Author: Dr. Magdalena Battles / Source: Lifehack
Life coaching is not just a fad. It is a useful and practical service industry that is here to stay.
Life coaching is a life changing partnership that helps people reach their potential. It is not counseling. Here is an easy explanation to differentiate between counseling and life coaching:
Counseling helps you deal with major life problems, such as depression, divorce, and death of a loved one. Whereas, life coaching helps you realize your goals and dreams, such as getting a job promotion, writing a book, or achieving a weight loss goal.
Every life coaching practice is different, but the premise of life coaching is for an individual to partner with a coach so they can receive counsel and encouragement to achieve their personal and/or career goals.
Before I married my husband and had children, I had a life coaching practice for several years. I also personally use a life coach. We have an hourly call once a month.
Life coaching works. I am stating this not only because I have seen it in my own clients’ successes, but it has worked for me personally.
While these are some signs that you need a life coach, here are more reasons why you need to find a life coach today:
1. Find Your Life Purpose
We all have the innate desire to be special and important. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to be on a stage or receive a standing ovation. It means that we each have an intrinsic desire to have a life that is of meaning. To be of value to this world in some way is the cry of our soul.
We each have a purpose in this world, but for most of us, it is not exactly clear what that purpose may be. A life coach can help you discover this in yourself.
For many, we have life experiences that shape and mold who we have become. We can use these experiences, both good and bad, to find our meaning in the world.
A life coach can help you unlock this potential for meaningful purpose. They can help you process your past and find the meaning and purpose for your life. It can be something positive.
For example, you may have twice performed CPR on strangers who had medical emergencies. You saved their lives and this left a lasting impact on you as a person that you felt within your soul and being. After you talked with your life coach for several sessions, you may decide that your job at a hardware store is not your purpose. You have come to realize that you react well in emergency situations and you find great meaning in helping others.
Your experience of saving those two individuals by your quick thinking and actions left an impression on you. You now realize that you want to become an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician).
You have found that your purpose is to save lives in real emergency situations. The next step with your life coach is working on discovering and creating a plan of action that will get you to the goal of being an EMT.
You may love your career, but you don’t feel that is your end purpose. Perhaps you have a yearning for something more meaningful. Your life coach can help you discover that purpose even if it means staying in your current career.
Also, it should be noted that it doesn’t necessarily need to be a positive experience that drives your purpose. For example, perhaps you are a widow because your spouse committed suicide. It happened a number of years ago and you have healed and found that telling your story to others now has helped a number of individuals and families.
You discover in your conversations with your life coach that you would like to channel your story and experience into helping others. This is your purpose. Your life coach can help you discuss what kind of options are out there and what you may be thinking.
In the end, after weeks of discussion and researching possible options, you have decided that you will become involved in your local suicide prevention organization. You find that there is a very active local chapter with opportunities for speaking.
Your life coach helps you set goals including meeting with the chapter president so you can help with the organization’s goal of suicide prevent. The end result is that you meet with the president and you asked to speak at their next public event about suicide prevention.
You are able to share your story along with the warning signs and how families can help their loved one who may be suicidal. Your purpose has clearly come into focus and fruition because of your life coaching partnership.
2. Unlock the Answers Within Yourself
Are you your perfect self? Have you achieved everything you want to be in life? Have you run out of things to improve in your life?
If you answered no to any of the above questions, then you can benefit from hiring a life coach.
Even if you don’t know what you want to improve just yet, or you don’t know what purpose you have in this world, a life coach can help you discover these things in yourself.
A life coach does not have the answers for you. However, they can help you unlock the answers in yourself.
Sometimes, you don’t even know it is in you, until the right questioning and person comes along. That right person is likely a life coach if you can’t put your finger on your future and what you want.
Life coaches are trained to question. They are not advice givers. Instead, they know the right questions and how to ask them in a way that gets you thinking introspectively.
They are positive, encouraging, and open to your ideas, thoughts, and their desire is to unlock the answers within you for yourself. They don’t want to provide you with your answers. They can guide you, but truly the answers lie within yourself.
A life coach will partner with you to help you find the answers in you about yourself, even if you don’t know or believe that you have the answers. You do. You just have to trust the process and trust yourself.
3. Develop Steps to Improve Yourself
Once you know what it is that you want to achieve and you have unlocked your passion, desires, and hopes, it’s then that the work begins.
Your life coach can help you achieve your goals, whether they are self improvement or career related. They partner with you to help you develop a plan of action. Your life coach will work with you to develop a step-by-step plan in achieving your goals.
For example, imagine that you have decided that your goal is to write a children’s book about overcoming cancer. You made this decision because you overcame cancer as a child and you want to help other children with cancer have hope in their bleak situation. You also have the desire to create an awareness among children about cancer and its affects.
Your life coach will likely ask you questions about how long you think it will take you to write the book, how you plan to obtain illustrations, and thoughts about publishing options. Those discussions will help you brainstorm the process of everything it takes (that you know) to write and publish a children’s book.
From there, you set goals to achieve before your next call. For…
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