A life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives.

Life coaches can help you clarify your goals, identify the obstacles holding you back, and then come up with strategies for overcoming each obstacle. In creating these strategies, life coaches target your unique skills and gifts. By helping you to make the most of your strengths, life coaches provide the support you need to achieve long-lasting change.

Many people seek out life coaches for guidance in navigating a significant life change, such as taking on a new career. In plenty of cases, however, people turn to life coaches simply for help in building a happier, more meaningful life.

There are a number of indications that working with a life coach could be helpful for you. These signs include:

• Frequent irritability
• Frequent stress and/or anxiety
• Inability to break bad habits
• Lack of fulfillment in your social life
• Persistent feeling of dissatisfaction at work
• Sense of blocked creativity

The different types of life coaches include:

• Addiction and sobriety coaching
• Business, executive, and leadership coaching
• Career coaching
• Dating and relationship coaching
• Diet and fitness coaching
• Divorce coaching
• Family life coaching
• Financial coaching
• Health and wellness coaching
• Life skills coaching
• Mental health coaching
• Spirituality coaching
• Sport coaching

A Life Coach focuses more on helping people find a source to channel their capability for their future, while a Therapist or a mental health professional focuses on healing, treating mental health conditions, and helping people work through trauma and other issues from their past.

Before you see a life coach, there are a few potential pitfalls that you should watch for:

Don’t expect immediate results. Your life coach can help you make plans, address problems, and work toward achieving your goals, but it is important to remember that these things take time. It may be helpful if you set some short-term and long-term goals to work toward.

Consider if your coach is suited to your needs. Not all life coaches take the same approach to a problem, so what you get out of the process may have a lot to do with the type of relationship you have with your coach. Look for a coach that is suited to working with your personality type and approach to solving problems.

Don’t see a life coach to address serious mental health issues. If you are experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition such as depression or anxiety, you should talk to your doctor or therapist to discuss your treatment options. Life coaches can offer help with your well-being, but that does not mean they can provide mental health treatment.

As a formal field, coaching is relatively young, but it has roots in many older disciplines. It draws on areas that include the human potential movement of the 1960s, leadership training, adult education, personal development, and numerous areas of psychology.

Life coaching formally emerged during the 1980s and grew in popularity throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Some of the earliest life coaches focused on life planning, but the field eventually grew to encompass other life areas including relationships, finances, careers, health, and overall well-being.

1. Am I ready for change?

Working with a Life Coach can transform various aspects of your life. Whether you are seeking a small change to a specific aspect of your life, or a complete ‘new year, new you’ mentality, you must be ready for change. So the first question to ask yourself is if you are ready for change and committed to your growth. Success starts with wanting an improved version of yourself more than you enjoy the current comfort of your day-to-day.

2. Am I ready to make a financial and time commitment to what I want?

Your coach is going to require you to make a commitment to yourself and to doing the work. Part of this commitment is the investment your coach charges for your time together, and the time they spend in the background to provide you with resources and support that will help you reach your goals. When we are willing to step up and invest in ourselves, we are more likely to take the endeavor seriously; and in doing so, you will get more out of the coaching experience.

3. Am I willing to play full out?

Coaching is meant, in part, to challenge you. Your coach will encourage you to be successful on the given topic and to make your growth sustainable. In order for this to happen, the easy way out is not always the best approach. So ask yourself, ‘Can I delay gratification until a later date?’, ‘Will I take the steps necessary to reach my desired outcome, even if it’s hard?’

4. What do I want to focus on in coaching?

Having an idea of what you want to get out of your coaching experience will help you evaluate your success upon completion of a coaching agreement. For this reason, your coach will likely spend upfront time with you to lay this out so that you are both aligned on desired outcomes.
If your outcomes are a bit vague right now, that’s okay! Your coach will help uncover this with you. Your coach might help you identify your passion and how to live that out each day. Or, your coach will help you discover which area of your life could have the most impact to feeling more fulfilled.

5. What are some of the signs that you may be in need of a Life Coach:

1. You feel lost…
2. You doubt yourself…
3. You have a vision, but no clear plan…
4. You simply don’t like where you are but can’t move forward…
5. You tend to forget important things…
6. You don’t always follow through…
7. You’re a procrastinator & it interferes with your life…
8. You don’t have a lot of time to waste…
9. You easily become stressed or frustrated…
10. Your self-confidence could use a boost…

Life Coaches will stay by your side as you gather the experience you need to believe in yourself.