WHAT IS LIFE COACHING?

Life Coaching is a unique and personalized process where I, as your personal Life Coach, will establish a non-judgmental relationship with you. As your coach, I will carefully observe and listen to you, providing the necessary tools to help you define clear and measurable goals. Through this partnership, you will be guided on your journey to achieving those goals.

What's the difference between therapy and Life Coaching?

While therapy focuses on healing past wounds, Life Coaching concentrates on your present situation and empowers you to move forward in creating the future you desire. Rather than dwelling on obstacles and problems, Life Coaching centers on identifying solutions and consistently focusing on achieving what you want.

What is Individual Coaching?

I offer one-on-one coaching sessions to help you achieve your specific goals. Working closely with you, I'll design a unique plan tailored to your individual needs. During the coaching process, I will ask powerful questions that help you tap into your best qualities, emotions, and self-awareness. You'll receive support, objectivity, structure, positive energy, insights, and helpful tools. Between sessions, you will have actionable steps and exercises to follow, ensuring you stay accountable and achieve results.

How Does Coaching Work?

I understand that the way you think profoundly influences your feelings and actions. By helping you strengthen certain thought patterns and brain connections,  making it easier for you to develop new habits and achieve positive changes in your life.

The Coaching Process:

Step 1. Assessing Your Current Situation

Step 2. Discussing Your Desired Outcome

Step 3. Setting Specific Performance and Behavioral Goals

Step 4. Designing Actions and Creating a Plan

Step 5. Implementing The Plan

Step 6. Monitoring Your Progress and Holding You Accountable

Step 7. Evaluating Results and Adjusting the Plan Accordingly

Areas of Impact:

My coaching can positively impact various areas of your life, including:

• Relationships - Enhancing connections with friends, family, and navigating marriage or divorce
• Balance - Improving time management, organization, and overall life fulfillment.
• Career - Finding clarity and satisfaction
• Finances - Effective money management
• Body Image - Building confidence and improving body language
• Happiness - Reducing stress and anxiety
• Communication - Managing confrontation, expressing feelings, and handling difficult conversations

First, there must be a belief in the capacity for change and a motivation for change on the part of the client. Both the coach and the client must believe that change is possible for anyone who desires it and is willing to work at it. The underlying assumption is that people are creative, resourceful, and growth oriented.

Secondly, development  of an increase in the client’s self-awareness is crucial to the life coaching process. This includes being willing to acknowledge one’s current strengths and limitations so that realistic attainable goals may be set for the future. Likewise, increased self-awareness of values and hopes for the future is encouraged.

A third core concept of life coaching is the importance of setting goals, followed by the client’s acceptance of accountability for reaching those goals. All life coaches facilitate the setting of goals by the client. With the coach’s help, a general statement of goals from the client becomes developed into specific measurable goals.

The goal of life coaching is to enable a client to reach their potential in any given aspect of their life. While the life coach asks questions to encourage self awareness and thought, the client must decide what it is that they want to be different in their lives. Once the vision of the future is established, the coach works with the client to figure out how to bring about those changes.

Life coaching can help with a wide range of future-oriented outcomes. These may be related to the client’s work, relationships, life/work balance, or general contentment.

Specific examples include:

• Improved performance at work as seen in greater productivity
• Improved work performance in terms of better efficiency
• Increased self-confidence
• Improved relationships (more cooperation, less conflict, etc.)
• Improved communication skills
• Better balance of time spent at work vs. at home
• Improved time management at home
• Improved effectiveness of a working team
• Improved physical health and emotional well-being
• 
  

Life coaching is not recommended for coping with mental illness, acute distress, or unresolved past issues. It is also not effective for individuals who are resistant to making changes in their lives, or who are seeking support as the primary intervention. Life coaching is not psychotherapy and can not substitute for therapeutic intervention or counseling. It is not a friendship; it is a working relationship.

Issues for which life coaching is not right (is not recommended or suitable) include:

• Clinical depression, including Major Depression and Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic or acute anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Those with unresolved problems from the past, such as unresolved grief or anger due to past trauma
• Serious mental illness, such as Schizophrenia or Schizoaffective Disorder
• Personality Disorders which include eccentric behaviors (Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal)
• Personality Disorders which involve dramatic or erratic behaviors (Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic)
• Desire for emotional support without intention of making changes
• Need for athletic coaching/training
• Those who view their life as “good enough” and feel no need for change
• Those who want to be directly told “what to do”
• 
  

Life coaching is different from psychotherapy in several critical ways. Most importantly, life coaching is not intended to treat any emotional or mental illness. Coaching is aimed at taking a current life situation which is tolerable but less than ideal toward a future outcome which is highly desired.

Psychotherapy often addresses current situations which are not tolerable and causing significant distress. A psychotherapist is educated and experienced in working with individuals who have serious psychological issues.

Life coaches do not necessarily have such education or experience, unless they also happen to be trained psychotherapists. For this reason, only psychotherapists are qualified to treat the various emotional disorders and personality disorders noted above.

A second critical difference between life coaching and psychotherapy is that life coaches do not address problems related to past unresolved losses or traumas. Life coaching is exclusively focused upon the present and future, while psychotherapy usually involves some understanding of the past as well as coping with the present and preparing for the near future.

Thirdly, life coaches differ from therapists in terms of the role of support in the relationship. Psychotherapists will be supportive as needed during the therapy process, as they are fully aware that their clients are often in a state of distress. Life coaches must focus upon goals and measurable outcomes as opposed to coping with current distress. Therefore, life coaches will primarily be a motivator and an accountability partner as opposed to a supportive person.

A fourth difference between the role of life coach versus psychotherapist is that the former will usually be much more open about their personal life, at least in their advertising of services and social media presence. Most psychotherapists only reveal facts of their personal lives when relevant and helpful to the topic presented by the client, such as to express empathy.

A final, often cited, difference is in the role of providing advice and guidance to the client. There is less clear distinction in this role because psychotherapists vary greatly in their tendency to be directive and provide guidance, depending upon the therapeutic model.

A behavioral therapist will be much more directive than a psychoanalytic therapist. A life coach is expected to provide guidance and to advise the client as a primary part of their work, although they generally avoid telling a client “what to do.”