You've Taken The First Step, Now Let Me Introduce Myself To You
Gary M. Fink, MA QMHP
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As a Professional Mental Health Counselor and Life Coach for over 19 years, I have dedicated my life to the betterment of individuals, families, and various organizations. After graduating from SUNY Stonybrook with a Bachelors Degree in psychology I proceeded to Hofstra University to earn my Masters Degree in Psychology and systems theory. I have been featured on radio talk shows and have trained many therapists and professionals along the way.
My approach with my clients is Solution Focused. Our initial consultation is an opportunity to make sure that we are the right fit for each other. Just because somebody has a degree and experience, does not mean that they are necessarily the best fit for you. You must feel comfortable, confidant and willing to do some work. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. We will continuously address progress made. I do not enable my clients but rather encourage and challenge them to take the steps needed to reach their goals. You can expect to have a positive experience. |
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What is a Life Coach?
A life coach is a professional who helps you reach a goal or make a change in your life
A life coach is a professional who helps you reach a goal or make a change in your life. They help you to get out of your head and start taking action in the areas of your life that you wish to change. A life coach guides you through the process by asking questions that help you evaluate and decide which steps to take in order to reach your goal or make an important change. Then they play the important roles of motivator, strategist and accountability partner. Their goal is to help you reach your goal in the most efficient, effective and rewarding way possible. Life coaches are more than just a counselor or consultant, they step you through the achievement process from the beginning to the end, from the planning stage all the way through the execution stages.
Motivator
A life coach is a source of motivation and inspiration that gives you the push you need to reach your full potential. You might hire a life coach for similar reasons that you would hire a personal trainer for. You may already be fit, but have specific goals that need more guidance and pushing to in order to accomplish them, or maybe you are overweight or feeling sluggish and know you need motivation and encouragement from outside of yourself to make a significant change.
Life coaches are like personal trainers for your life goals. They have the professional training and mindset that is needed to coach you towards your dream life. They are with you every step of the way, helping you find ways to stay on track and motivated to accomplish those goals and so much more.
Strategist
Effective strategizing is something a life coach is really good at helping you with. One of the first things they do when they meet with you is to ask specific questions about what you want to accomplish and help re-focus your thinking to make sure you’re going about it in an effective and meaningful way.
Part of what a life coach does is help you reach your goals quicker and with less effort. Efficiency is key to keeping momentum up and creating lasting changes.
Accountability Partner
A life coach is someone who will keep you accountable for reaching your goals and making positive changes. They maintain contact and make sure to check in with you throughout the process to make sure you are progressing and keeping your momentum up.
You may tend to rely on friends and family to keep you accountable for what you’re trying to do but this can often be a strain on those relationships, or people simply let you down because they just don’t know how to be an accountability partner. A life coach will not just let your dream fizzle without saying anything about it. They will hold you accountable to what you said you will do, and because of that you will be more motivated to keep progressing toward your goal in order to show them what you have accomplished.
Ultimately, a life coach will hold you accountable to reaching your personal and professional goals. They will be there with you every step of the way to help you with strategy as well as encourage and motivate you.A life coach will help you through the road blocks along the way, give you the push you need when you’re stuck, cheer for you when you meet your goals and then challenge you to get out there and conquer even more goals.
What Does a Life Coach Do?
They Help You Identify Goals
Identifying your goals is one of the hardest things you do when you’re trying to make a change and get started on something new. A life coach is great at helping you interpret your dreams and ideas, and organize them into tangible goals. In a way, they help you to connect what your head is saying and what your heart is saying to find some agreement between the two that points toward your passions. Identifying, redirecting and managing goals to make them more realistic are what life coaches do best. You may have an idea of what you want but are having a hard time making it into a solid goal that you can work toward. Or you may think you have a solid goal but then you begin to realize that it isn’t what you want or it is less doable than you thought. This is where a life coach comes in and helps you reevaluate those ideas and goals in order to turn them into “smart goals” that encourage real life change and forward motion.
They Help You Achieve Your Goals
A life coach helps you to accomplish your goals, make new changes, and live your dreams. A coach helps you get from where you are in your life now, to where you want to go. In other words, their job is to help you get from Point A to Point B in your life, whatever that may be for you. Your coach is someone who supports you, motivates you, and holds you accountable for achieving your vision for yourself. Whatever it is that you want in your life, they will help you get there.
They Guide You Through Changes and Obstacles
A life coach helps you to move your life forward and to find fulfillment, success, well-being and happiness. They can help you to pinpoint the blocks or obstacles that are making you feel “stuck” and help you to move through them.
They may also guide you through a life transition, such as finding a new career, or looking to start a new relationship. You might call them a “change facilitator” or a “courage catalyst”.
They Give You Permission to Follow Your Dreams
You may be searching for validation and approval before you truly feel justified in taking that big first step towards following your dreams or reaching your goals. The advice and feedback from family and friends can be helpful but it isn’t professional, and rarely is it unbiased. A life coach is someone who is separate from your personal life and can truly look at your ideas and goals objectively, and therefore they are much more capable of giving you the right validation that you need to get started on making your big move.
