Life coaching

Life coaching is the activity and process of addressing specific personal needs like goals setting, business start up, well being, relationships and career goals. Life coaching is significantly different from consulting mentoring, counselling, therapy and advice yet it draws from each of these to give the audience a holistic experience in meeting their individual needs. Life coaching is thus simply coaching on life issues and preparing one with the skills and knowledge necessary.

Life coaches and trainers normally are mature and well experienced individuals who can guide their clients in an effective and practical manner. Because life coaching issues range from academic matters to personal relational issues, the coach must be able to advise, counsel and mentor their audience. Usually, life coaching is designed for adolescent boys and girls due to the volatility of their age group. However, life coaching can be for anyone at any age facing any issue.

Coaching commonly cover the following topics;

• Confidence, self worth and self esteem

• Authenticity and identity

• Relationships at home, school, work and in the community

• Career development, career change, career audit and improvement

• Balancing work, family and social life

• Purposeful living

• Managing grief, loss, sadness, change, betrayal and disappointment

• Emotional intelligence

• Health, wellness and recreation

• Faith, spirituality and wholeness

Life coaching is for people who want to make changes to their life, those that want to correct their mistakes, or improve in specific areas. A life coach must be able to train their client to develop new habits, become more disciplined, improve time management, achieve more through productivity and above enjoy themselves in the process. The bottom-line in life coaching is that a well lived life is full of joy and helping others.

A general consensus of life coaching is that the coach must become a motivator, a strategist and an accountability partner to their client. A life coach must be a source of comfort, motivation and encouragement in situations of grief, despair and failure. They must provide solutions, ideas and alternatives were growth and development is required. Overall they must establish accountability to ensure that the discussion points from their sessions are being implemented.

Finally, Life coaching guides people into making the right decisions. This means they must give tried and tested ideas that will lead to the best possible outcome and results. They must also teach their clients on how to make good decisions on their own without relying on the coach every time.