Build a Happy Life: 5 Great Benefits of Working with a Life Coach

happy life benefits of working with a life coachDo you want to become more self-aware? Do you want to walk on the path to self-discovery and self-fulfillment? If yes, you’re not alone. One of the greatest joys of being human is being able to discover new facets of our personalities and carve out opportunities for improvement. Once you start this journey, you can eventually unlock your full potential and get a sense of self! And the best part is, we can tell you how to get there.

Everyone could use a little help from time to time. Whether you want to work on self-esteem building or need general guidance in your life, it can be a bit confusing to chalk out a path. You might feel lost or feel like there’s no way to accomplish your life goals, but we’re here to cut through the fog. It would help if you had a life coach.

What is Life Coaching?

Simply put, life coaching encompasses an extensive range of general and specific skillsets. It can vary from relationship coaching to self-help and even career coaching. Say you’re feeling a little demotivated at work. You can use life coaching to jump-start your path to motivation and a healthy sense of self.  Or perhaps you’ve wanted to start a new venture, but your self-doubt is creating problems. Life coaching can help you cut through the doubts and achieve that goal! So, whether you want to work on your self-esteem, create a healthy work-life balance, maintain successful relationships, find your greater purpose, or lead a happy life, life coaching is the way to go.

What’s the Difference Between a Life Coach and a Therapist?

Now, before we go any further, you should know that a life coach is not the same as a therapist. As licensed psychotherapist and board-certified Tess Brigham explains, “a coach looks at your present to help you create the future, while a therapist looks at your past to help you manage your present.” The clear distinction here is that a life coach takes a direct and action-oriented approach with clear goals, whereas a therapist looks more at what’s causing you to feel out of sorts.

What Does a Life Coach Do?

Since you now know what a life coach does not do, let’s talk about what they do. Think of yourself as a tennis player – feel free to pick any sport, really – and what that involves. Every player has a coach who guides them through a strategic plan so they can bring the trophy home (think Serena Williams!). Just as sports coaches study the playing field and devise strategies of action, life coaches study your current situation and assess what should be done. Of course, you should have some goals in mind when you approach a life coach. They will then give you a plan to work with, so you can accomplish whatever it is you need to do.

At this point, you might ask yourself what “the plan” really entails. Well, that’s the best bit about life coaching. It’s your plan, your way. A life coach is simply a trained and experienced professional who will improve your productivity in all areas of your life. There is a long list of roles that a life coach can take on, depending on the situation. Life coaches can be consultants, motivational speakers, great listeners and a lot more. Essentially, this is a person who will get you on the track to win at life, and they won’t let you down.

The Benefits of Working with a Life Coach

We have discussed the general reasons why anyone who wants a great life should start life coaching. Now, let’s take a deep dive into some specific benefits you would enjoy once you got a life coach:

#1: A more confident mindset

Lack of confidence is a prevalent problem that individuals can face. It doesn’t mean you’re weak nor does it mean you lack a true sense of self. If you feel like you need to build your confidence, you can sign up with a life coach and watch your life change! A life coach will help you create an empowered self-image, work on self-esteem building and, ultimately, better confidence. Healthy confidence is the key to several areas of life, whether they are professional or personal. A boost of confidence will only help you to achieve your other goals.

#2: A clearer outlook

You might feel like you want to change up your life without knowing which specific area needs attention. Here’s where a life coach comes in. They will help you unpack your objectives, getting unstuck from old energies in the process, and then hyper-focus on what you want. Your life coach will determine what is most vital to you, and they will then help you define the path you need to take. Once you achieve your clarity of purpose, a greater sense of self will prevail and you’ll be set for success.

#3: An assertive approach

Everyone struggles with self-doubt sometimes. It’s the internal enemy that festers and slows down our progress. You might have set a project for yourself only to find that your self-esteem issues are clouding your chance of success. Once you connect with a life coach, this will change. Your life coach will help you defeat the self-doubt demon, leaving you free to focus your energy on your ultimate vision.

#4: A result-oriented path

Too often we carve paths for ourselves that we’re determined to walk on but fail to follow through, our sense of self can be challenged and we need to focus on some self-esteem building. This situation occurs when there’s a disconnect between what you want to do and your ideas around how difficult it would be to take action. A life coach is an excellent addition to this dilemma because they can ensure that you implement the plan they have set out. Once you work with them, you will find it easy to apply your vision to your life!