They Teach You How to Make the Right Decisions for Yourself
When you seek out a life coach, it usually means you need help making a decision. The decision might be which goal to prioritize, what step to take first, or to find out if you should even pursue that goal in the first place.
One of the best things that life coaches do is to equip you with methods and tactics that will help you make the right decisions for yourself and your future. They walk you through these processes regarding whatever you are working towards, and eventually you will start developing that problem solving mindset that they are working on with you. This mindset will start to work its way into your everyday life and change how you make decisions on a daily basis because it simply makes sense.
What Does a Life Coach Not Do?
Coaches usually don’t give advice or tell you what to do.They try to help you find what feels right for you by helping you reveal the answers to yourself through discussion, suggestions, brainstorming and reflection.
What’s the Difference Between a Life Coach and a Therapist?
It is understandable that you may be wondering what the difference is between a life coach and a therapist, but there are quite a few key distinctions that separate the two. Mainly, life coaches do not treat issues like depression, anxiety, or mental illnesses. It’s really important to realize that when you sign up for life coaching, you will not be getting a therapist.
Future vs. Past
A life coach will focus mostly on looking toward your future, rather than dealing primarily with your past.
While they may offer you suggestions, new ideas or action steps, they are not advice-givers. Instead, they listen to you and ask you the right questions to help you find your path, your truth, and your answers. Then they help you to align your life with who you are and what you want.
If you come into a life coaching session without having resolved, or at least started to deal with a past issue, it is likely that the life coach will refer you to a therapist or request that you look into this issue more. Life coaches can help you deal with mental blocks but many past issues are beyond their realm of expertise.
Solution Focused vs. Problem Focused
Another key difference between life coaches and therapists is their focus. A therapist tends to be more focused on a certain problem you are dealing with and what got you there in the first place. This is why many people go to therapy: to solve a problem or work through an issue.
A life coach on the other hand, is going to be more focused on solutions that get you from point A to point B. You should sign up for life coaching if you want to figure out how to get to where you want to be in life. Although your coach will help you deal with problems along the way, the focus of the coaching sessions will be on finding new ways of acting and thinking that will help you reach your goal.
In fact, the effectiveness of solution-focused approaches to accomplishing goals has been proven to get you closer to those goals, faster.
Other Things a Life Coach is Not
Among other things, you cannot expect a life coach to be a consultant, athletic coach or best friend. Although life coaches are someone you consult about strategies and goals, they are life specialists not specific specialists like a business consultant or an athletic trainer. They may specialize in certain areas that benefit your performance in these areas, but they are helping you reach your goals, not giving you data on how to grow your business, or how often you need to eat to reach your weight goals.
Life coaches may also seem like a friend at times because they are encouraging, inspiring and fully invested in helping you reach your goals, but this does not make them a friend nor does it replace the importance of having friends.Your life coach may be demanding and hard on you sometimes because it is a goal focused relationship and when you succeed, they succeed.
Who Uses Life Coaches & Why
Who Hires Life Coaches?
Simply put, the people who hire life coaches are people that want more. They are people that desire growth in their personal or professional lives (possibly both), and they want that growth to come faster or easier. Anyone in any walk of life can hire a life coach for almost anything they want to improve upon in their lives.
Professional
You will find that many businesses have begun giving their employees access to life coaching to help them excel in their professional lives and careers. There are also many very successful business owners, CEOs, and professionals that hire a life coach to help them set goals and stay accountable so that they are able to reach that next level of productivity, efficiency or success.
Personal
Many people have begun turning to life coaches to assist them in their personal lives as well. These people can be anyone from students professionals to stay at home moms. Almost everyone has personal goals they want to meet and often, they just need the push that comes with the wisdom and encouragement from a life coach.
In general, people who hire a life coach tend to be people that want the following:
Why is Life Coaching so Popular?
There has been quite a big surge in the popularity of life coaching both in the professional world and in people’s personal lives as well. A simple reason for this is the mere fact that as humans we tend to get stuck in certain places in our lives whether it is due to comfort, fear, ignorance or something else. We all tend to need a push and some guidance to get us moving and heading in the right direction again, and this is exactly what life coaching does.
Versatility
Life coaching is a very versatile field because there are coaches that can help people and businesses with a wide variety of things. Many coaches specialize in certain areas which can be helpful when you’re trying to reach certain goals, but most coaches are trained to help you help yourself by using methods and tactics that work in all kinds of situations, and toward many different purposes.
Direction & Focus
Where there is a lack of focus and direction in the workplace or in your personal life, a life coach is really good at tackling that problem and helping you re-think and re-evaluate where you are heading. This is a major asset to companies that need motivated and skilled workers because it helps to encourage employees to reach their goals within the company which benefits everybody.
Increased Productivity
Many companies and individuals have to face a lack of motivation in the workplace which translates into low productivity. Life coaching has been proven to improve work performance by 70%. It is also shown to improve other important factors such as: self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, life/work balance, team effectiveness, time management and more.
