Are you struggling to find a purpose in life? Despite having industry-relevant skills and competencies, do you find it hard to accomplish your targets?
Most of us know what we want to do but do not have an appropriate plan of action to channelize our skills to achieve our goals.
You might have often told yourself that you are not strong enough or intelligent enough. It is essential to note that your capabilities don’t hold you back; your fear of failure does. It is completely fine to be nervous or anxious, but it is not okay to let fear/ anxiety take a toll on you.
This is where life coaching steps in. Also known as personal development coaching, it helps you set your goals, identify your shortcomings, and help you to move past your fears. With the help of these sessions, you will learn how to take action confidently and commit in times of uncertainty.
In order to reach the next level of your life, let us walk you through what life coaching is and how it can assist you. In this blog, you will also discover why it is necessary and what are areas wherein you can incorporate life coaching strategies and methodologies. So, without further ado, let us begin!
What is Life Coaching?
Personal development coaching is a misunderstood concept. Some consider it to be modern-day counselling, while others think it is an expensive agony aunt!
So, to cut a long story short, it is the talking therapy that has been successfully used over many years and has changed numerous people’s lives. The critical aspect of life coaching is confidence.
People who lack confidence and self-worth often require life coaching. A life coach is responsible for reinstalling the individual’s faltering confidence and ensuring they have the courage to live up to their potential. Here is what a life coach does:
- Gain an overall perspective of your life and decide which area needs to be improved/ worked upon.
- Agree to achieve common goals.
- Break down the session to achieve immediate and long-term objectives.
- Help you learn and implement different strategies to enhance self-confidence.
Life coaching is often linked with therapy sessions. But no matter how akin they may sound, they are not the same! There is a fine line between life coaching and therapy. Let us discuss it in detail!
Life Coaching v/s Therapy
Is life coaching and therapy the same thing? No! There are some similarities between the two, but they are not identical. For instance, life coaching is primarily focused on personal and professional development. On the other hand, therapists require specific educational and licensure prerequisites in order to provide mental health treatments.
To understand the difference better, let us look at a tabular difference between them!
| S.NO. | Life Coaching | Therapy |
| 1. | Life coaching serves as a guide through the various aspects of your life. | Therapists help in healing your past wounds to help you enjoy your present. |
| 2. | It is focused on personal and professional development. | It is focused on helping you with mental health issues and contributes to your overall well-being. |
| 3. | Life coaching is a part of talk therapy. But herein, the coaches are not licensed. | Therapists have licenses to practice with clients. |
| 4. | Coaching focuses on achieving goals, changing behavior and transforming perspectives for overall self-improvement. | They focus on diagnosing and treating your mental health needs. |
| 5. | Your mental health, emotional well-being, and physical health are taken care of by life coaches. | Therapists help you understand your psychological patterns to help you change your behavior and improve your emotional and mental states. |
| 6. | Coaching is not a mental health treatment. | Therapy is a mental health treatment wherein therapists can prescribe medication for psychological and mental health conditions. |
Both life coaching and therapy help in personal and professional development. They are similar yet different. The table mentioned above highlights the key differences between the two so that you can decide whether to go for therapy or life coaching sessions! It is vital to note that both serve different purposes to make your life more productive and optimistic.
Types of Life Coaching
There are numerous types of life coaching that offer general guidelines for people to become more efficient in their lives. However, if you are also looking for overall personal development, then it is best to know the areas where you might need life coaching.
Below are the types of life coaching that you can take based on your requirements/ needs.
1. Relationship & Family Coaching
This kind of coaching can help facilitate conversations between family members who have communication issues. It also allows individuals to find ways to solve their current problems. Life Coaches provide clients with advice and suggestions to deal with the issues. For instance, family coaching helps instill harmony among family members, while relationship coaching helps clients find the right partners. Relationship coaching also includes guiding couples who are either getting married or divorced.
2. Career Coaching
Taking up career coaching sessions will help you face your career issues like deciding which field to choose, retirement opinions, career switch, etc. This kind of coaching is helpful for people interested in taking higher positions in the hierarchy or starting up their own businesses. Another benefit of career coaching is that it helps you decide your career and choose the kind of job based on your interests and talent.
3. Finance Coaching
Finance coaching helps you meet your financial goals and helps people who are striving to meet their monthly expenses in order to pay off their debts. This type of coaching can benefit people having money management or spending problems. Finance coaching will help you save your money and invest it meticulously to get better returns.
4. Mental Health Coaching
Mental health coaching deals with issues like conflict, anger, grief, etc. This coaching teaches specific skills to manage stress, anger, and other situations readily. The main aim of mental health coaching is to improve your communication skills to find work-life balance and create a pertinent layout to fulfill your goals. Another benefit of this coaching is that it builds your confidence and helps you find a sense of purpose in life. Thus, if you need some strategies or tools to improve your life, then mental health coaching is the one you must go for!