#5: A recognition of potential

A lot of people feel like their lives can’t change. Or that it’s too late for them to achieve the specific goals they had in mind. Many times this is brought on by negative thought patterns, a negative sense of self, or self-sabotaging behaviors. A life coach can do wonders in this situation. Not only will they assure and motivate you, but they will also help you recognize your potential. No one can live in a state of stagnancy, and an experienced life coach will help you fulfill your true potential.

Schedule an Appointment to Work with a Life Coach Today!

Other blog posts of interests:

♦ Accountability & Working With A Professional Life Coach
 What to Expect: When Working With A Professional Life Coach
♦ 5 Ways Self-Sabotage Is Stopping You From Reaching Your Goals
♦ Secret Reasons Why Professional Coaches Are NOT Calling You Back

Accountability & Working With A Professional Life Coach

accountability professional life coach

Take a moment and imagine.

Imagine that your life and everything in it is going exactly the way you want it to.  You love your job, you love your personal life, you’re content and happy in every area!  Like many celebrities and Fortune 500 executives, to achieve this level of success, one of the tools in your success kit is probably working with a professional life coach.

You may be asking “so what makes working with a professional life coach so great?!”

One of the answers is accountability.

What does accountability from a professional life coach look like?

professional life coachA professional life coach is an independent third party person who will encourage you.  They will also hold you accountable for the steps to success you declared that you’re going to take.  Please understand that this isn’t the type of accountability that is exercised in a relationship with a parent, your boss, your spouse, or with a mental health professional.

A coach will partner with you to help you uncover fears and define goals. Share on X

A coach will partner with you to help you uncover fears and define goals. From whatever starting point is established, you both will work together to identify your path to success bit-by-bit.  Rome was not built in a day and this process will not happen overnight.  Effective partnership with a professional life coach will help you to chunk down whatever areas need to be addressed in your life — in a manner that resonates and challenges you.

For example, say you book a session with a professional life coach and want to move forward in your career.  Some of the areas that come up in your sessions include:

  • Level of education,
  • Professional appearance,
  • Self-confidence issues,
  • Effective upstream management (a.k.a. knowing how to manage your manager),
  • Communication, and
  • Clarity around what success looks like for the client.
Any change requires action on the part of the person who desires that change Share on X

Each of these areas will need a defined goal.  Each goal will then have accompanying action steps that need to be completed by you to reach the bigger goal.  Make no mistake, these are not goals and action steps defined by the professional life coach.  Any goals or action steps have been defined by you!  Some action steps may overlap.  However, whatever is determined by you and understood by your coach is what you will be held accountable for.  Remember, any change requires action on the part of the person who desires that change.

Let’s continue with our example…

So you decide the first area that you want to focus on is self-confidence.  A professional life coach will do two main things:

  • ask powerful questions that allow you to come up with a defined goal, and
  • dig deeper to provide you with the space to come up with action steps to meet that defined goal.

As you work with your coach and masterful questions are being posed, you have the revelation that your self-confidence issues are based on not being able to ask for what you want without feeling guilty. Bingo, you’ve identified the issue and know your goal is to have more self-confidence in work situations!

Some actions steps that you may come up with could be:

  • learning how to ask for what you want at home (i.e. help with chores from your kids or spouse),
  • learning how to say no in your personal life, and
  • starting to take more time for yourself each day.

Action steps like this will help you to build your self-confidence.

How is accountability between a client and a professional life coach implemented?

professional life coachThe short answer is through conversation.  At the start of a session, one of the many things your professional life coach will do is ask about the progress towards your goals.  Be honest and open at this moment.  There is no need to lie to yourself or your coach.  Sometimes when progress isn’t occurring it’s because the goal that you’ve selected really isn’t resonating with you at the moment.

And that’s ok!

Your professional life coach wants you to have the best possible outcome for you.  No fear or worry should be present and (trust me on this one) they won’t be mad at you.  Hesitation, procrastination, or lack of desire towards a stated goal is very revealing.  This usually means that you and your coach need to dig deeper.