Efficiency
You can definitely learn how to reach your goals on your own and maybe you already know how. There are many top performers in the workplace and in life that still hire life coaches. Why is that? Because they want to be more efficient in how they tackle their life goals. Motivated and unmotivated people alike can benefit from the efficiency and expert direction that a life coach can bring to their lives.
It Works
Studies have been done on how effective life coaching is and some are based on ROI, some are based on the satisfaction of the client and their willingness to return. Both types of studies have proven the effectiveness of life coaching. Approximately 86% of the companies studied said that they at least made back what they invested in using life and professional coaches. 99% of the companies and individuals who used life coaching were at least satisfied with the experience and 96% said that they would use a life coach again.
Deciding if You Should You Get a Life Coach
What is Life Coaching Going to Do For Me? How Will It Change Me?
Gain a Fresh Perspective
Initially and throughout the coaching process, coaches will use an exploratory approach to help you uncover what it is that you want, what it is that is blocking you, as well as why and how you’re going about achieving your goals. To help you find out your purpose or path in life, as well as your ideal career, coaches may use personality tests or assessments to help you uncover your personality traits, strengths, and alignments. Offering new perspectives and different ways of looking at a situation — to reinterpret the current situation in a new way — allows you to make dramatic discoveries in where and why you feel stuck. By exploring how you got “stuck” and what’s behind your frustration, coaches help you to first identify the deeper causes beneath your situation. By guiding you with new approaches and powerful exercises, coaches are able to offer new tools and techniques to help you achieve your goals and find solutions.
Become More Aware of Your Goals
By having a life coach echo back what you are saying, you become more mindful of your current belief system and perspective on a situation. Mindful awareness of your current way of thinking sets the stage for adopting new ways of understanding, and new ways of conquering your goals. By listening without judgment and bringing this awareness to your current life issues, you can see those issues in a whole new light. As a fish doesn’t recognize the water that it’s swimming in, sometimes we too don’t recognize the deeper beliefs and assumptions we’re living under. By offering new ways to look at your situation and revealing new meanings behind it, your coach will often help you find relief and new beginnings in where you currently stand in life, and in relation to your goals.
Direction
A big part of the life coaching process is finding out where you are now, where you want to go in life, and finding the best process of getting you there. A coach helps you to take action in places where you’re feeling frozen or stuck. It can be fear or anxiety, uncertainty or stress. Sometimes you just feel lost, and a coach will help you get re-oriented with your goals by helping you to find the right direction to take.
Purpose
By asking you deep and meaningful questions, a life coach can help you find a vision for yourself and turn it into reality. By doing this and guiding you through the necessary changes and hurdles, they help you reach your potential and find your purpose.
Accountability
Some people confuse their coach for a friend who is just there to cheer them on, but it’s best to look at a coach as more of an advocate than a friend. Yes, they are there to encourage and support you, but more importantly, they are there to keep you moving in the right direction. Don’t expect them to start applauding when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. They are there to push you, challenge you and make sure you extend yourself beyond where you are now.
You can expect a life coach to hold you accountable for doing what’s necessary in order for you to make the changes you desire. By having someone make sure you take responsibility, you have to face the excuses that you keep telling yourself and thereby realize that you really do have the ability to make the changes that you need to make.
Motivation
During the time that you are investing in life coaching, you should be consistently taking action steps in your life toward reaching your goals. Your life coach will keep you motivated by making sure you have a clear purpose, direction, and more importantly that you keep making steady progress. The different techniques and methods they use that help you find the right goal as well as to stay on track will help create the rewards of achievement that you need to keep going. The life coach is directly invested in your success so you can expect to be motivated and mentally fueled up to take on life’s challenges.
How Does Life Coaching Work? What Can I Expect?
Coaches use a variety of different techniques, methods, and processes to help you reach your goals. There are countless different training and educational programs that coaches learn from, so there are many ways they can use to help you succeed.
The First Meeting
The first meeting with a life coach usually lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. It is often used as a discovery session where they learn more about you and your aspirations. This may be an initial consultation to see if life coaching is right for you, or it could be a time to figure out what you want to focus on, or it could be both.
In this initial session, the life coach will be asking a lot of questions and probably having you take various tests and going through certain exercises to find out what the best method is to go about conquering your goals. Some of the questions they may ask might include: What are you passionate about?, what do you avoid?, what is holding you back?, where will this get you?, what’s another way to look at this situation?, etc.. You should walk away from the first meeting with an initial game plan and an idea of what you will do next or something to explore that will start getting you on track.
What a Coaching Session is Like
A coaching session will look slightly different depending on what methods your life coach uses and what stage of coaching you’re in. This relationship is dynamic and it will change over time because you will start getting used to how you work best with them, and they will accommodate their methods to fit your strengths as time goes on. Life coaching sessions will gradually reveal what’s holding you back and what exactly you get stuck on so that you can identify and break down the mental and emotional blocks or limiting beliefs that stand in the way of your success and progress. A life coach is great at helping you see what’s in your blind spots and getting you to look at things from a different perspective. The importance of this is that you can only truly get this through the help of another person like a life coach who is helping you examine your life and goals. This isn’t something you can simply learn from a book and that’s why life coaching sessions are extremely valuable.
