What is Life Coaching

What is Life Coaching - After I explained to beginners who may want to take up life coaching in my previous post, I am finally going to tell you all what exactly is life coaching. So what is life coaching? Perhaps I will start with the term coaching first. I had previously explained different terms such as managing, mentoring, training and also counselling. Well let me say that coaching is a bit of all this, but it would also depend on the specific genre of coaching that you are looking at.

Anyways, coaching serves to develop the abilities of a person who is the client of the coach. When we talk about coaching, it is about focusing on the achievement by the client of a goal or specific skill. While coaches do provide mentoring and training, they also evaluate your progress and set specific goals in the areas which you wish to achieve. Along the way, they will also provide the necessary psychotherapy and counselling services.

As I also mentioned, there are many types of coaches who will coach you in many different areas. This includes sport, business, to specific niches such as divorce or motivational speaking. Usually the coach will meet the client for some face to face and one on one sessions. Other times the coach may just email you or chat with you over the telephone or maybe even online now that technology is so advanced! Sometimes there are coaches who do team coaching. These are the coaches who coach a whole team so they will discuss with you the strategies in a whole group setting.

These days, coaching has become more and more popular. With the rise of those who are more affluent, people are more willing pay for top coaches so that they can become a better person and achieve what they want in life. Coaching is also a recognized discipline. It is used by many professionals engaged in personal development and they employ coaches to help them focus on achieving the results that they want. However, it is a relatively new profession which only started in 1990. From what I know it is also self-regulating, except for those international professional life coaching associations that exist. But there are currently no independent supervisory board that evaluates practicing coaches. Some associations accredit various coaching schools as well as individual coaches though.

So what about life coaching? Life coaching is actually the mainstay of coaching as it is a more fundamental and necessary form of coaching which builds up a person’s foundation. A certified life coach aims to help clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaches select from among several methods to help clients set and reach goals. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification and modeling, goal-setting and other useful techniques in helping their clients. You can even find a christian life coach who will actually guide you the ways of being a devout Christian. I am not sure if there are such similar life coaches for other religions but it you are interested you can always check it out.

So after todays article, I do hope you have got a better understanding of life coaching. In future articles I will really be going into the meat of life coaching. Now if you noticed my blog has been introducing life coaching books and for this article I will be doing the same. If you would rather invest in a life coaching book then in some life coach courses, you are most welcome to try out these books that I have recommended. Maybe you may even end up looking for some life coaching jobs! Anyways today’s book is titled Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis.

Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life

Well ok I am going to tell you right now that this book is not really about how you can be a life coach or is it going to teach you how to coach yourself in life. But it does have some significance to the life coaching team I am talking about here. The book is about how the author Michael Lewis remembers his high school baseball coach, Coach Fitz. Though his coach was a baseball coach, he actually served as a life coach as well for Lewis. Coach Fitz taught kids to fight "the natural instinct to run away from adversity" and to battle their way through all the easy excuses life offers for giving up. He may be strict, but he was so good that now, 25 years later, alumni want to name a new gym after him.

Things may have changed a bit though because some parents do not like this coach. They called the headmaster and complained that Coach Fitz was mean to their children. Do you know that this book was originally a magazine article in the New York Times Magazine? This article created so much publicity that the coach not only managed to keep his job but also that the school has to look for a new headmaster. Well if you want to know the full story, do purchase a book for yourself. Till next time for more life coaching stories, catch them all on my life coaching for beginners blog!

What is Life Coaching