Using the example from earlier this means that means

Conclusion

You’re already powerful and you’re already great.  Working with a professional life coach will only help you to unleash the potential that’s already there!  The only difference is that an independent 3rd party will be helping you to:

  • define your goals,
  • define the action steps necessary to meet your goals, and
  • asking questions around the completion of those action steps to ensure you stay on track.

Are you serious?  Do you think you’re ready to take the plunge and work with a professional life coach? Let me know in the comments below!

Other blog posts of interest:

Secret Reasons Why Professional Coaches Are NOT Calling You Back
Overcoming Self-Sabotage: 3 Steps to Take Today
What to Expect: When Working With A Professional Life Coach

What to Expect: When Working With A Professional Life Coach

professional life coach

Understand the role of a life coach

professional life coach - expectationOn the home page of my website, I try to give any prospective clients a clear picture of what a life coach does. We aren’t counselors, therapists, psychologists, or teachers. The goal is to be clear upfront so there aren’t any unrealistic expectations. Human nature dictates that when we go to a professional for help, that they are going to give us the answers.

That is not how coaching works.

A professional life coach doesn’t give you the answer.  What we do is partner with you to come up with the best solutions for you.  You know yourself better than anyone else, a professional life coach helps you to uncover those best solutions by asking powerful questions.

Ready to partner with someone who will help to make lasting changes in your life? Then schedule a Discovery Session with one of our professional life coaches today!

Expect to be held accountable

professional life coach - accountabilityYourdictionary.com defines accountability (noun) as “taking or being assigned responsibility for something that you have done or something you are supposed to do”.

A professional life coach is not your parent, your boss, or your warden. What we are is an accountability partner who will help you stay on track with your goals. Accountability is one of the main reasons that I’ve seen for why clients don’t reach their goals. Getting unstuck is a very common goal of many clients when they first work with a professional coach.  Once they get past being stuck, then it’s time to move toward their actual goals.

A professional life coach is not your parent, your boss, or your warden. Share on X

Expect to be challenged

professional life coach - challengedDon’t let the word “challenge” scare you. The way in which a professional life coach challenges you is always three things:

  • positive,
  • approachable, and
  • respectful.

What we do is challenge any current negative or non-productive beliefs that you have.  These beliefs can be about yourself or a particular situation. The goal is to stretch your current beliefs or energy past your current situation and perceived limitations.

Don’t believe you can get a better job? What about that belief is contributing to your current situation? Or Don’t believe you have any self-control when it comes to food? How has that belief contributed to your current habits?  Getting to the core of those thoughts and beliefs is an important part of your success. You live your life from a point of those thoughts and beliefs.

You live your life from a point of your thoughts and beliefs so make sure they are positive. Share on X

Conclusion

If you want to experience change, a professional life coach has the job of partnering with you to effectively challenge and confront limiting or self-sabotaging thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.  They aren’t propelling you towards your success. Making changes and progress can be hard and won’t happen overnight. However, you don’t have to do it alone. If you’re ready and sincere, start working with a professional life coach today!

So what are your feelings about working with a professional life coach?  Do you think it’s a good fit for you and your situation?  Let me know!

Like, comment, share and subscribe!

Some other blog posts of interest:

Accountability & Working With A Professional Life Coach

 Am I Uncoachable?!

3 Steps to Getting Unstuck

Secret Reasons Why Professional Coaches Are NOT Calling You Back

Overcoming Self-Sabotage: 3 Steps to Take Today

Secret Reasons Why Professional Coaches Are NOT Calling You Back

professional coaching pinAs a professional coach, the success of my business depends on retaining current clients as well as getting new prospective clients.  Same as any service business.  For assistance in getting new potential client perspectives, I’m registered on several websites that help service professionals do just that (i.e. Thumbtack, Bark, etc.).  However, there are a few things that will make me hit “PASS” very quickly.  Since people go to these service sites with the best intentions and expectations, I wanted to give prospective clients some insight as to why they are being overlooked.

The request is too vague

profession cooaching vague details

Adding a simple sentence like “I need to get my life together” is something coaches loathe.  It sends the message that the prospective client is someone who is unclear about where they want to start.  This comes across as jumbled and scattered and no professional coach wants to deal with that!

Any person making a request through these service websites should complete the additional details section.  They should be meaningful details about themselves.  1-3 sentences are sufficient.