The Outcome
The outcome of a life coaching session is a feeling of direction and purpose. Instead of those feelings of being lost or constantly frustrated by either not being able to reach your goals, or just disappointment in failing to try, you will feel energized and mobilized. When you are finally able to crack the code on setting doable goals and taking the correct steps to follow through, it is an incredible feeling. Your life coach is there to get you moving as soon as possible so that you begin to feel more confident and productive right away and carry that energy into the rest of your life. The happiness that comes with having a clear vision and actually witnessing yourself achieve your goals is validating, and the best thing that comes out of life coaching sessions. A life coaching session will generally include a discovery time near the beginning to figure out where you are, what you’re doing and what you should do. After that, the sessions will be more about holding you accountable to the steps you should be taking to get where you need to go, and tackling problems that may pop up along the way. A coach is focused on three main things: taking action, staying accountable and following through. These three things guarantee success and will be an integral part of how your coaching sessions are handled.
What Your Relationship with Your Coach is Like
You may initially be unsure about what your relationship with your coach should look like. The relationship should be based on trust and be something that is constantly challenging you. The ultimate goal for a life coach is not to tell you what to do but to ask you the right questions so that you tell yourself what to do. Then they are responsible for holding you accountable for the decisions you make, and goals you set. A life coach can be similar to a lot of things like a consultant, advocate, friend, facilitator, navigator, and more but ultimately they are there to get you to take action. The relationship is bound to fail if you expect them to be just a friend who cheers you on, or just a consultant who gives you all of the answers and data you need. They are there to help you succeed so they will push you and challenge you to look at things differently and stay on the right track. This is a relationship that is a partnership. You can trust them to be a non-judgmental party who is looking out for your best interest with no ulterior motive except to see you succeed.
What Areas of My Life Can a Life Coach Help Me with?
Life coaches can help you in any area of your life including, but not limited to:
Most Popular Life Coaching Areas
You may think you’re alone in wanting to improve upon a certain area in your life or reach a certain goal when in reality there are thousands of others who are pursuing change in those exact same areas with the help of a life coach. You might be surprised at how many people are seeking help in some of the same areas you are.
When clients request a coach through Life Coach Spotter, according to our data the top reasons they provide are:
Should I Get a Life Coach?
Want to make a big change in your life? Want to reach a goal? Feeling stuck? Going through a life transition? There are an infinite amount of reasons why people hire a life coach to get them on the right track toward success. You simply have to ask yourself a few questions to evaluate where you are, where you want to be and how you feel about it. This will ultimately help you reveal those burning desires that are truly worth going after and finally doing something about.
For example, you might decide to hire a life coach for ANY of the following reasons:
You Feel Stuck or Blocked
If you feel like you’re stuck in the same place and want to start moving in the right direction to accomplish your goals, a life coach would be very helpful. Also, if you feel some kind of mental or emotional block that you can’t seem to get past on your own, a life coach will help guide you out of that mental state and into one where you can finally make progress.
You’re Unsure of Your Next Step
If you have a feeling of uncertainty or like you’re lost and don’t know where to go or what to do to get what you want in life, this is a great opportunity to recruit a life coach to help you find purpose and direction in any area of your life.
You Want to Make Some Changes
If you want to grow, build your confidence, find your happiness or just start making some positive changes in your life, life coaching is a great solution. Feeling like something is missing in your life is a great opportunity to start making changes by transforming your life and your mindset.
Life coaching is NOT right for you if…
There are some situations where life coaching is not going to be the right thing for you. If you’re in need of therapy or serious counseling for a mental illness or issue in your life, you may want to consider resolving this or at least starting the resolution process with a counselor or therapist before seeking out a life coach.
Also, if you just want to be told what to do, this may not be the solution for you. A life coach is going to guide you and help you make your own decisions rather than get out a step by step play book and tell you exactly what to do.
Finally, you have to be willing to actually carry out the change. Life coaching isn’t right for you if you are not able to commit to working on yourself, stretching your thinking and taking action in your life. A life coach expects you to be involved in your solution and you will not gain anything from the experience if you do not want to change.
Making the Decision
If you have begun asking the right questions and evaluating what areas in your life need improvement, the decision to hire a life coach will be much easier. Going through the lists above will also help highlight those areas of your life that could use some extra work and a little extra accountability. If you’re ready to make an action plan rather than just explore your various issues, a life coach is definitely a great option for you. If you still have some past issues that you need to deal with or you aren’t sure that you’re quite ready to start making serious changes, you could consult with a life coach to see if you should seek out help with a therapist or counselor first. It is extremely important to be in the right place mentally and emotionally to get the most out of the coaching experience. Ultimately, life coaching will be worth your time if you are determined to be open to new ideas, tactics and are willing to put in work to implement changes. You don’t even need to have a specific goal in mind before you go to a life coach, as long as you know you want more from life they can help you pinpoint what’s next for you. A coach will improve your self-awareness, widen your thinking and help you become more focused. They are great people to go to when you want help accessing the talent and motivation you already carry within yourself.
