Essential Guide to Life Coaching

Coaching is a safe space to get really clear on the life you want to live, and a road map towards it.  The coach will support you to develop a clear vision of the life you desire and help you create, and achieve, the steps you need to get there.

What to expect from a coaching session

Coaching is a guided conversation.  Initial sessions will focus on helping you to become really clear about the life you want to achieve and identifying what needs to happen to get achieve that.   Subsequent sessions are a safe space to support you to keep focused and to be supportively challenged to overcome any barriers on the journey and to reflect and build on what is going well.

What can life coaching help with?

Coaching can support any aspirations towards a future life.  Examples of what people may come to coaching for can be things like:

• You are looking to find more balance between competing priorities in your life.
• You are thinking of major changes such as a new career, or you want to develop a career that is feeling stuck.
• You have a real vision of a future life you’d like to build but you’re not sure how to get there.
• You are feeling bored in life and know there could be more, but don’t know what that looks like yet.
• You have a fear of failure that keeps you from reaching your goals.

What Life Coaching is not

Life coaching can sometimes be confused with counselling and therapy.  While there can be some surface similarities, it is important to note that coaching is distinct from psychotherapies.  There are different approaches to both coaching and counselling/psychotherapy, so no account of the differences can be definitive, but broadly speaking:

• Coaching has a focus on the future and building a desired life where counselling/therapy is often about resolving issues arising from past experiences or present emotional distress.
• Coaching has a strong emphasis on creating a safe space where you can be challenged to stretch yourself to reach goals whereas counselling/therapy is more frequently about creating a safe space and using psychological models to help resolve challenging areas of the past and current life, particularly emotional challenges.
• While coaching can be beneficial for mental health, it is not a treatment for mental health difficulties.  People who come to coaching are generally well but looking for development in their life.  An ethical coach shall recommend other sources of support for example if they feel that a client would be more appropriately supported by a counsellor/therapist or a medical professional.