What is Life Coaching?
Life Coaching is a process that can help you or your group
set and achieve your goals. The life coaching process
provides you with many tools, including:
- A fresh perspective that will help you explore new, creative ideas or directions in a safe environment.
- A clarification of your needs and desires, and the issues that might be blocking success.
- Encouragement and support to think "outside of the box", to try something new, and accountability to keep going when things are challenging.
- A clear structure for establishing reasonable goals and a process for measuring and evaluating results.
The International Coach Federation or (ICF) says that the role of a Professional
Life Coach is to:
"provide an ongoing partnership designed to help (their) clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Life Coaches help people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.Life Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client... The life coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has."
What Life Coaching is not...
Life Coaching should not be confused with counseling or consulting.
- Consulting takes place when an expert in a certain field is called in to share their opinions and use their skills in a given industry. For example, a legal consultant might be called upon to work with a law firm.
- Life Coaches assist clients in setting and achieving goals, and evaluating their success. A Professional Life Coach will help bring out the gifts, talents, and abilities of the client to achieve results.
- Counseling tends to focus on analyzing past events and human emotions in order to achieve healing.
- Life Coaching is oriented toward moving forward by finding and fulfilling life's purpose, setting and achieving goals. Someone has said "Therapy is like helping someone with a broken leg to walk again. Life Coaching is helping them to run the four minute mile."