Source (http://www.lifecoachspotter.com/what-is-a-life-coach/)
A life coach is a professional who helps you reach a goal or make a change in your life. They help you to get out of your head and start taking action in the areas of your life that you wish to change. A life coach guides you through the process by asking questions that help you evaluate and decide which steps to take in order to reach your goal or make an important change. Then they play the important roles of motivator, strategist and accountability partner. Their goal is to help you reach your goal in the most efficient, effective and rewarding way possible. Life coaches are more than just a counselor or consultant, they step you through the achievement process from the beginning to the end, from the planning stage all the way through the execution stages.
Motivator
A life coach is a source of motivation and inspiration that gives you the push you need to reach your full potential. You might hire a life coach for similar reasons that you would hire a personal trainer for. You may already be fit, but have specific goals that need more guidance and pushing to in order to accomplish them, or maybe you are overweight or feeling sluggish and know you need motivation and encouragement from outside of yourself to make a significant change.
Life coaches are like personal trainers for your life goals. They have the professional training and mindset that is needed to coach you towards your dream life. They are with you every step of the way, helping you find ways to stay on track and motivated to accomplish those goals and so much more.
Strategist
Effective strategizing is something a life coach is really good at helping you with. One of the first things they do when they meet with you is to ask specific questions about what you want to accomplish and help re-focus your thinking to make sure you’re going about it in an effective and meaningful way.
Part of what a life coach does is help you reach your goals quicker and with less effort. Efficiency is key to keeping momentum up and creating lasting changes.
Accountability Partner
A life coach is someone who will keep you accountable for reaching your goals and making positive changes. They maintain contact and make sure to check in with you throughout the process to make sure you are progressing and keeping your momentum up.
You may tend to rely on friends and family to keep you accountable for what you’re trying to do but this can often be a strain on those relationships, or people simply let you down because they just don’t know how to be an accountability partner. A life coach will not just let your dream fizzle without saying anything about it. They will hold you accountable to what you said you will do, and because of that you will be more motivated to keep progressing toward your goal in order to show them what you have accomplished.
Ultimately, a life coach will hold you accountable to reaching your personal and professional goals. They will be there with you every step of the way to help you with strategy as well as encourage and motivate you.A life coach will help you through the road blocks along the way, give you the push you need when you’re stuck, cheer for you when you meet your goals and then challenge you to get out there and conquer even more goals.
What Does a Life Coach Do?
They Help You Identify Goals
Identifying your goals is one of the hardest things you do when you’re trying to make a change and get started on something new. A life coach is great at helping you interpret your dreams and ideas, and organize them into tangible goals. In a way, they help you to connect what your head is saying and what your heart is saying to find some agreement between the two that points toward your passions. Identifying, redirecting and managing goals to make them more realistic are what life coaches do best. You may have an idea of what you want but are having a hard time making it into a solid goal that you can work toward. Or you may think you have a solid goal but then you begin to realize that it isn’t what you want or it is less doable than you thought. This is where a life coach comes in and helps you reevaluate those ideas and goals in order to turn them into “smart goals” that encourage real life change and forward motion.
They Help You Achieve Your Goals
A life coach helps you to accomplish your goals, make new changes, and live your dreams. A coach helps you get from where you are in your life now, to where you want to go. In other words, their job is to help you get from Point A to Point B in your life, whatever that may be for you. Your coach is someone who supports you, motivates you, and holds you accountable for achieving your vision for yourself. Whatever it is that you want in your life, they will help you get there.
They Guide You Through Changes and Obstacles
A life coach helps you to move your life forward and to find fulfillment, success, well-being and happiness. They can help you to pinpoint the blocks or obstacles that are making you feel “stuck” and help you to move through them.
They may also guide you through a life transition, such as finding a new career, or looking to start a new relationship. You might call them a “change facilitator” or a “courage catalyst”.
They Give You Permission to Follow Your Dreams
You may be searching for validation and approval before you truly feel justified in taking that big first step towards following your dreams or reaching your goals. The advice and feedback from family and friends can be helpful but it isn’t professional, and rarely is it unbiased. A life coach is someone who is separate from your personal life and can truly look at your ideas and goals objectively, and therefore they are much more capable of giving you the right validation that you need to get started on making your big move.
They Teach You How to Make the Right Decisions for Yourself
When you seek out a life coach, it usually means you need help making a decision. The decision might be which goal to prioritize, what step to take first, or to find out if you should even pursue that goal in the first place.
One of the best things that life coaches do is to equip you with methods and tactics that will help you make the right decisions for yourself and your future. They walk you through these processes regarding whatever you are working towards, and eventually you will start developing that problem solving mindset that they are working on with you. This mindset will start to work its way into your everyday life and change how you make decisions on a daily basis because it simply makes sense.
What Does a Life Coach Not Do?
Coaches usually don’t give advice or tell you what to do.They try to help you find what feels right for you by helping you reveal the answers to yourself through discussion, suggestions, brainstorming and reflection.
