The What and What Nots of Life Coaching

Success is the goal— and there is a way to ensure taking the right path to it.

Life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives.

This article will help you if you are looking into trying coaching certification programs to help you become an accredited coach.

Articles Include:

What Coaching is?
Help in Creating and Achieving Goals
Maximizing Personal Development
Navigation Transition in Life
What Coaching is Not:
Coaching is about advising
Coaching is counselling and/or therapy
A coach will tell you what to do with life
Having a coach makes life simple

What is coaching

When I first started working I had a lot that I wanted to do. But it seemed like no matter how I put effort into my work, it was just not enough to be considered as a step to getting the life that I aspire to have.

A friend recommended me to attend with him in a coaching session and we’ll see whether we would like it. So I did. Just minutes after the program started, it changed my life. I now wanted to either learn how to be a coach or maybe get a coach myself.

Coaching as I learned is a client-partnership process that aims in maximizing one’s personal and professional potentials.
It can be said as guidance or facilitation of thought processes to achieve a certain goal.

And what might that goal be? Success and growth. Coaching is essential for:

• Help in creating and achieving goals

• Maximizing personal developments

• Navigating transitions in life.

Help in Creating and Achieving Goals

Achieving success is most likely what everyone’s goal is. But what kind of success exactly? There was a lot that I wanted to do but I didn’t know which to prioritize.

Can’t you just ask yourself what kind of success you want? Of course, you can, BUT most of the time talking with someone else helps you process your thoughts. But why can’t that “someone else” be just your spouse, friend, or relative?

The key is that: Coaches are trained to guide you in specifying what you want by asking the right questions.

It is when you have answered the right questions that you can now have a clear vision of what you want and how you could make the right actions to find that path to your goal.

Maximizing Personal Developments

Before going into personal developments, your coach would first look into your needs, beliefs, values, and strengths. Certified coaching can help you evaluate yourself without going into changing anything within you, but instead working on what’s within you to achieve what you have in your vision.

But can’t you do it alone? Well again you can, BUT think of this: remember how sometimes you have little faith in your skills that you pass up on opportunities? Will you be able to pinpoint your actual needs and not cover it with another denial?

The key point here is that: Coaches are trained to look into a client’s strength that might be easily overlooked. They are also trained in addressing barriers to achieving goals.

An example of a barrier would be the existence of conflict between our desires and value systems. We usually depend on these values and belief systems for guidance.

From the certified coaching program, I learned that sometimes these belief systems and values which have been with us (and was learned from childhood), most of the time can no longer serve us in adulthood and only acts as hindrances to our personal developments.

My coach helped me address the apparent existence of those values and belief systems but he emphasized that it is not their function to change the client’s beliefs and values. They only aim for the client to define these and be aware of these to help themselves eventually.

Navigating Transitions in Life

A life coach can help a person process the changes and shifts that they may be going through or will have to go through. They can serve as a guide but not influence.

But can’t you do it alone? You can. But from experience, it feels lighter when there is someone that could help.

Coaches are not therapists, they are only there to help a person process their views and feeling, to vocalize it for them, and to point areas that can be used for improvement.

A person who is going through a rough patch in life that affects and disrupts their everyday work and life might need a therapist, not a coach. Help should be sought as coaches can only help identify what is present, and how it can help one’s future— coaching is not about looking at the past and identifying dysfunction.

WHAT COACHING IS NOT

The following are the common misconceptions about coaching:

Coaching is About Advising

For a time I also thought that a coaching profession is just something as easy as advising someone. But I was wrong. What I experienced was that they never really told me to do this and that, what I would consider doing was always based according to the situation. Like for example, we look at my present situation, look at the actions and ways that I could do about it, but these actions are also from the perspective of a goal I also have in mind.

Coaching IS NOT about imposing knowledge or information to clients.

Coaching is looking at the present and helping the clients think about how they can align their actions to the goals they set. It is not about advice, it is only vocalizing the thoughts that came from them, it is about helping a person FIND THEIR WAY forward.

Coaching is Counseling And/Or Therapy

Yes, coaching is different from the two mentioned. Counseling involves the diagnosis and finding a way change behavior and thinking, coaching does not change behavior and thinking, it helps a person be aware of their behavior and thinking by articulating the things that have come from them. Therapy, on the other hand, deals with the disease of the body and mind, coaching helps with issues of self-esteem and easing inabilities of achieving goals.

Coaching can recommend seeking counseling and or therapy and is the only way that it can be associated with the two— and nothing more than that.

A Coach Will Tell you What to do With Life

Now, this is the most common misconception. AND NO. A coach will not tell you what to do with your life. A coach will help you reflect on what you want, they can help you find the keys but you will have to drive on your own.

What my coach taught me was the core of commitment— which is accountability. I realized that they can only lay out for you what you have at the moment, help you find the needs you have to resolve, and aid in specifying a vision for your future but they will never advise on the decisions that you would have to take. It would have to be you. You are leading your own life, they are just merely guiding you by resonating your thoughts, and words.

A coach will not have power over you, but instead, they give and teach you how to use that power over yourself.

Having a Coach Makes Life Simple

Life coach training does not involve doing things for a client, it is on us who would have to take action. They can only assist but they are never about doing it for you.

If in case you want to try being a coach, you will learn that this profession is also about challenging your clients’ ideas of themselves. Yes, you will echo their words and thoughts, but you will be taught skills to challenge their views so they see a new perspective, a room for possibilities. This is important especially if their current belief and values are the hindrance to reach the goal they want.

An advantage of enrolling in Life coaching certification programs is that it can help you become accredited and not only can you be that ‘someone else’ for others that would help them towards their path to success but you can also learn for yourself— so you no longer need to seek and hire one.