has your best future in mind, then YOU allow your coach to help you.
By granting your coach this space in your life, you create a powerful partnership.
This Integral, basic relationship you have with your coach, helps you EXECUTE what you need to reach your goals.
What To Watch Out For in a Life Coach
The coaching industry is not regulated. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s up to YOU to research and find the right coach.
It’s your choice with whom to spend your money.
So do your due diligence!
**Here are some ideas how to find and research a good Life Coach:**
Check Life Coaching References
There are several ways to find references for any coach you are thinking of working with.
The best way is when you get your coaches name and info from a personal friend or family member, in which case, you are done with this step.
If a trusted friend suggests you work with the coach, clearly they are happy with the coaching and see that you will get value out of the partnership.
If you are not getting a personal referral for a life coach, here are some ideas to check their references:
When you are on a coaches website, look into their testimonials, then look up those students/clients who wrote testimonials to research how they are doing. If you can, contact them to ask how they liked this coach.
Some of the testimonials will only have initials, be anonymous, or have just a first name. This is normal, and respect their privacy.
But, some of the clients may leave their full name and possibly even contact information.
Don’t stalk people. Don’t be weird or creepy. Just be clear with your questions in an email.
Look for Certifications, or Not
There are MANY life coaching certifications on the market, and some are much better than others. Some are awful. Some are masterful.
Remember this:
**Expensive coaching certifications doesn’t guarantee a good coach. Also, lots of coaching training does not equal lots of coaching experience. **
Having a certification is a good start, but doesn’t guarantee good coaching.
Sometimes a coach with a list of expensive coaching certification certificates is a terrible coach.
Likewise, some of the best coaches out there have no “coaching certifications”, and instead use their life & job experience, personality and great listening skills to help you.
You STILL need to research each coach you may hire, even if they have oodles of training.
**The trick is to find the fit for you.**
-Look past certification and look at results.
-Look at how you would or would not get along with them.
-Use their “free call” or an email exchange and test the waters.
Your Coach Should Have Your Results in Mind, Not Theirs
This concept is a bit more advanced and might be tricky to uncover if you are just starting out on your coaching journey. You are trying to reach new depths of self discovery and facing your fears that you weren’t aware existed, so it’s hard to pay attention to what your coach is up to.
Most coaches will do what is best for you. You can trust them. And most won’t guide you but will create ways for you to learn how to guide and push yourself.
Remember that this is about you. If you start to feel like the conversations are turning in a “non-you” direction, please speak up. Request to change the direction of YOUR coaching. You are allowed to speak your mind.
Why is Coaching Popular?
Life Coaching is popular because it works.
It started slowly, but many people are realizing how much they can accomplish with some focused attention from a single person on the goals they are also focused on.
I personally think that we, as a culture, can communicate more readily anywhere in the world, and getting support is much more available than it once was.
Some people are really good at encouraging the best in others, which makes them very effective coaches.
More of those effective coaches have been found by the people who can utilize their skills.
Now it’s your turn to try coaching!
When is Coaching NOT a Good Idea?
Coaching is not good for you right now if:
- you are under a doctors supervision for a mood issue, depression or anxiety
- you
If you are actively in treatment with a medical professional for a mood or mental condition, then you need to wait until you are better or have permission from your doctor to work with a coach. We cannot work with you without your doctors written permission.
It’s not a good idea to work with more than one coach at a time, so stick with one for your agreed upon time.