What’s the Difference Between a Life Coach and a Therapist?
It is understandable that you may be wondering what the difference is between a life coach and a therapist, but there are quite a few key distinctions that separate the two. Mainly, life coaches do not treat issues like depression, anxiety, or mental illnesses. It’s really important to realize that when you sign up for life coaching, you will not be getting a therapist.
Future vs. Past
A life coach will focus mostly on looking toward your future, rather than dealing primarily with your past.
While they may offer you suggestions, new ideas or action steps, they are not advice-givers. Instead, they listen to you and ask you the right questions to help you find your path, your truth, and your answers. Then they help you to align your life with who you are and what you want.
If you come into a life coaching session without having resolved, or at least started to deal with a past issue, it is likely that the life coach will refer you to a therapist or request that you look into this issue more. Life coaches can help you deal with mental blocks but many past issues are beyond their realm of expertise.
Solution Focused vs. Problem Focused
Another key difference between life coaches and therapists is their focus. A therapist tends to be more focused on a certain problem you are dealing with and what got you there in the first place. This is why many people go to therapy: to solve a problem or work through an issue.
A life coach on the other hand, is going to be more focused on solutions that get you from point A to point B. You should sign up for life coaching if you want to figure out how to get to where you want to be in life. Although your coach will help you deal with problems along the way, the focus of the coaching sessions will be on finding new ways of acting and thinking that will help you reach your goal.
In fact, the effectiveness of solution-focused approaches to accomplishing goals has been proven to get you closer to those goals, faster.
Other Things a Life Coach is Not
Among other things, you cannot expect a life coach to be a consultant, athletic coach or best friend. Although life coaches are someone you consult about strategies and goals, they are life specialists not specific specialists like a business consultant or an athletic trainer. They may specialize in certain areas that benefit your performance in these areas, but they are helping you reach your goals, not giving you data on how to grow your business, or how often you need to eat to reach your weight goals.
Life coaches may also seem like a friend at times because they are encouraging, inspiring and fully invested in helping you reach your goals, but this does not make them a friend nor does it replace the importance of having friends.Your life coach may be demanding and hard on you sometimes because it is a goal focused relationship and when you succeed, they succeed.
Who Uses Life Coaches & Why
Who Hires Life Coaches?
Simply put, the people who hire life coaches are people that want more. They are people that desire growth in their personal or professional lives (possibly both), and they want that growth to come faster or easier. Anyone in any walk of life can hire a life coach for almost anything they want to improve upon in their lives.
Professional
You will find that many businesses have begun giving their employees access to life coaching to help them excel in their professional lives and careers. There are also many very successful business owners, CEOs, and professionals that hire a life coach to help them set goals and stay accountable so that they are able to reach that next level of productivity, efficiency or success.
Personal
Many people have begun turning to life coaches to assist them in their personal lives as well. These people can be anyone from students professionals to stay at home moms. Almost everyone has personal goals they want to meet and often, they just need the push that comes with the wisdom and encouragement from a life coach.
In general, people who hire a life coach tend to be people that want the following:
- To achieve their goals and be successful
- To find happiness
- To find their life purpose
- To do what they love
- To decide on or change their career
- To be more confident
- To find love or improve their relationships
Why is Life Coaching so Popular?
There has been quite a big surge in the popularity of life coaching both in the professional world and in people’s personal lives as well. A simple reason for this is the mere fact that as humans we tend to get stuck in certain places in our lives whether it is due to comfort, fear, ignorance or something else. We all tend to need a push and some guidance to get us moving and heading in the right direction again, and this is exactly what life coaching does.
Versatility
Life coaching is a very versatile field because there are coaches that can help people and businesses with a wide variety of things. Many coaches specialize in certain areas which can be helpful when you’re trying to reach certain goals, but most coaches are trained to help you help yourself by using methods and tactics that work in all kinds of situations, and toward many different purposes.
Direction & Focus
Where there is a lack of focus and direction in the workplace or in your personal life, a life coach is really good at tackling that problem and helping you re-think and re-evaluate where you are heading. This is a major asset to companies that need motivated and skilled workers because it helps to encourage employees to reach their goals within the company which benefits everybody.
Increased Productivity
Many companies and individuals have to face a lack of motivation in the workplace which translates into low productivity. Life coaching has been proven to improve work performance by 70%. It is also shown to improve other important factors such as: self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, life/work balance, team effectiveness, time management and more.
Efficiency
You can definitely learn how to reach your goals on your own and maybe you already know how. There are many top performers in the workplace and in life that still hire life coaches. Why is that? Because they want to be more efficient in how they tackle their life goals. Motivated and unmotivated people alike can benefit from the efficiency and expert direction that a life coach can bring to their lives.
It Works
Studies have been done on how effective life coaching is and some are based on ROI, some are based on the satisfaction of the client and their willingness to return. Both types of studies have proven the effectiveness of life coaching. Approximately 86% of the companies studied said that they at least made back what they invested in using life and professional coaches. 99% of the companies and individuals who used life coaching were at least satisfied with the experience and 96% said that they would use a life coach again.
