Personal Life Coaching

A life coach helps to compassionately dislodge a person’s way of thinking, feeling and behaving in order to achieve personal and/or professional growth and development. As a person’s awareness develops they are able to find freedom through the proactive engagement in their life.

Coaching isn’t about solving a client’s problems. Coaching is a partnership where the coach works with the client in a creative process using tools and techniques that equip the client to ultimately solve their own problems as and when they come up. We want to leave a client with the ability to self-correct and self-generate.

Coaching and therapy are both wonderful support mechanisms.

With life coaching, a client will work with a coach who is not a healthcare professional to clarify goals and create an action plan to achieve their desired result. There is a focus on future progress with the goal being to leave a client with the ability to self-correct and self-generate after an agreed number of sessions. The idea is to help a client get ‘unstuck’.

With therapy (counselling or psychotherapy), a client will work with a healthcare professional to diagnose and resolve problematic beliefs, behaviors, relationships and feelings with a focus on past traumas and issues. Therapy is usually a long-term process which can last for years.

Coaching and therapy work to enable clients to make positive changes in their lives and become more productive. A client can engage in therapy or coaching or both.

See the below diagram – note where areas are specific and where they overlap.

People seek out a coach for any number of reasons. Some common reasons include:

• Life transition
• Career move
• Personal development
• Decision making
• Goal setting
• Big picture idea but lack detailed planning
• Self-doubt
• Stress management

The human conundrum:

• I feel… stuck, lost, need direction, stressed
• I want to make a change!
• I don’t know where to start?
• Now that I’ve started it’s so hard to stick to the plan!!

We are creatures of habit! We start off strong but when there’s a bump in the road we revert to old/bad habits.

A life coach creates a safe space to explore, question and create achievable action plans. The coach then supports the client and acts as an accountability partner throughout the developmental journey.

Growth and change can be daunting and scary as they require us to push outside of our comfort zones. A coach has the skills to actively listen, ask powerful questions and set achievable challenges to support the client’s learning and development.

Support is a fundamental pillar of change and no matter what the goal of the client, the coach can fulfill the support and accountability role to make the journey easier.