HOW LIFE COACHING WORKS AND HOW IT CAN BENEFIT YOU TODAY
Everyone is familiar with coaching: Our favorite world-class athletes wouldn’t be where they are today without exceptional sports coaching. Many CEOs, entrepreneurs, business leaders, executives and business professionals would not be as successful without business coaching. But there’s another type of coaching that sounds more foreign to many people: life coaching.
WHAT IS A LIFE COACH?
The life coach definition is someone professionally trained to help you maximize your full potential and reach your desired results. They are like a supportive friend and a trusted adviser rolled into one. They’re someone who will push you to identify your goals, hold you accountable and provide encouragement throughout your journey to become a better version of yourself.
Life coaches complete extensive training that teaches them how to ask the right questions, communicate effectively and get to the heart of your needs and desires in life. They’re often trained in a specific coaching method, like Tony Robbins’ Results Coaching. Do your research about different methods and the training hours that are required – not all coaching programs are created equally.
WHAT DOES A LIFE COACH DO?
A life coach encourages and counsels clients on a range of professional and personal issues. Life coaching is distinct from giving advice, consulting, counseling, mentoring and administering therapy. You hire a coach to help you with specific professional projects, personal goals and transitions.
A coach helps you grow by analyzing your current situation, identifying limiting beliefs and other potential challenges and obstacles you face and devising a custom plan of action designed to help you achieve specific outcomes in your life.
The relationship between a client and their life coach is more like a creative partnership than a one-way street. From your first meeting, you will:
Identify, clarify and create a vision for what you want
Use your coach’s expertise to modify goals as needed
Encourage self-discovery and growth
Nurture and evoke strategies and a plan of action based on what fits best with your goals, personality and vision
Foster accountability to increase productivity
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF LIFE COACHING?
The exact life coach definition and the benefits you will experience depend on what your specific goals are. Some of the most common areas clients improve while working with a life coach include:
Identifying goals and defining a vision for success
Creating professional and personal growth plans
Identifying limiting beliefs
Working toward financial independence
Obtaining work/life balance
Learning to communicate more succinctly and effectively
Fostering more powerful connections professionally and personally
Improving relationships and communication skills
Getting promotions
Achieving weight loss and/or fitness goals
Starting a new business or growing an existing one
Managing an important life or business transition
Articulating core values
Ultimately life coaching allows you to maximize your potential in any area. Research shows that coaching and training is a far more effective combination than training alone. Training alone can increase productivity by 22.4%, but when combined with weekly life coaching, productivity is boosted by 88%
HOW DOES LIFE COACHING WORK?
Now that we know the answer to the question “What is a life coach?,” let’s get into more detail about what exactly you can expect. Life coaching typically works in a specific, structured format, although your coach will ultimately work with you to create a custom action plan.
First, you will work with your life coach to define your vision. Your coach will ask you questions like:
What is it that truly drives you? What’s at the basis of your goals? After answering that question, you’ll work alongside your coach to identify barriers and limiting beliefs that have been holding you back. What negative things have you been telling yourself? How have these patterns gotten in your way and how can you move past them? Finally, you and your coach will set challenging, but achievable, goals. Your coach will ensure that you are not settling for limited goals or being too negative as you assess your position by helping you calibrate your long- and short-term goals against your core values.
Assessing your current position helps you and your life coach measure your progress and identify current and potential obstacles. After this important step, you and your coach will review your resources and all courses of action available to you in order to create a plan of action. You’ll then decide which specific steps you will take and when you will take them. You will prepare for potential obstacles and decide how to cope with them. At this time, you will ensure that each step supports your end goals, while your coach will help you stay on track and monitor your progress. If your plan needs modification at any point, your coach will help you with this as well, which will empower you to stay committed.
WHO SHOULD CONSIDER WORKING WITH A LIFE COACH?
Anyone who wants to do more tomorrow than they can do today should consider hiring a life coach. Life coaching clients are typically ambitious people who want to improve their output and see more growth – and they want to do those things quickly and to the best of their ability.
All kinds of people use life coaches, including actors, business leaders, creatives, entrepreneurs, executives, homemakers, managers, professionals, small business owners and start-up pioneers. These people all identify a gap between where they are and where they want to be, and turn to coaching when they want help reaching their goals.
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