Deciding if You Should You Get a Life Coach
What is Life Coaching Going to Do For Me? How Will It Change Me?
Gain a Fresh Perspective
Initially and throughout the coaching process, coaches will use an exploratory approach to help you uncover what it is that you want, what it is that is blocking you, as well as why and how you’re going about achieving your goals. To help you find out your purpose or path in life, as well as your ideal career, coaches may use personality tests or assessments to help you uncover your personality traits, strengths, and alignments. Offering new perspectives and different ways of looking at a situation — to reinterpret the current situation in a new way — allows you to make dramatic discoveries in where and why you feel stuck. By exploring how you got “stuck” and what’s behind your frustration, coaches help you to first identify the deeper causes beneath your situation. By guiding you with new approaches and powerful exercises, coaches are able to offer new tools and techniques to help you achieve your goals and find solutions.
Become More Aware of Your Goals
By having a life coach echo back what you are saying, you become more mindful of your current belief system and perspective on a situation. Mindful awareness of your current way of thinking sets the stage for adopting new ways of understanding, and new ways of conquering your goals. By listening without judgment and bringing this awareness to your current life issues, you can see those issues in a whole new light. As a fish doesn’t recognize the water that it’s swimming in, sometimes we too don’t recognize the deeper beliefs and assumptions we’re living under. By offering new ways to look at your situation and revealing new meanings behind it, your coach will often help you find relief and new beginnings in where you currently stand in life, and in relation to your goals.
Direction
A big part of the life coaching process is finding out where you are now, where you want to go in life, and finding the best process of getting you there. A coach helps you to take action in places where you’re feeling frozen or stuck. It can be fear or anxiety, uncertainty or stress. Sometimes you just feel lost, and a coach will help you get re-oriented with your goals by helping you to find the right direction to take.
Purpose
By asking you deep and meaningful questions, a life coach can help you find a vision for yourself and turn it into reality. By doing this and guiding you through the necessary changes and hurdles, they help you reach your potential and find your purpose.
Accountability
Some people confuse their coach for a friend who is just there to cheer them on, but it’s best to look at a coach as more of an advocate than a friend. Yes, they are there to encourage and support you, but more importantly, they are there to keep you moving in the right direction. Don’t expect them to start applauding when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. They are there to push you, challenge you and make sure you extend yourself beyond where you are now.
You can expect a life coach to hold you accountable for doing what’s necessary in order for you to make the changes you desire. By having someone make sure you take responsibility, you have to face the excuses that you keep telling yourself and thereby realize that you really do have the ability to make the changes that you need to make.
Motivation
During the time that you are investing in life coaching, you should be consistently taking action steps in your life toward reaching your goals. Your life coach will keep you motivated by making sure you have a clear purpose, direction, and more importantly that you keep making steady progress. The different techniques and methods they use that help you find the right goal as well as to stay on track will help create the rewards of achievement that you need to keep going. The life coach is directly invested in your success so you can expect to be motivated and mentally fueled up to take on life’s challenges.
How Does Life Coaching Work? What Can I Expect?
Coaches use a variety of different techniques, methods, and processes to help you reach your goals. There are countless different training and educational programs that coaches learn from, so there are many ways they can use to help you succeed.
The First Meeting
The first meeting with a life coach usually lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. It is often used as a discovery session where they learn more about you and your aspirations. This may be an initial consultation to see if life coaching is right for you, or it could be a time to figure out what you want to focus on, or it could be both.
In this initial session, the life coach will be asking a lot of questions and probably having you take various tests and going through certain exercises to find out what the best method is to go about conquering your goals. Some of the questions they may ask might include: What are you passionate about?, what do you avoid?, what is holding you back?, where will this get you?, what’s another way to look at this situation?, etc.. You should walk away from the first meeting with an initial game plan and an idea of what you will do next or something to explore that will start getting you on track.
What a Coaching Session is Like
A coaching session will look slightly different depending on what methods your life coach uses and what stage of coaching you’re in. This relationship is dynamic and it will change over time because you will start getting used to how you work best with them, and they will accommodate their methods to fit your strengths as time goes on. Life coaching sessions will gradually reveal what’s holding you back and what exactly you get stuck on so that you can identify and break down the mental and emotional blocks or limiting beliefs that stand in the way of your success and progress. A life coach is great at helping you see what’s in your blind spots and getting you to look at things from a different perspective. The importance of this is that you can only truly get this through the help of another person like a life coach who is helping you examine your life and goals. This isn’t something you can simply learn from a book and that’s why life coaching sessions are extremely valuable.
The Outcome
The outcome of a life coaching session is a feeling of direction and purpose. Instead of those feelings of being lost or constantly frustrated by either not being able to reach your goals, or just disappointment in failing to try, you will feel energized and mobilized. When you are finally able to crack the code on setting doable goals and taking the correct steps to follow through, it is an incredible feeling. Your life coach is there to get you moving as soon as possible so that you begin to feel more confident and productive right away and carry that energy into the rest of your life. The happiness that comes with having a clear vision and actually witnessing yourself achieve your goals is validating, and the best thing that comes out of life coaching sessions. A life coaching session will generally include a discovery time near the beginning to figure out where you are, what you’re doing and what you should do. After that, the sessions will be more about holding you accountable to the steps you should be taking to get where you need to go, and tackling problems that may pop up along the way. A coach is focused on three main things: taking action, staying accountable and following through. These three things guarantee success and will be an integral part of how your coaching sessions are handled.
