A Life Coach is a professional who guides their clients in improving their health, relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives. In other words it affords an opportunity to “turn over a new leaf”. Many times we need to hit the reset button to change behavior in a more productive way. A professional life coach can help to clarify individual goals, identify obstacles serving as barriers, and invoke positive change in one’s life that supports growth to successfully navigate through life. It is taking a client from feeling stuck to moving them into their future by tapping into their internal motivation.
Life coaching is NOT therapy. Therapy involves looking into a client’s past to resolve issues and is ingrained in illness, whereas coaching places the focus on the present and is entrenched in wellness that is aligned with a client’s strengths, thoughts, and desires. Coaching addresses a person’s belief system to attain their desires while therapy is based in psychology and delves more into addressing a client’s emotional needs.
Life coaching utilizes a motivational and behavioral change approach to support people in setting and attaining enhanced goals while moving them towards improved well-being and personal functioning. Jarosz (2016) described the life coach as a “thought partner” assisting their client in steering a course that focuses on the future as opposed to being stuck in their past. Life coaching is not about “fixing” the client but instead taking a holistic approach to efficiently and effectively improve future personal outcomes by providing tools that enhance insight and provide a sense of empowerment.
Utilizing a life coach helps you to identify your strengths that are then aligned with your desires, emotions, and behaviors to steer a course for personal success and goal attainment. Life coaching also supports positive thinking as positive thoughts help to bring about positive outcomes. While we cannot control negative perceptions from creeping into our thoughts, we place great focus on being intentional in our positive thinking to promote a greater sense of energy, well-being, and happiness.
Jarosz, J. (2016). What is life coaching? An integrative review of the evidence-based literature. Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 14(1), 1-56