Who is a Life Coach and What can they Do
Who is a Life Coach and What can they Do for You?
Very often, planning for our future is often overwhelming and can leave us feeling confused, not knowing how to deal with our lives. At such times, professional help provided by a life coach comes extremely handy!
Addressing very specific personal goals, ambitions, conditions and business projects, a life coach can help you to take course of action that will help you reach your goals.
Known to be a designed alliance between the coach and the client, essentially YOU, as the client will always have all the power! However, a life coach can make use of various psychological principals and techniques based on intuition. This can make it easier for the client to deal with extremely difficult and emotional situations. They can thus use the different techniques to be able to build upon their weaknesses!
However, this by no means that your life coach will play the role of an ‘agony aunt’! A life coach has to be objective and not at all demonstrate any sense of authority on an individual. The individual should actually feel empowered and positive about taking an independent decision that he/she feels is right for him/her.
By offering any sort of advice, opinion or even judgment; that would just undermine what life coaching essentially is about.
Some of the basic and core principles of life coaching include:
A)Subjectivity: Life coaching is subject to subjectivity. There is no right or even wrong answer to any problem. Perspectives are different and so are the solutions. Life coaching is about recognizing this and respecting these differences. At times, there may be certain perspectives, which are very restrictive by nature. These are harmful as they may even prevent a person from becoming who they aspire to be.
B)Empowerment: Life coaching leads to empowerment. Through this type of coaching, people learn to feel far more open-minded and positive about reaching solutions.
C)Guidance: While instructors are known to strictly tell people what they should exactly do, guides (also known as life coaches) are known to provide not only inspiration but also all the necessary tools to support a person in making decision (independently). Life coaches are just like guides!
Is Life Coaching Just an American Fad?
Although, life coaching is known to date back to the 1970s American vogue for self-help books and motivational talks, this process has been very effective in motivating the mass in general. However, at the same time there are segments of the population, such as the British lot who are known to actually ‘shy’ away from the entire notion and idea of ‘self-help’ and ‘self-improvement’. This is mainly because of the popular mantra, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ which is an intrinsic part of the national psyche of individuals. It can be said that the British are stereotypically modest and stoic in nature, whereas the US mass audience is typically built upon various ideologies of hope, strength and improvement. In fact, these very values have provided the foundation for the entire ‘self-help’ industry!
Life coaching has never made any unbelievable-sounding claim such as providing any miracle cure for unhappiness or even a quick solution for fighting debt or obesity. The techniques that are used in life coaching are meant to make use of basic intuition and psychological evidence. No sort of wish-washy life advice, intuition, opinion or even judgment was used.
This is drastically different from some of the self-help books that we can find in the US such as, ‘How to Keep a man in Love with You Forever’ or even ‘How to Shine Out in a Crowd’. There are plenty of other titles, which can go in this list, but it would be of no use when you compare it to the benefits of life coaching.
However, all said and done the number of people who are realizing that self-help is not exactly a self-indulgent fad is increasing! Self-help is a method of actually improving oneself by making use of what we already have and know and then breaking those limited preconceptions about we think we are and thereby seeing what we are capable of.Even if you are skeptical, you can also benefit from life coaching by organising and discussing your life with an impartial stranger!
Thus, bringing us back to the question at hand, Is life coaching JUST an American Fad? Well, we can disagree with that and conclude that it is more of an effective, legitimate and transformative process, which is most likely going to remain an integral part of not only the UK but also the world!
