SO, WHAT IS A LIFE COACH?

So, tell me exactly what is a life coach, what do they do? (This is a question I hear a lot in my practice!) According to an article written by Kendra Cherry on verywelllife.com…

“A life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment.”

When contemplating how to explain what I do as a life coach, the buddy system from childhood came to mind. When I was a child, as I am sure most of us will remember, you were always taught to take a buddy. If you have to go to the bathroom, take a buddy. If you leave the group whatsoever, take a buddy. If you are having a tough time in a class, grab a study buddy. If you want to try something new…most of us take a buddy!

Think about some of the great entrepreneurs of our era, they all had partners, buddies, coaches, mentors… you get the point, let’s look at the start of some of these greats!

Steve Jobs founded Apple with his good friend Steve Wozniak by building the first Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs parent’s home.  Bill Gates founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975, becoming the world’s largest personal computer software company. Mark Zuckerberg now the CEO of META, formerly known as Facebook, came up with an idea that he and his classmates Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin originally called Face mash. Its sole purpose was for Harvard Students to rank other Harvard Students on their level of attractiveness, which quickly morphed into the Harvard Connection, a social network for Harvard Students exclusively, and eventually grew into Facebook and now META.  These men are all greats of our era but they did not rise to the top alone, they had coaches along the way.

So, when charting through important decisions, challenges, and changes that life brings to us daily why not have a buddy? A life coach can be that buddy, the one for support, the one for kicking your butt when you step back instead of forward, the cheer leader in your last mile to get you through to the finish. A life coach is a wellness professional, their job is to give you the guidance, tools, and support that lends to your goals and dreams becoming a successful reality. A life coach does not perform any special magic to get you to where you want to go, they ask questions, they give insight and then more questions, they assist you with navigating obstacles, create attainable goals, develop a plan of action, and cheer you through every step of your journey.

A life coach is not a therapist or a counselor! The best way I ever heard the difference between a therapist/counselor and a life coach is, a therapist/counselor works on the past to move you past trauma into healing, a life coach works from today to make goals for the future, taking life experiences to date and compiling set of goals and actions to realize and live our dreams…Achieve Your Truth.

According to Joseph Rauch, in an article he published on talkspace.com…

“Therapists, or psychotherapists, are licensed mental health professionals who specialize in helping clients develop better cognitive and emotional skills, reduce symptoms of mental illness, and cope with various life challenges to improve their lives.”

A therapist/counselor assists their client by moving through past experiences and trauma, reprocessing them and eventually healing them and helping them move forward with life. Whereas a life coach meets a client where they are in their current reality, working through motivational interviewing and observation they are able to assist in identifying obstacles in their current path, and decide to remove them, working towards a successful outcome with the goals they have made, which lends to a happy and satisfying life for the client, in a sense healing them as well.

The idea of both coaching and therapy is for the client to process through the obstacles in their lives, learn new ways to cope with them, make a goal and move forward with healing. The problem lies in when a client does not seem to move forward and does not rely on themselves instead they seem to be reliant on the coach or therapist, this is a therapy loop. When a client becomes dependent on their coach/counselor, it can become detrimental to their healing process. This makes it extremely important to establish clear professional boundaries.

A life coach, as a part of developing the action plan, will have the client set a time/date on each step of the plan. This assists in moving forward in a constant motion instead of sitting stagnate in any one area, sometimes this means realizing there are holes in action plan and maybe having to adjust, but continuing forward momentum.

Either way in today’s society things are ever changing and we will need to follow with changing times, learn to adapt, and make new goals. Life coaches are here to help navigate these changes as they come.

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
― Steve Jobs

Bibliography

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-life-coach-4129726

https://www.talkspace.com/blog/therapist-psychotherapist-complete-definition/

https://criteriaforsuccess.com/30-inspirational-quotes-on-sales-coaching/

https://depositphotos.com/56227959/stock-photo-belive-you-can-and-youre.html

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/614051

https://mccounselingcenter.com/2021/06/29/whats-the-difference-between-coaching-and-therapy/