There are different types of goals you might want to achieve. But if you lack confidence and self-worth, then everything goes in vain. This is why personal development coaching helps you focus on different areas of your life to make you a better individual. It contributes to your overall well-being and increases your potential to handle life situations.
Who needs Life Coaching/ Life Coach?
Life coaching helps you in managing life situations efficiently. If you want to change your monotonous life cycles/ patterns, then it is best to opt for such coaching sessions.
Below are specific situations wherein you might need a life coach.
- Help in moving forward in your career/ life.
- Struggling to strive for a work-life balance.
- Experiencing a lot of stress at the workplace.
- Utilizing your strengths and weaknesses in a constructive way.
- Build self-esteem or need motivation.
- Improving time-management skills.
- Making major life decisions like a career change.
Apart from these pointers mentioned above, you can take up personal development coaching sessions if you are struggling in any other area of your life. Life coaching provides you the clarity to make better personal and professional decisions.
Let us now look at the benefits of taking life coaching sessions.
Benefits of taking Life Coaching
Life coaching is one of the booming fields that offers an insightful approach to making one’s life better. There are numerous reasons why you need life coaching.
Below are the advantages of taking life coaching for overall well-being.
1. Creating a balanced life
The concept of work-life balance is different for everyone. For instance, you strive to have a balanced life, due to which sometimes you might feel stressed out or anxious. In such a situation, personal development coaching helps inculcate a happy, tranquil, and harmonious relationship between your cognitive and physical being. The training enables you to identify the kind of balance you like to bring in your life and define the plan of action to achieve it.
2. Fostering better relationships
Relationships are the foundation upon which the individual and society are combined. Therefore, both society and individuals work together to achieve fulfillment in life. From marriages to friendships, strong relationships are critical to contributing a sense of happiness and joy. But if the relationships are not good, it becomes challenging to manage life situations. This is why personal development coaching is required. According to research,, it has been proven that 73% of the people who took life coaching have better relationships.
3. Achieve goals
We all have dreams in life, but only some have the capability to crystallize those aspirations into goals and accomplish them. If you know your short-term and long-term goals, then life coaching can help you create a concrete plan to attain them. This way, you will become more confident and productive in your approach.
4. Clarity of purpose
Do you have clarity as to what purpose you have in life? The answer to this varies from person to person. Transparency is crucial as it leads you in the right direction to fulfill your targets. Life coaching offers you that clarity and assists you in being utterly focused towards attaining goals.
5. Improved communication
Research shows that 72% of people who take personal development coaching sessions are better communicators. This is no surprise! Life coaches who help you out are accredited NLP practitioners who assist you in developing advanced communication skills. Thus, being good at interaction and collaboration solves half of your life’s issues. This is why life coaching is increasing in demand!
6. Higher income
As told earlier, personal development coaching sessions help you head in the right direction in terms of your career. As a result, you become capable of achieving your career goals and grow your business to new heights. In addition, even if you have a job, life coaching will help you become more efficient and productive at your workplace.
7. Accepting criticism
Suppose in a job interview, the employer/ HR asked you how well you take criticism. You might respond that you are open-minded and take criticism positively. But in the hearts of hearts, you know that emotions take over when someone criticizes you. An emotional reaction in such a situation can negatively impact your impression of ‘taking criticism positively’ on the person providing you feedback. They might just be trying to help you, but everything goes in vain when you prioritize emotions over logic!
This is when personal development coaching teaches you to accept criticism and work accordingly to make yourself productive at the workplace.
8. Better decision-making
Despite thinking that we act rationally, many of us make decisions subconsciously. Having a profound understanding of how the mind works, you can re-evaluate the decision-making process so that the mind becomes sagacious and uncomplicated.
9. Stay motivated
Failures and roadblocks can derail the best of us. Therefore, one of the most sought-after benefits of life coaching is to become disciplined and put in maximum effort in challenging times. Life coaching teaches you to stay calm and motivated even in the worst of situations to enhance functionality and derive better results. After all, challenging and complex circumstances help improve our competencies and work dexterously to achieve our targets.
10. Overcome your fears
One of the vital benefits of personal development coaching is that it minimizes negative thoughts and embraces your strengths so that you overcome your fears and adeptly fulfill your goals and aspirations. Once the fear has gone, you will have clarity in your life which will help you know your purpose and enable you to make better decisions.
Life Coaching can make your life better!
Having a better salary, work-life balance, achievement of goals, etc., are some areas where we want fulfillment. Personal development coaching helps us improve our performance in every area of life, thereby enhancing our vision and offering us clarity.
Once you become clear on your purpose, eliminate negativity, and have the appropriate tools and techniques to build a meaningful life, everything you desire will definitely come your way in one way or the other.
Life coaching is synonymous with self-improvement. It is a framework that determines your direction in life and serves as an ally to help you get there. So, if you are also interested in making your life meaningful personally and professionally, it’s time to take personal development coaching sessions and set your future on the right path!
