What is Life Coaching?

A life coach is a personal change expert who helps people grow personally and professionally, helps people understand themselves more deeply and live with greater purpose, fufillment and balance.

Coaches help people like you navigate transitions, identify important goals and priorities for life, make important changes, lower stress, create action plans and more. So how does coaching really work?

Coaching is the art of helping people grow and maximize their potential without telling them what to do. In a coaching relationship, you choose what you want to work on, you set your own goals and actions—in other words, you are always in charge. What I bring to the table as a coach is a set of professional skills for helping you identify what you really want in life, design action plans to reach those goals, and get those things done.

You'll figure out early on that your coach is not a "teller" or an advice-giver. Coaches are masters at the art of asking questions and are great listeners. It is hard to think something through on your own (especially if it is an emotionally-charged issue), but it is amazing how much clearer your course becomes with someone asking you the right questions.  

Coaches do two primary things: they help you think things through, and they help you get things done. Coaches create a transparent and authentic environment helping you explore, discuss freely, and gain perspective on your life. In this open and safe place, you can say what you are really thinking. And that’s often where the real solutions come from. You’ll receive the kind of support, affirmation, accountability and follow-up structures you need to maximize your performance.

Coaching vs. Other Disciplines

You might ask, how is coaching different than mentoring or counseling? Where mentors give wise advice based on their own experience, coaches help you fully draw from the well of your own insight and ability. Often the biggest obstacle to our dreams isn’t knowing what to do: it’s having the self-confidence to do it! Coaches have mastered the art of believing in people instead of telling them what to do.

And where a counselor’s goal is to move hurting people toward wholeness, coaches help people who are basically whole maximize their lives. Counseling focuses on the past, but coaching focuses on the future.

Over and over, people who work with a great coach find they can reach higher and accomplish more than they ever thought they could on their own.