Life
Coaching
Imagine how you would feel if you knew you could
create your life however you wanted. That’s the power of life
coaching.
We all crave vibrant health, unique self-expression,
meaningful work and fulfilling relationships. We long to play, love,
relax, contribute and adventure. Yet, few of us know how to design
a well-balanced, fully-expressed and deeply satisfying life.
What Life Coaching is Like
Life coaching involves supporting clients in discovering and creating
what they most want in their lives. The coaching process actually
calls forth the best in both the coach and the client. From this
place, the coach elicits information from the deepest part of the
client that hadn’t previously been accessible to the client.
How a Life Coach is Different
“Don’t get too big for your britches.” “Who
do you think you are?” “No one in this family has ever
. . .” In our culture and in our families, most of us receive
far more messages pressuring us to stay small rather than inviting
our lights to shine.
Our culture tends to emphasize what needs fixing rather
than what works. As a society, we focus on what’s wrong without
giving much attention to all that is right. News broadcasts seem
to emphasize the worst of human nature. And, advertising continually
reminds us of what’s missing. If we mindlessly take in mass
media and mass advertising, we have little support for fully believing
in ourselves.
Additionally, while growing up, most of us received
indirect and direct personal messages that we were not good enough.
Kathy felt terribly imperfect when her dad asked why her report
card had four ‘A’s and one ‘B.’ She now
sees her grades as exceptional and realizes she doesn’t need
to be perfect. Janine never felt she fit in because both her parents
kept trying to get her to “settle down.” She now acknowledges
her parents didn’t know what to do with her high-spiritedness.
Tom’s teachers labeled him “slow” because he had
trouble concentrating. He now understands he learns experientially
while most material in school is taught visually or auditorially.
If we don’t become aware of the ingrained childhood
messages that automatically govern our thoughts and actions, we will
continue feeling not good enough. If, however, we  consciously
look at beliefs established in childhood, we have the opportunity
to see their impact from an adult perspective. We can then choose
new beliefs about ourselves.
Life coaching supports clients in choosing new perspectives
and establishing new beliefs. It also calls them to identify and
live from their strengths. They learn to celebrate all of who they
are, even the parts they used to label as weaknesses. They find
the gifts in all aspects of themselves.
Working with a life coach, clients also focus on what’s
working and build on that. If they don’t know what they want
in their lives, they explore that. If they do know what they want,
they begin to make new choices and create new habits. Life coaching
builds a bridge between where the client is and where s/he wants
to be.
What You Need to Know To Be
a Life Coach
To serve as a life coach, you will have benefited from life coaching
yourself. You will also need a strong,
on-going commitment to your own personal awareness and growth. As
with all other types of coaching, you need to possess and continue
to develop coaching skills and tools.
All great life coaches have these traits in common:
• A huge love for and desire to help people
• Superb listening skills (both for the spoken and unspoken)
• A willingness to consistently stand in truth
• A strong blend of loving-kindness and the ability to compassionately
“call clients on their stuff”
• The gift of recognizing and articulating clients’
strengths
• A large capacity for non-judgment
• Well-developed intuition
• A positive orientation to life
• Good personal boundaries
• Non-attachment
• Empathy
• Strong business skills
The Market for Life Coaching
Anyone who desires a better life and feels compelled to make changes
will benefit greatly from coaching. The trick to building a thriving
life coaching practice involves working with a specific niche. The
most successful life coaches choose not only a narrow coaching focus,
but also a narrow target market. The niche and the market will organically
develop from the coach’s skills, interests and life experiences.
The more passion the coach has for the niche and the market, the
more successful the practice.
Examples
• Stress management for new managers
• Spiritual tools for people in grief
• Life balance for foster parents
• Business skills for fine artists
• Life reorganization for empty-nesters
• College prep for teens
• Self-care for stay-at-home moms
• New life direction for executives leaving companies
• Adventure experiences for people taking sabbaticals
• Life skills for young adults
• Financial management for couples
• Spiritual exploration for former atheists
What important changes have you made in your life?
What do you feel most passionate about? Who would you most enjoy
coaching? The answers to these questions will create the foundation
for your specific life coaching niche.
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