What is Life Coaching?

I’ve been asked this a lot recently and it’s a perfectly valid question.  I thought I would take the opportunity to answer the questions in a series of blog posts because the reasons people come to see me for life coaching are many and varied.

Life Coaching,Consulting, Counselling and Therapy.

• A consultant is generally an expert in a particular field and they will tell you what to do. Consulting is the service you seek to answer a specific problem using the expert knowledge of a professional.
• Counselling is a process that focuses on the relief of distress. You and your counsellor will work together to help you cope, adapt and build skills to reduce that distress.
• Therapy is a deeper and longer process than counselling. Clients who pursue therapy want to make deep and significant changes in themselves which involve looking back to events to understand why they happened.  People usually seek therapy to cope or come to terms with something that happened in the past. They’re often seeking tools to handle emotional issues that stem from past trauma.
• People seek coaching as a method for creating a new future. Coaching is about a client starting from where they are, receiving support as they do the inner work necessary to create outer transformation.  As a Life Coach, I see my clients as already whole, equipped with everything they need to reach their goals.

What prompts someone have life coaching?

There are a number of reasons, which can manifest in lots of different ways yet very often the surface reasons are to do with work, career and general life direction. Sometimes clients describe life lacking purpose and meaning.  There are a number of experiences that can happen before this:

• You start to feel a bit wobbly on a Sunday evening
• Perhaps you cannot get to sleep on Sunday night as you are worrying about the next morning
• You wake up on Monday morning with a sense of dread
• You feel your career / job role isn’t right for you
• You’re not quite sure what career / job role would be?
• You see other people moving forward but you don’t feel you have enough confidence
  Things that you used to enjoy doing don’t hold your interest anymore
• You spend all your time working and don’t seem to have a life outside of it
• Perhaps you have reached the top of your “career ladder” but it hasn’t satisfied you, it doesn’t mean as much as you thought it would
• You now think that the ladder was against the wrong wall
• Deep down you have a feeling that this isn’t the life you were meant to live
• Maybe you are now thinking about being your own boss but you don’t know where to begin
• You keep thinking about a business idea you have but either don’t know where to start or don’t believe you can do it or both!

What does life coaching involve?

Coaching is a conversation about where you’re at, where you want to be and what’s in the way, both real and imagined.  Coaching is about the future; it’s about solutions; it’s about helping people become more aware of who they really are beyond everything that’s getting in their way.

When people approach me, they are often overwhelmed.  They think that they’re stuck with however things are at the moment.  Through coaching I help them increase their self-awareness and identify what they are truly responsible for and can change.

The Role of the Life Coach

As your coach I use skilled questioning to help you:

• clearly identify what your current situation.
• identify your ideal outcome  – this can often take a full session on its own. As we begin to explore this we start to tap in to what it really means to you, deep inside you and we explore it’s true meaning, value and purpose to you and for you.
• set specific goals that will help you achieve that outcome.
• identify clear strategies that you can implement to achieve your goals and outcome.
• remove self-limiting beliefs that are getting in the way of taking action and moving forward
• stay accountable
• access a set of resources within you that you didn’t realise you had.

I use our initial contact as a free consultation to help us get to know each other a little and decide whether or not we are a ‘fit’.  It’s also to establish whether or not your particular challenge is something that I would work with.  As a full member of the Association of Coaching, I will always be guided by the Global Code of Ethics for Coaches, Mentors and Supervisors.

Code of Ethics

Why would a client want to know about the code of ethics?

What does it mean to you if your coach is a member of a professional coaching association?  You can be confident that your coach:

• is fully qualified and has undergone rigorous training and testing
• maintains and updates their skills through Continuing Professional Development
• undergoes supervision
• is fully insured
• has a duty not to misrepresent the support they offer.

As a coach, will I give you answers? Nope.
As a coach will I provide solutions? Nope.
As a coach will I tell you what you ‘should’ do? Nope.
As a coach, will I guarantee results? Nope.  I will, however, guarantee you my very best efforts and the results are dependent upon your own commitment to this process.
I’ve been fortunate to help people develop and maintain their self-belief, increase their self-confidence, create their inner-cheerleader rather than have an overactive inner-critic.  I’ve helped them make radical career changes and secure their dream job or begin running their dream business. I’ve coached them through depression when they have chosen to explore  solutions that are more forward looking.

Our initial consultation is free of charge and it’s a great way to find out what options are available, so if any of the above feelings or situations present challenges for you at the moment, please reach out for that chat.

Contact Lou

Alternatively, you can book an appointment here Diary