A life coach is a wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches to aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives.
Life coaches can help you clarify your goals, identify the obstacles holding you back, and then come up with strategies for overcoming each obstacle. In creating these strategies, life coaches target your unique skills and gifts. By helping you to make the most of your strengths, life coaches provide the support you need to achieve long-lasting change.
Life coaches work with functioning individuals who are looking to create a pathway to reaching set goals. Whether it is work, personal, or family, coaches act as unbiased thinking partners and hold their clients accountable by typically having weekly or bi-weekly one-hour sessions.
The coaching process addresses specific personal projects, business successes, general conditions, and transitions in the client’s personal life, relationships, or profession by examining what is going on right now, discovering what your obstacles or challenges might be, and choosing a course of action to make your life be what you want it to be.
One of the main benefits of working with a life coach is the ability to gain a fresh, informed perspective on problems that you face. In addition to offering new insight into challenges, a life coach can help you to zero in on negative patterns that could be standing in the way of your success.
Many people view working with a life coach as a means of bridging the gap between your current circumstances and the life you’d like to lead. The following are some of the positive outcomes that could result from joining forces with a life coach:
- Confidence, Self Worth & Self Esteem
- Loving Relationships That Work
- Career Change – Creating Workplaces That Work
- The Mastery of Balance – Juggling a Life
- Self Care – Getting Your Own Needs Met
- Living Your Purpose
- Hot Buttons – Managing Anger, Upsets, Frustration, and Stress
- Managing Grief, Loss, Sadness, and Change
- Connection Parenting
- Self & Identity – Surviving the Oppressive Over-Culture
- Addiction and sobriety coaching
- Business, executive, and leadership coaching
- Career coaching
- Dating and relationship coaching
- Divorce coaching
- Family life coaching
- Health and wellness coaching
- Life skills coaching
- Mental health coaching
- Spirituality coaching
Therapists and other mental health professionals focus on healing, treating mental health conditions, and helping people work through trauma and other issues from their past.
(While working with a life coach may help you to deal with certain unresolved issues, life coaches cannot treat mood disorders, anxiety disorders, addiction, or any other mental health condition).
- Don’t expect immediate results. Your life coach can help you make plans, address problems, and work toward achieving your goals, but it is important to remember that these things take time. It may be helpful if you set some short-term and long-term goals to work toward.
- Consider if your coach is suited to your needs. Not all life coaches take the same approach to a problem, so what you get out of the process may have a lot to do with the type of relationship you have with your coach. Look for a coach that is suited to working with your personality type and approach to solving problems.
- Don’t see a life coach to address serious mental health issues. If you are experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition, such as depression or anxiety, you should talk to your doctor or therapist to discuss your treatment options. Life coaches can offer advice that can improve your well-being, but that does not mean they can provide mental health treatment.