Life Coach

WHAT IS A LIFE COACH?

Coaching may sound like a remote concept to some, but think of it this way, to compete as a world-class athlete, you need the experience, enthusiastic support, objective perspective and insight of a coach. This is just as true for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business leaders, executives and business professionals. 

So, what is a life coach? A life coach is someone professionally trained to help you maximize your full potential and reach your desired results.

A life coach encourages and counsels with clients on a range of professional and personal issues. Life coaching is distinct from giving advice, consulting, counseling, mentoring and administering therapy. Life coaches help you with specific professional projects, personal goals, and transitions. A coach helps you to grow by analyzing your current situation, identifying existing and potential challenges and obstacles you face and devising a custom plan of action designed to help you achieve specific outcomes in your life.

The relationship between a client and their life 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

These aspects of the process all work together to allow the client to maximize his or her potential, and research shows that coaching and training is a far more effective combination than training alone. In fact, training alone can increase productivity by 22.4%, but when combined with weekly life coaching, productivity is boosted by 88%.

HOW DOES LIFE COACHING WORK?

Your coach will ultimately work with you to create a custom action plan, however life coaching typically works in a specific, structured format.

First, you will work with your coach to define your vision: What is it that truly drives you, motivates you? What is at the basis of your goals?

After answering that question, you’ll work alongside your coach to identify barriers and limiting beliefs that have been holding you back. What negative things have you been telling yourself? How have these patterns gotten in your way, and how can you move past them?

Finally, you and your coach will set challenging, but achievable, goals. Your coach will ensure that you are not settling for limited goals or being too negative as you assess your position by helping you calibrate your long and short-term goals against your core values.

Assessing your current position helps you and your lifestyle coach measure your progress and identify current and potential obstacles. After this important step, you and your coach will review your resources and all courses of action available to you in order to create a plan of action. You’ll then decide which specific steps you will take and when you will take them. You will prepare for potential obstacles and decide how to cope with them. At this time, you will ensure that each step supports your end goals, while your coach will help you stay motivated and track your progress. If your plan needs modification at any point, your coach will help you with this as well, which will empower you to stay committed and on track toward your goals along the way.

These are just a few of the ways a life coach will impact your life.

• Gain clarity in your purpose – Get clear and focused on the goals and objectives that will radically change your life in the next year.
• Achieve your health & fitness goals – Feel more energy, more vitality and more accountability from a coach that pushes you. Stay committed for real results and start living the life you desire.
• Ignite passion in your relationships – Remove beliefs that are sabotaging you from true connection and discover the key to fulfillment in relationships. Discover how to break down limiting beliefs you hold about yourself and your partner.
• Become a more effective leader – Break through limitations and gain the skills to persuade, inspire and connect with others.
• Prepare for change – Tap into courage, strength, passion and confidence to overcome any challenge or unexpected change that life throws at you.
• Grow your business – Commit in times of uncertainty, and step out of your comfort zone to drive sales & profits.

LIFE COACHING MYTHS:

Following are some of the most common misconceptions and myths about life coaching. 

Myth #1: “Anyone can be a life coach and coaches do not require training.” This isn’t the case. Great life coaches must possess the right blend of expertise and skilled delivery. This ensures that they can properly motivate and encourage clients while determining and resolving the core issues that merit attention in each case. 

Myth #2: “Coaching is like unlicensed therapy.” Life coaching is focused on your present and your future. Coaching accepts your current reality and looks to improve your outcome moving forward. Life coaches are not health professionals, and they do not diagnose you. In contrast, therapy focuses on your past and looks to delve into past actions and motivations. It is analytical, but not action-oriented.

Myth #3: “Coaching is only for people who have problems or who can’t succeed on their own.” Going back to the athlete analogy, life coaching is for anyone who wants to improve their performance – whether you’re trying to advance at work or make more meaningful personal connections. Even the most skilled, successful people can benefit from coaching.

Myth #4: “Coaches let you vent, then they offer advice.” Coaches do need to have great listening skills, but delivering high-quality coaching is far more than giving advice. It demands that the coach be able to draw on a deep base of knowledge, experience and training to craft unique solutions for each scenario and work with the client to implement them. Coaches are objective and will offer unbiased opinions about how to move toward accomplishing your goals.

WHAT A LIFE COACH CAN DO FOR YOU

Some of the most common steps clients take while working with life coaches include:

• Identifying goals and defining a vision for success
• Creating professional and personal action plans
• Identifying limiting beliefs
• Working toward financial independence
• Obtaining work/life balance
• Learning to communicate more succinctly and effectively
• Fostering more powerful connections professionally and personally
• Getting promotions
• Achieving weight loss and/or fitness goals
• Starting a new business or growing an existing one
• Managing an important life or business transition
• Articulating core values

People choose to hire life coaches because they want to do even more tomorrow than they can do today. They want to improve their output and see more growth, and they want to do those things quickly and to the best of their ability. People from all walks of life use life coaches including actors, business leaders, creatives, entrepreneurs, executives, homemakers, managers, professionals, small business owners and start-up pioneers. These people all identify a gap between where they are and where they want to be, and they turn to coaching when they want help reaching their goals.

There’s a reason that life coaching is the second-fastest growing profession in the world – because it works for people. Few people can honestly say that they are already performing at the top of their game each and every day. If you are ready to truly maximize your human potential, and take your life to the next level, then it’s time to seek out a life coach.