Life Coach Jobs

Life Coach Jobs - Would you want to consider a career in life coaching? Well it may not be a lucrative job but the thing is it will definitely give you job satisfaction, especially when you are able to see your clients excel and reach their targets, goals or ambitions, the goals which you have helped them set and the targets which you have helped them track.

There are many different types of life coaching jobs available out there actually. For example, if you are the religious sort, you might decide to take up Christian life coaching. Of course there are other types of spiritual life coaching jobs available that you can choose from. I guess most of the religious life coaches actually are Christian life coaches but that would not stop you from being a religious life coach if you are actually from another religion. I guess there are just more Christians who believe in spiritual life coaching and therefore engage a Christian life coach to help them achieve their spiritual goals.

What about getting some training and becoming a NLP life coach? NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It is actually a controversial approach to psychotherapy and organizational change. Actually I am not very knowledgeable in this subject so I cannot really explain it well here. However I do know that it is based on a system of alternative therapy and it seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication. In addition, the purpose of NLP is to change a person’s patterns of mental and emotional behaviour through successful patterns of behaviour and subjective experiences such as patterns of thought. If you do decide to do NLP life coaching, you would really need to be certified by the NLP practitioners before you go be a NLP life coach.

Nevertheless, there are many other life coaching schools that will be able to impact to you the necessary skills to be an effective life coach should you decide to take up a life coach job. With all the skills you get trained in in a life coaching school, you can even call yourself a life skills coach. There are many life coaching tools available to train a person to become a life coach. You can also put it another way that these life coaching tools are for your client. Whatever you learn will definitely benefit both coach and client. If you are staying in the United Kingdom, you would be happy to know that there is quite a good support there for those who plan to take up life coaching as a job. Just do a search on life coach uk and you would realize that there are many life coaching resources online for those staying and living in the uk.

That may lead you to think of just getting a crash course online to get yourself ready for a life coaching job. I would think that online life coaching courses do not really help you out that much. What about certification or accreditation? Some online life coaching do not come with such results. Nevertheless, I would propose that you do some reading first before you decide whether to take up such a book. Today’s recommended read is titled Character Makeover: 40 Days with a Life Coach to Create the Best You by Katie Brazelton and Shelley Leith.

Click here to buy the Character Makeover: 40 Days with a Life Coach to Create the Best You

At the time of writing this post, this great bestselling book has had a total of 47 reviews which were all either 5 stars or 4 stars. 41 of the reviews gave the book 5 stars while the other 6 gave it 4 stars. First of all, this book is meant more for the ladies, but if you are male, you can still make use of this book and nobody is stopping you from reading it. The authors have given this book a personal touch by focusing on their own personal stories on life. Both Katie Brazelton and co-author Shelley Leith have the intention of inviting you to join them on a spiritual journey by reading this book of theirs. When reading this book, you may find that your insecurites would be exposed and you would also find out how to deal with them.

The book has been designed more to be used as a tool and resource for women's small groups. However the personal stories add a special touch to the book and give the reader a more welcome and cosy feeling. In addition, this book is packed full of downloadable mini-talks, self-assessments, and questions for group discussion along with an Internet blog with access to the authors.

Unfortunately, do also note that the book is pretty challenging and is not to be read like a story book. If you are serious in changing yourself, you would need to actively engage yourself with the activities provided in the book, such as filling out journal entries, charts and self-evaluation checklists. It is a lot of work and the questions are not easy. You would have to be honest with yourself when doing these activities. the questions are not easy ones. I know not many people would have the time or discipline to sit down and get engaged in the activities of this life coaching book, so some may end up giving up. So if you cannot stick with this 40 day program, it is time that you really engage a life coach to improve and get a heads start in life. After you experience it for yourself, then you may decide to get a life coach job.

Life Coach Jobs

Life Coaching Courses

Life Coaching Courses - Today’s topic is on life coaching courses or life coach courses, they are both basically the same thing. So now that you know what is life coach or life coaching all about, I might want to draw your attention to some life coaching courses. To become a life coach, you would need to take up some life coaching courses to get the relevant credentials or certifications. Of course you can do your own reading and self study but you would not have the necessary qualifications or maybe just a certificate to prove that you got what it takes to be a life coach. The thing is there are many quacks out there these days so you got to make sure that you are signing up for a genuine and accredited course. Such courses are actually quite rare and you would have to check out what your own country has to offer.

Anyways the first thing you have to do is to investigate and hunt down the life coaching courses which are available in your country. Based on what is available you have to then narrow down your choices and choose the course which is most appropriate for you. There are even some websites online when you can engage an online life coach. I am not saying that such services are bad but you have to do some research to see if they are credible. Such online life coaches are in generally kind of dodgy I would say and it is always best to go for a course which is conducted by a professional life coach.

I also have to warn you that in some places, life coaching is not regulated. What this means is that there is no proper accreditation and you do not need to possess any minimum qualifications to practice as a life coach. The course is just there so that you can have more confidence and better coaching skills after the completion of a course. I still feel that it is best to find some proper courses. You may end up taking some life coaching for dummies which offers no value whatsoever to you.

