1. What is life coaching?
*A life coach is someone you hire to help assist you with your personal development, especially in the area of setting and achieving specific goals. Your life coach may share advice, offer guidance, help you make plans, and hold you accountable for taking action. Just like you would hire a trainer for implementing fitness goals, you would hire a life coach to inspire and support you to implement personal life goals. Many people also need motivation with productivity and organization during their coaching process, which is what the coach is for! Every life coaching situation is unique, therefore each individual sets specific milestones and goals to implement during and after the coaching process.
*Amid all your responsibilities, activities and projects, it's sometimes hard to see the big picture and easy to become overwhelmed or feel like you're lacking direction. That's where a life coach can come in. If you are frustrated with an aspect of your life, not sure how to stop making the same choices you keep making or just want to have more happiness, peace of mind and passion -- life coaching can do that for you. Life coaches can specialize in areas like relationships, careers or personal growth. They promise to motivate, offer support when clients need a boost in confidence and help them decide which direction to take (Pawlowski, 2007).
2. How does life coaching differ from counseling or therapy?
*Coaching focuses on goal setting with future emphasis. Coaching meets the client where they are with support during their time of struggle with poignant questions and motivational encouragement. Coaching is about positive acute change.
*Therapy focuses on issues of pathology, healing and unresolved psychological issues of the past. Coaching on the other hand, begins with the present and assists clients in setting very clear, and specific goals that they want to achieve in the future. While the past may be discussed on occasion, it is addressed only in the context of discovering what is blocking the client from moving forward. The focus is always on movement and taking action, not on insight or understanding (Austin & Brain, 2008).
3. How does life coaching work?
*What happens between you and your life coach? Your life coach will be your EQUAL PARTNER. If you do not feel that your life coach is your equal partner, then the life coaching process will almost assuredly not succeed. Your life coach will focus totally on you. You will become the absolute center of their attention. Life coaching is all about you accomplishing your coachable goals on your terms, on your pace, on your agenda (Dueease, 2007).
*Your life coach will ask you personal questions about you for the purpose of having you reveal what is inside you that you cannot see. You will open up to your coach to divulge what make you tick, to unravel the mystery of you. Once you reveal your inner thoughts, feelings and motivations that you had previously not known about or fully understood, your coach will reflect them back to you. Your life coach will become your mirror to describe to you what you divulged to your coach (Dueease, 2007).
4. Does your life need a coach?
*At home: Coaching provides personalized strategies and shortcuts to organize your day and keep you on track. Or you might finally get your closets organized — and keep them that way. A coach doesn’t just solve time-management or organizational problems for you, he or she helps you identify them and teaches you how to develop solutions to prevent them from recurring.
*At Work: A coach can help you navigate the tricky waters of office politics. Even a procrastination problem can be solved with a little support. A coach can teach you to break down a big project into several smaller ones that are less overwhelming and easier to complete. If you need help with long-term goals, coaching can help you objectively review your future employment, promotion or salary goals.
*Personal life: It is different from talking to a friend or family member. Friends mean well and can certainly lend a supportive ear, but completing homework assigned by a life coach can break down mental barriers such as ‘I can’t draw’, ‘I can’t run a mile’ or ‘I don’t know how to sew.’ A coach understands that the idea of running a mile can feel daunting for someone who’s never jogged down the street. She works with you to find creative ways to break down the ‘can’ts’ into a series of small triumphs and ‘cans.’ (Unilever, 2008).
*Often, people need someone to help them take the dreams they have in their heads -- the visions of what they want to do next with their lives -- and do the work to make them a reality. Remember that you get out of the coaching experience what you put into it, so hire a coach when you're ready to make changes, and devote your attention to doing the work. A coach can be a powerful asset, but they will work in a partnership with you, and you determine where you want that partnership to go (Pawlowski, 2007).
5. What do we discuss in a coaching session?
*You will discover: Your passions (the ones you know about, those you suspect but are not sure of and those that have been hidden within you that want to come out) ; Your self-imposed obstacles (what you do not want to do, the opposite of passions) ; Your beliefs and values, some people call this spirituality as opposed to religion, (your boundaries and integrity points) ; Your talents (the ones you know about, those you suspect but are not sure of and those that have been hidden within you that want to come out) ; Your priorities what is most important to you, what is second, third, etc (Dueease, 2007).
*This process of discovery will take several months to accomplish because there is a lot there to unravel. The end result is that you will become the World’s Leading Expert on You! The biggest mystery in the world is not global warming, but is the mystery of ourselves. The reason the life coaching process has become so popular, so valuable, and has grown so much in only sixteen years is because life coaching assists people to discover themselves in such a short time, with so much more accuracy, and in such a supportive and confidential (secret) environment (Dueease, 2007).
Austin & Brain. (2008). Coaching and Counseling: What is the Connection? Found online 7/27/09 at http://www.julietaustin.com/article-coaching-counseling.html
Dueease, B. (2007). How Does Life Coaching Work? The Coach Connection Blog. Found online 7/27/09 at http://findyourcoach.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/8/27/3186956.html
Pawlowski, A. (2007). Getting Unstuck: Does Your Life Need a Life Coach? CNN.com. Found online 7/27/009 at http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/08/01/wlb.life.coaches/
Unilever Group. (2008). Do You Need a Life Coach? Found online 7/27/09 at http://www.executivehealthwealth.com/makinglifebetter.pdf
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