What Your Relationship with Your Coach is Like
You may initially be unsure about what your relationship with your coach should look like. The relationship should be based on trust and be something that is constantly challenging you. The ultimate goal for a life coach is not to tell you what to do but to ask you the right questions so that you tell yourself what to do. Then they are responsible for holding you accountable for the decisions you make, and goals you set. A life coach can be similar to a lot of things like a consultant, advocate, friend, facilitator, navigator, and more but ultimately they are there to get you to take action. The relationship is bound to fail if you expect them to be just a friend who cheers you on, or just a consultant who gives you all of the answers and data you need. They are there to help you succeed so they will push you and challenge you to look at things differently and stay on the right track. This is a relationship that is a partnership. You can trust them to be a non-judgmental party who is looking out for your best interest with no ulterior motive except to see you succeed.
What Areas of My Life Can a Life Coach Help Me with?
Life coaches can help you in any area of your life including, but not limited to:
- Work-life balance
- Health and fitness
- Spirituality
- Work performance
- Career goals
- Procrastination & productivity
- Getting motivated
- Finding your purpose
- Prioritization
- Hobbies
- Educational goals
- Dating and sex
- Divorce
- ADHD
Most Popular Life Coaching Areas
You may think you’re alone in wanting to improve upon a certain area in your life or reach a certain goal when in reality there are thousands of others who are pursuing change in those exact same areas with the help of a life coach. You might be surprised at how many people are seeking help in some of the same areas you are.
When clients request a coach through Life Coach Spotter, according to our data the top reasons they provide are:
- Achieving your goals (64%)
- Happiness (51%)
- Finding your purpose (48%)
- Doing what you love (44%)
- Career (43%)
- Confidence (39%)
- Relationship/love (38%)
Should I Get a Life Coach?
Want to make a big change in your life? Want to reach a goal? Feeling stuck? Going through a life transition? There are an infinite amount of reasons why people hire a life coach to get them on the right track toward success. You simply have to ask yourself a few questions to evaluate where you are, where you want to be and how you feel about it. This will ultimately help you reveal those burning desires that are truly worth going after and finally doing something about.
For example, you might decide to hire a life coach for ANY of the following reasons:
You Feel Stuck or Blocked
If you feel like you’re stuck in the same place and want to start moving in the right direction to accomplish your goals, a life coach would be very helpful. Also, if you feel some kind of mental or emotional block that you can’t seem to get past on your own, a life coach will help guide you out of that mental state and into one where you can finally make progress.
You’re Unsure of Your Next Step
If you have a feeling of uncertainty or like you’re lost and don’t know where to go or what to do to get what you want in life, this is a great opportunity to recruit a life coach to help you find purpose and direction in any area of your life.
You Want to Make Some Changes
If you want to grow, build your confidence, find your happiness or just start making some positive changes in your life, life coaching is a great solution. Feeling like something is missing in your life is a great opportunity to start making changes by transforming your life and your mindset.
Life coaching is NOT right for you if…
There are some situations where life coaching is not going to be the right thing for you. If you’re in need of therapy or serious counseling for a mental illness or issue in your life, you may want to consider resolving this or at least starting the resolution process with a counselor or therapist before seeking out a life coach.
Also, if you just want to be told what to do, this may not be the solution for you. A life coach is going to guide you and help you make your own decisions rather than get out a step by step play book and tell you exactly what to do.
Finally, you have to be willing to actually carry out the change. Life coaching isn’t right for you if you are not able to commit to working on yourself, stretching your thinking and taking action in your life. A life coach expects you to be involved in your solution and you will not gain anything from the experience if you do not want to change.
Making the Decision
If you have begun asking the right questions and evaluating what areas in your life need improvement, the decision to hire a life coach will be much easier. Going through the lists above will also help highlight those areas of your life that could use some extra work and a little extra accountability. If you’re ready to make an action plan rather than just explore your various issues, a life coach is definitely a great option for you. If you still have some past issues that you need to deal with or you aren’t sure that you’re quite ready to start making serious changes, you could consult with a life coach to see if you should seek out help with a therapist or counselor first. It is extremely important to be in the right place mentally and emotionally to get the most out of the coaching experience. Ultimately, life coaching will be worth your time if you are determined to be open to new ideas, tactics and are willing to put in work to implement changes. You don’t even need to have a specific goal in mind before you go to a life coach, as long as you know you want more from life they can help you pinpoint what’s next for you. A coach will improve your self-awareness, widen your thinking and help you become more focused. They are great people to go to when you want help accessing the talent and motivation you already carry within yourself.
Source (http://www.lifecoachspotter.com/what-is-a-life-coach/)
