What Exactly Does a Life Coach Do?
I've been speaking to over a dozen life coaches for the last couple of weeks. And to be completely honest with you, I'm still not 100% sure what a life coach does, mostly because they all do it a little bit differently. It's similar to how every chef will have their own unique flavors and style, even though they're all cooking food.A Life Coach is Not a Therapist
What's the main difference between a life coach and a therapist? A therapist focuses more on the past and how it's affecting your present. A life coach focuses more on the present, and how you'll get to some point in the future.
A therapist is helpful for healing from a state of emotional turmoil, trauma, or discomfort. A life coach is helpful for wanting to achieve a goal or a specific outcome in your life. Rather than removing a negative feeling or situation from your life, life coaching is the creation of something new that you want in your life.Coaching-- Not Counseling
Watch a good baseball coach of a little league team. He's playing many roles and using many techniques to get his players fine-tuned and performing well. He's a motivator and an inspirational figure. For him, anything is possible, and he imbues his team with that same attitude. He teaches, he guides, and most importantly, he watches and listens to his players to figure out what they need from him in order to excel at the game.Your life coach is on the side lines of the game you're playing – the game called “Life”. Your life coach can't play your game for you, but will give you very powerful tools from the sidelines so that you can play your game at a very high level and create amazing results.
Your Big Brother (or Sister)
Even if you don't have an older sibling, you've had someone in your life who you're intimately close with, and who plays the role of your mentor. You look up to that person because of their amazing powers and abilities, not to mention their great confidence, self-awareness, and honesty.Remember when you were a kid and your older sibling (or cousin or friend) would teach you a really cool skill, or game, or something useful? Like how to avoid punishment from your parents, how to play a game, how to do your school work. Imagine having an older sibling like that for your life, someone who you're close to that you can trust. Someone who's a teacher and a friend, someone who empowers you, believes in you, and gives you permission to do “crazy” things, like following your dreams.
Things You Wouldn't Expect
Please forgive my generalizations because they're not true of every life coach of course. But these are things I've noticed generally, and I want to share my observations with you.1. They're not perfect either.
In fact, many life coaches go to see their own life coaches. At first I was surprised to learn this, but then I realized that many professionals do the same thing in their own fields. Teachers go back to school to learn more. Professionals continue to hone their techniques and perfect their craft.2. They were once in your shoes too.
Yup. They once were feeling stuck just like you're feeling now. Though today he or she might seem like some sort of superhero, they've had to overcome their own personal challenges as well. That's one of the ways that they've become so good at what they do.3. They have great intuition and understand you more than you think.
I was talking to one life coach, and after saying maybe 2 or 3 sentences, she seemed to know exactly what I was struggling with in my life. Another life coach has such incredible intuition, she's practically like a psychic! It's really uncanny, and I don't even believe in that stuff.So What Exactly Does a Life Coach Do?
A life coach has one fundamental task: to get you from Point A to Point B in your life. Often times people don't even know what their Point B is. Or if they do know where they want to go in their life, they feel “stuck” in trying to get there. It can be anything from a career, to a relationship, to any aspect of life that's challenging.Life coaches are here to help you live an amazing and fulfilling life. Working with one of them is truly inspirational, and a blessing.
Tom Casano is the founder of lifecoachspotter.com. He's passionate about personal development and helping other people to achieve their dreams. Find out more about how life coaching can help you live an amazing life at lifecoachspotter.com. What's holding you back from living the life of your dreams?