What Is A Life Coach?
Discovering Your Best Self: Understanding Life Coaches
Seeking more purpose, fulfillment, and balance? Eager to set ambitious goals and finally achieve them? A professional life coach may be the key. But in a sea of health gurus and self-help strategies, what exactly is a life coach and could working with one change your life?
What is a Life Coach?
A life coach is a professional who partners with clients to catalyze personal, professional and interpersonal growth. By championing self-awareness, they inspire clients to realize their best selves. Life coaches equip clients with frameworks, accountability and support to overcome deep-rooted obstacles and design lives abundant in meaning. Instead of providing therapy or advice, life coaches motivate clients to identify the possibilities within themselves.
The Origins of Coaching
While formal life coach training and certification is now standardized, early forms of self-improvement coaching emerged centuries ago. Ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates used probing question and answer sessions to unveil truths. Spiritual leaders prayed with followers to reveal inner wisdom and direction from a higher power. Today, influencers like Oprah continue sharing frameworks for self-discovery and actualization.
Empowerment coaching has existed for generations, but the formal field coalesced in the 1970s as psychology intersected with business consulting. As coaches integrated tenets of adult development, positive psychology and behavioral change theory into their practice, life coaching as its own niche profession crystalized in the 1990s. The field continues to professionalize; most coaches now complete accredited programs to gain credentials.
The Core Principles
Though coaching techniques evolve, several key principles anchor the profession:
Whole Life Perspective: Coaches take a holistic approach across all life domains – personal, professional, physical, emotional, financial, spiritual domains interchangeably shape each client’s happiness.
Client Centered Path: The client sets their own vision, goals and path forward while the coach provides targeted support. Coaches meet clients where they are emotionally and don’t impose judgements.
Forward Focused Action: Dwelling on the past is limited without applying lessons learned to the present. Coaches motivate action today to manifest tomorrow’s dreams.
Intrinsic Motivation: True motivation must come from within. Coaches strengthen clients’ self-confidence, courage and inner drive.
The Coaching Process
Accredited coaches design their services based on proven frameworks ensuring clients progress through key growth phases:
- Discover: Coaches use assessments, active listening and self-reflection to understand clients’ history, strengths, obstacles, values and vision.
- Strategize: Coaches map personalized strategies to target clients’ priorities and aspirations identified in discovery.
- Equip: Coaches provide tools like journals, mantras, or organizational systems to actualize strategies. They build emotional resilience.
- Launch: Clients implement initial action steps; coaches provide structure and accountability.
- Review: Coaches and clients review outcomes, challenges and needed refinements to the plan through consistent meetings.
- Achieve: With ongoing support, clients fully actualize goals and form lifelong positive habits.
Benefits of Working with a Life Coach
Partnering with a coach trained in behavioral science, human development and motivation techniques yields numerous benefits:
- Gain clarity and direction to feel more fulfillment day-to-day
- Build self-confidence by identifying strengths and gifts
- Develop resilience and mental wellness to counter stress
- Receive accountability to make consistent progress
- Learn frameworks to unpack obstacles holding you back
- Obtain an objective perspective from someone committed to your success
By championing self discovery in a judgment-free space, a life coach illuminates clients’ full potential. Small steps compound over time through coaching to yield enormous transformation.
Types of Life Coaches
All life coaches aim to unlock clients’ best lives, but specialize in different areas:
- Career Coaches help clients discover professional purpose, pivot roles, ace interviews, gain leadership skills and more.
- Health and Wellness Coaches inspire clients to improve fitness, nutrition, mental health, work-life balance through incremental goals.
- Relationship Coaches strengthen clients’ romantic connections, family ties and social bonds through improved communication techniques.
- Spiritual Coaches guide clients to discern core values, uncover meaning, and deepen faith practices.
- Finance Coaches empower clients to reduce debt, budget thoughtfully, invest profitably and achieve financial freedom.
The niche allows deeper insights, but coaches often address interconnected domains too. Finding an accredited coach whose background and style resonates with your needs is key to the process.
Invest in Your Best Self
Professional coaching elicits lasting transformation by turning fleeting motivation into concrete results over time. Through consistent self-discovery and small wins compounding, clients define and boldly live out dreams once seeming impossible. They gain the clarity, confidence and inner strength to keep growing towards their highest selves long after coaching ends. By courageously taking the first step to engage a coach’s guidance, you invest in your best possible life.