Once you feel that a course seems alright and have picked it out among the many others, it is time to ask the course provider intelligent questions. You can also ask for testimonials, these would come from the people who have taken the course and benefited from it. Testimonials can also be forged so you got to be careful. Then you got to make sure that the curriculum of the course is good. Is it value for money? Do you think you are being over charged? What is the coaching certification you will get after the end of the course? Is this certificate recognised internationally?

There are always many different levels and different types of courses depending on what you want and how much experience you already have. Is a beginner course more suitable or a more advanced course? Do you intend to be your own life coach or do you aspire to be a professional life coach? The many varied courses include religious ones as well, such as courses for those who want to be a Christian life coach or maybe a spiritual life coach as well. Of course the most basic and fundamental would be a course which offers life skills coaching.

Before I end my article, I would want to say that think through carefully what you want at this stage. Engage the experts if you really want to be professional. Do note that being certified or accredited is not a must have, there are excellent life coaches who got to where they are now simple because they are good and also have experience. But do note the different qualifications, courses and training available, but do not start pulling your hair just because you cannot afford a course or do not have a certificate.

To end of this article, I would like to introduce to you today’s book on life coaching entitled Start Your Own Coaching Business by Monroe Mann. What better book to introduce when you need to know which life coaching courses are the genuine ones. While you read this book about the proper ways to start a life coaching business, you would also find out what you should look out for when you register for a life coaching course. There are currently only 5 reviews of this book and 4 of them give the book 5 stars!

Start Your Own Coaching Business

This book teaches you how to be a motivational life coach as a professional career. It contains an easy to use hands-on guide which guides you through the steps you need to take to set up and launch your own successful coaching company. Then the next stage would be to help your clients with their life and get them motivated. Of course you would have to become an expert life coach in the process to attract clients and build your reputation. The book also features experts who provide real-life examples, sound business advice and priceless tips. It does hope that you can build a great business brand, teaches you how to price your service, advertise and publicize to attract more clients and finally boost profits by expanding your business.

Well ok now that I have gone through the book, it does seem that it is not really about life coaching courses but oh well maybe I will get it right next time! Stay tuned for more articles that will let you become a great life coach and learn what is life coaching in the process!

Life Coaching Courses

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

Life Coaching for Beginners

Life Coaching for Beginners - In my earliest post, I have talked about life coaching. Now in this subsequent post of mine, I will finally talk about and give you the answer to what is life coaching. Many people may have heard of other similar terms, such as managing, training, mentoring or maybe even counselling. But do you know that these terms do not really give you the same meaning as coaching? Let me explain these terms as well as the term coaching first. There are many different forms of coaching but the one that my blog focuses on would be on life coaching. So anyways let us get back to the original question.

So what is managing, training, mentoring and counselling? Let us start with the easiest – counselling. Well when people encounter problems in their lives, or in their relationships like family or marriage, they go to a marriage or family counsellor who would talk to them, assess the situation and see what is wrong. These counselling sessions serve to improve communication between two or more individuals who are facing problems. While coaching is more about improving and bettering oneself, part of coaching is also about improving one’s relationship or marriage. However I would feel that counselling is more to solve an issue or problem, whereas coaching is more for improving oneself overall.

Then there is the case about managing. You should know what are managers right? Most of the time they are your bosses and the people who are in charge. Hence managers sort of direct you around and ensure that you are doing the right thing at work. So if you need someone to manage you, you probably are your own businessman that’s why you are thinking of getting a manager! Well there certainly is not about coaching because managing is simply about making sure that people know what to do and what they should do.

What about training? You have heard soldiers training for the war or sportsmen training for a competition. Trainers teach these people skills on how to achieve a certain objective. In a way they are like teachers who teach people what to do what they do not know how to do and also how they can improve in the process. Some teachers or trainers are also known as coaches, but these coaches usually train the individual physically and not mentally.

Lastly we talk about mentoring. As mentioned for training which is more physical in nature, mentoring is the mental side of training. Mentoring would be quite close to coaching but is more of guiding someone along and showing them how to do something. A mentor is like a guide who would teach you how to start a business, how to emulate himself such that the mentee is able to achieve what he wants to achieve. I do feel that coaching has some mentoring elements in it.

So this brings us to the big question, what is coaching? Well I will be talking about that in my next post, as I just realised that this post is starting to get a bit long! Before I end, as always, I am going to introduce a good book on life coaching training. Maybe once you get this book you do not even need to find a life coach anymore. Maybe you may even up up taking up some life coach jobs. This book is titled Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute of Life Coach Training. It will not only teach you lessons on becoming a life coach but at the end you may end up with some life coaching certification too!

Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute of Life Coach Training

You would be happy to know that this book has gotten 27 reviews, of which 26 were 5 stars and 1 was 4 stars at the time of this post. If you are looking for a book on how to be a professional life coach, then this is really it! The number of people seeking help and who are in need of personal and professional coaching will only increase in the future and if you are a professional life coach, this would only mean that you are positioned to be in a powerful career. Whatever the type of coaching you might seek, you would realise that life coaching is the basic operating system and the foundation required for a good coach.

In this book, the author Pat Williams, who has been a leader in the life coaching movement and a pioneer of the coaching profession and who has founded the Institute for Life Coach Training, an ICF Accredited Coach Training Program, has co-authored this essential book with Diane S. Menendez, Ph.D. who is a master certified coach and has coached leaders, teams, and organizations for over 25 years. This book comes from the wisdom of years of collective experience that both authors have gone through and is designed with the curriculum for the Institute for Life Coach Training in mind. This curriculum has trained therapists, psychologists and not forgetting life coaches around the world and presents the essential elements of a life coach training program in a content-rich form.

Buy this book Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute of Life Coach Training if you intend to become a life coaching professional and you will never regret it. Till my next article where I will finall explain what is life coaching!

Life Coaching for Beginners

Life Coaching

Life Coaching - In my short introductory post, I have talked a little bit about how this blog would work. Of course the main focus of this blog of mine is to really talk about everything under the sun with respect to life coaching. It is definitely one of the best things which would value add to your life. Life coaching is not a simple business and you should engage a life coach to be on the safe side. Well in all other cases, perhaps you might find my blog good enough that you can do some life coaching on your own without engaging a life coach. In this way, you can not only save some money but learn some trips to do it yourself (DIY).

Anyways besides engaging a life coach, there are also many life coaching courses out there that you can take up. Currently there isn’t any life coach certification or life coach accreditation. From what I know, life coaching is pretty new and is a self-regulating profession, except for those registered under international professional associations). To attain such certifications, you would need some good life coach training or should I say life coaching training.

So if you are on a quest to find a life coach, I am not sure this blog of mine would be able to help you out. But of course deep down in my heart I hope that this blog will truly really really help you out. My blog would in subsequent articles focus on becoming a life coach. Maybe if you want to look for some life coach jobs to get some life coaching certification, you are also most welcome.

So as mentioned, I like to introduce good books on life coaching for my blog. I believe that it is impossible for me to cover everything on my blog and hope that with my good recommendation, people may actually buy some of this books to read and improve on their knowledge. In today’s article I would like to recommend this best selling book titled Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life by Laura Whitworth.

Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life

You would be happy to know that many of the reviews of this book gave it a 5-star rating (46 out of 70 with another 14 giving it 4 stars at the time of this post). Anyways this book is a newly revised edition. Co-Active Coaching teaches you how to design and maintain successful, collaborative, and empowering coaching relationships. While is book is written more for the coach or prospective coach, I would say that it is useful for people who need some help with life coaching to read it too. This book is divided into three parts and the authors, Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House and Phil Sandahl describe in detail their flexible and adaptive model for great life coaching.

The three parts of the book are as follows:

Part One is about "Coaching Fundamentals." The authors outline the model which places the client's agenda at the heart of the coaching partnership. The model focuses on the coach using his or her skills to focus on the client's fulfillment, balance, and process.

Part Two is about "Co-Active Coaching Skills." There are five skills which are key to the coach's success: listening, use of intuition, exploration of curiosity, action and learning and self-management. The book details activities that the coach can practice at the end of each chapter. This would allow the coach to perfect his skills in the five different areas.

Part Three is about "Co-Active Coaching Processes." While the earliest section was about skills, this section is more on how to conduct a smooth life coaching process. For this section, the authors highlight the three core principles of coaching, which are fulfillment, balance and process.

The fourth section is on "The Coach's Toolkit" which is a little nice section that had packed all the information needed to facilitate life coaching. For example you can find Action Plans, Client Activities and Worksheets, Intake Checklists etc which are good tools for the coach to use when coaching clients. There are even exercises and worksheets that can be used by the coach to better understand what the client is asked to do and so as to allow him to understand the coaching process as well. There are over 35 exercises, questionnaires, checklists, and forms to reinforce the principles and techniques taught in the earlier chapters.

With so much good information stored in this book Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life, you should go ahead to grab it soon before it runs out of stock! Stay tuned to my life coaching blog for more good books and future updates!

Life Coaching

Welcome to my What is Life Coaching Blog

Hello there dear readers! Welcome to my What is Life Coaching blog. I have actually created this site so that everyone would be able to find out more about life coaching and if possible do some life coaching on themselves! I think it is important that in the first place people understand what is life coaching. This site would not only teach you the basics but hopefully train you to be a life coach too. This is my first post and it is just an introduction into the world of life coaching. There are more articles on life coaching to come and throughout my blog posts, I would also introduce some good life coaching books that you can refer to in your journey to improve yourself. If you have questions that you want to ask me or something that is not covered in my blog, please feel free to email your question to buycheaptoys@gmail.com. I do hope that I can provide you with all the help you need on life coaching.

Welcome to my What is Life Coaching Blog