Wondering How Life Coaching Can Help You?
Life Coaching is a pretty broad term, and may even have a bad name depending on what you’ve heard or experienced.
So let’s clear up what Life Coaching is all about, and what its not – so you can make an informed decision about what’s right for you.
I love Life Coaching because it’s real, it’s genuine, and it’s driven by you – the client!
Life Coaching is about listening and letting you explore your challenges, goals, and pathways.
A competent Life Coach draws on their experience and has a deep toolbox of resources to help guide you.
Life Coaches come from all walks of life and are trained in all sorts of methods, and frameworks to help you.
Personally, I prefer the tried and trusted frameworks that have stood the test of time. Like the humanistic or relational approach, they are easy to understand and help clients in the easiest and most useful way.
Genuine Life Coaches are out to help you, and serve you and the wider community. Tapping into the best of psychology – and applying it. It’s molding the science in a way that is actionable and useful in your life.
It’s not a textbook or boring thesis, nor a way to diagnose. Coaches aren’t interested in that – They use evidence based frameworks, tools, stories, examples, and more, to help you.
This is where I feel frustrated and saddened at people using tarot, ‘mediums’, and crystals to ‘heal’ and somehow make a meaningful difference in clients lives.
It cant possibly make a difference, beyond naive blind belief. The only difference crystals or fortune telling can make is giving you blind hope. But it’s avoidance, a distraction. It’s false hope.
A reliable, honest Life Coach would call that out as avoidance. ‘Feeling good’ is different to ‘being better’. See the difference.
A Life Coach would ask, do you want to ‘blindly hope’ things get better, by dangling crystals about, or do you want to take a good, honest look at what you can do to change your circumstances, and put something tangible into action – even if that is just a mindset shift, to get what you want?
The latter is all about taking responsibility, and action, and owning your pathway. Sure, faith and positive belief is part of that, but the hard work, has to come first. Otherwise you’re only deluding yourself and lining the pockets of people who unfortunately don’t have your best interests at heart.
The kicker is, getting your palm read, or aligning your crystals is probably more fun and alot easier than doing the more difficult inner-work in real Life Coaching and personal development. It’s the easy way out. And boy oh boy en masse aren’t we lazy!
At the end of the day, the choice is yours, I’ll leave it up to you! Results will always be the measure.
In this post I’ve done my best to succinctly answer common questions about How Life Coaching Can Help You… Dive into it below.
Is Life Coaching Worth It?
Put simply, you get out what you put in. Depending on your unique circumstances, Life Coaching and be Life Changing.
Well that’s the whole point isn’t it. To change. To not be the same. To make a change for the better. The question here is, what is the ultimate outcome worth to you? What will it mean for you to achieve your goal.
From breaking a bad habit to leading a whole new healthy and empowering lifestyle?
From an unsatisfying job and dull outlook to a new satisfying career and life full of new exciting opportunities on the horizon?
From a place of fear and low-self worth, low confidence and second guessing yourself to a healthy mindset, confident, connected, happy and passionate about life, travel, friends and family?
Is Life Coaching worth it? – Only you can be the judge.
Or, another way to look at it – Ask “What’s this problem costing me?”
How Does Life Coaching Work?
Every coach is different. But generally speaking a discovery session or a single session of some kind is a great starting point.
In the online world a group session, or participating in a video series may be your first introduction to coaching, and your Life Coach.
Your coach may offer a series of single sessions, or have a program created that is well suited to your specific needs.
Programs and a tailored approach are a powerful way to help clients get results fast. They have the benefit of going deep quickly on a specific area of focus. Perfect for clients with a specific set of problems and goals.
The Coach and client relationship is built on trust and rapport. They are not best friends, but have a healthy respect for each other and have a special ‘working relationship’.
This allows the coach to hold the client accountable, to motivate them, encourage them, challenge them, support them, empathize, listen and champion them as required.
How to Choose a Life Coach?
Alignment is the word that comes to mind for me.
A coach who has ‘been there’ before you and has a lived experience or relatable experience similar to yours is going to be worth it’s weight in gold.
In some ways you can ‘try before you buy’ – by viewing the coaches videos and ebooks for example.
Most coaches will have a free chat or great value discovery session to see how they can help you. So the risk is pretty low in choosing the right coach for you.
Do you need a specialty coach or a general Life Coach?
The answer will depend on your unique needs, and you will have to weigh up the benefits. Generally speaking a Life Coach is able to help you in all of the key life areas.
Do I Need Life Coaching or Therapy / Counselling?
I have a whole article on the topic exploring the differences.
Can Life Coaching Help Depression?
Yes. Of course it can!
However Life Coaching is not out to treat depression. Though Life coaching can help prevent depression in the first place! So it can be a bit of a chicken / egg situation.
In any case, Life Coaching is going to be most effective when the clients Mental Health is stable. Having a solid foundation to work from is especially useful as you begin big life changes and challenging work.
A Life Coach will recommend you see a counsellor, or specialist if depression or other therapies are better suited to your immediate needs.
Can a Life Coach Help My Specific Problem?
Ask! There are so many coaches with their own lived experience, training and unique way of helping clients.
At the end of the day, we are all human, and we can all relate. So even if your specific problem is unique, a Life Coach is going to be able to empathise and understand what you are going through, at least on some level.
With the internet it’s never been easier to find a coach who specialises in certain areas, or has expereince in certain life situations.
Life Coaches also tend to have a network of other coaches and therpaists, so if they can’t help you, they are likely to know (or find someone) who can!
How Do I Get in Touch with Lee?
Interested in coaching or learning more about how I can help you?
Get in touch using the chat widget below, or check out the popular Discovery Session. It’s a great starting point.