The information has red flags

professional coaching red flag

Just like when a person reads an online dating profile and there are red flags that go off about a person, with a coaching request, similar mental warnings occur.  Words and expressions such as:

  • “depression”,
  • “depressed”,
  • “mental health”,
  • “suicidal thoughts”, and
  • “have no hope” are a no-go.

These are red flags for professional coaches and many reputable coaches will not contact a prospective client with such words in their details.  What these words are telling the coach up front is that the prospect has deeper emotional and mental issues that need to be handled by a qualified and certified therapist or counselor.  As I explain on my home page, coaches are not mental health professionals.

Only open to face-to-face professional coaching

This one really bugs me, especially for prospective clients who have never experienced professional coaching.  First, those who want to employ the services of a professional coach need to understand there are two fundamental reasons many professional coaches do not do face-to-face coaching:

#1: Safety

As I stated earlier, professional coaches are not mental health professionals.  That being said, based strictly upon our training as coaches we do not have the tools to deal with the erratic and potentially dangerous behavior of a prospective client who may not want to hear what we have to say.

One of the first things I learned in my ICF-approved professional coach training was “when in doubt, refer them out”.

Here’s a quick scenario: A professional coach responds to a coaching request on one of the services I mentioned earlier.  The prospect wants to meet face-to-face so they agree on a great public location where there is some privacy.  Like a public park.  So they meet, exchange pleasantries, and sit on a bench to chat.  It becomes apparent to the professional coach very quickly that this prospect:

  • is better suited for therapy,
  • is not be a good fit for coaching, and
  • has some serious anger and impulse control issues.

Now, this coach is in a tight spot.  For the exact reasons they have identified, they don’t feel comfortable (or safe) telling the prospect that they will not take them on as a client.

So my question is, why would a professional coach put themselves in this situation?!

The answer is simple.  Most of us wouldn’t.  I do not do face-to-face coaching to avoid the very scenario described above.  When a prospect books a session with me, it’s either for a phone or Zoom/Skype session.  This makes it more comfortable and convenient for us both and certainly a safer set of circumstances for myself.

Please note this is just how I see things.  Every professional coach is different and needs to do what works best for their business.

#2: Cost

professional coaching costThe cost of traveling to see a prospective client is something that many people don’t consider when they state that they only want to meet with a professional coach “face-to-face”.  This to me translates as a prospect stating that they expect me to take on unnecessary costs (i.e. travel, gas, and commute time) with no guarantee that a paid session will be booked.

This is a bit of a red flag and gives me the impression that a prospect is not serious about wanting professional coaching services.

Details are too exacting with “dos” and “don’ts”

prospective client demanding

I have seen this scenario way too many times to count and it always makes me chuckle.  A prospective client will put in a request for a professional coach through a service site and in their details, there is a long list of “dos” and “don’ts” for the professional coach and “wills” and “won’ts” for themselves.  I smile and instantly click pass on such prospects.

The reason is simple.  If a prospective client has already decided what they will and won’t do and what a professional coach needs to do or not do for them, then this is not a person who is serious about wanting to make positive changes in their life.  Now, to be clear, I am not talking about anything to do with:

  • professional behavior,
  • ethical standards, or
  • basic respect.

What I am referring to is a prospective client who basically wants someone to agree with their current behavior and not effectively challenge it.  The impression a professional coach gets is that this prospective client has control and accountability issues (which is also a red flag).

I hope this was insightful for readers and makes it a little more clear as to why those seeking professional coaching, personal trainer, or other personal services may not be getting any responses.

Comment, share, like, subscribe, and (if you’re ready for some professional coaching yourself) book a Discovery Session!
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Am I Uncoachable?!

Am I Uncoachable

As a life coach, I get this question often.

If this is something that you have asked yourself, this short audio post may help you figure out if life coaching sessions are a good fit for you!

See what I have to say about this topic.

Other blog posts of interests:

Accountability & Working With A Professional Life Coach
What to Expect: When Working With A Professional Life Coach
5 Ways Self-Sabotage Is Stopping You From Reaching Your Goals
Secret Reasons Why Professional Coaches Are NOT Calling You Back

Ready to work together?  Great!  Sign up for a Discovery Session today!

Schedule Appointment