If you’ve strategized, planned, and performed to your best, and are now looking for a guided path to reach your full potential, maybe it’s time to get yourself a life coach.

A life coach is a trained professional who can help you achieve all-around development and attain your full potential across several aspects of life.

Like an athlete has a coach to work on specialized parts of their fitness and gameplay, ordinary people can also adopt an organized strategy for self-awareness and improvement. A certified life coach can help them through this part.

So, what exactly does a life coach do?

A life coach works with people to help them make upgrades in their lives and move ahead from whatever is making them feel stuck. Your coach will help you set goals depending on your priorities in life, and then devise a plan so you can achieve them within a set deadline.

They don’t teach anything new. Rather, coaches work on the belief that every person has everything inside themselves to make whatever life upgrades they desire. The coach works more as a facilitator than as a teacher.

This is life coaching summarized on a broader scale. At a micro level, life coaches have their area of specialization. Some work in relationships, some in career, some in family and private matters, some in goal-accomplishing, fitness, habit building, and the list continues.

This post is the ultimate guide to getting started with working together with a life coach. If you’ve ever considered upgrading your life with the help of a trained professional, this article can be your cue to start doing that right away. Read on for some insights, and don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.

Who needs a life coach

Technically, any person can hire a life coach, no matter what phase of life they are at. Coaching can be an incredibly eye-opening experience and can make several hurdles seem less daunting.

However, certain situations can become much easier with a life coach’s expert guidance, for example, switching jobs or shifting careers, and undergoing a significant life change like moving to a new city or entering a new relationship. 

Aside from that, there are several signs that working with a life coach can make your life significantly better. These are:

• If you find life meaningless or fail to see a purpose.
• If you feel constantly dissatisfied, no matter how many accomplishments you have under your belt.
• If the people around you feel like you’re pushing them away. 
• If you’re always under a lot of stress.
• If you’re trying to build new habits or break old ones.

No matter what your situation is, coaching helps you become self-aware and gives you enough clarity to view life from a different perspective. That’s why it’s important to be very careful and pick the right life coach whose coaching style and budget match your requirements.

Most coaches offer a free clarity call to help you understand if they are the right fit for you. Make sure you check out our actionable tips to make the most of your first call with your prospective life coach.

How can a life coach help me

As mentioned before, working with a life coach has several benefits. Coaching can be depicted as reevaluating. It’s tied in with figuring out how to reframe your perspective and directs your capacity to deal with the hardships involved in what Werner Erhard called “the being of a human being.”

A life coach helps people to push forward in areas where they feel stuck — be it individual goals, relationships with others, how they wish to make a living, what they want to accomplish in life.

1. Helps you gain clarity around your life’s purpose.
2. Equips you to seek solutions to specific problems in life.
3. Makes you more self-aware.
4. Helps you make a plan and stick to it.
5. 5. Helps boost your productivity.
6. Holds you accountable.
7. Inspires you to constantly re-evaluate your thinking and beliefs.
8. Helps you nurture better relationships with yourself and the people around you.
9. Helps you be more grateful and have a positive outlook on the effect others have on your life.
10. Makes you more likely to accept constructive criticism.
11. Makes you more empathic and compassionate, so you can see and feel the world through the perspective of another person. 
12. Helps you make better decisions. 
13. Keeps you motivated and disciplined.
14. Eliminates bad habits.

Aside from these, working with a life coach can have multiple other benefits like helping you manage your time more productively, making you more goal-oriented, eliminating negative thoughts, and overcoming your irrational fear and unnecessary anxiety. Statistics from the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) Client Survey tracked down that 67.6% of coaching customers experience a more elevated level of mindfulness.

Is a life coach the same as a therapist or a mentor

No matter how similar their services might sound at first glance, a life coach is different from a mentor. 

Perhaps, the most critical difference between a mentor and a life coach can be summed up in the words of Coach Tony, the Founder of Coach.me: “Mentors are found by chance, and coaches are available right now. So, looking for a mentor means postponing your career growth, often for quite a long time. But, choosing to opt for a coach means embracing the next step to your growth right away.”

A life coach is also different from a therapist. 

Whereas a therapist looks into a person’s past and helps them tackle unresolved issues there, a coach looks on to the future and helps a person design better goals, stick to them, and in general improve the quality of their life by working on what they promised themselves. 

What are the long-term impacts of having a life coach

Life coaching is often a time-exhaustive project and may require several months before you start seeing the results. However, if you keep working hard with your coach over an extended period of time, the impact of life coaching can be all-encompassing. Some of the many ways a good life coach can impact you are:

1. Helps you achieve your goals

With a life coach’s help, you can design an exclusive arsenal of explicit tools and techniques for achieving all the objectives you set for yourself. Thus, you don’t have to experiment or waste time in trial and error. You’ll get the perfect strategy that’s tailor-made to your goals, strengths, and weaknesses, and can help you make your dreams come true with the least resistance.

Periodically reviewing your objectives or sharing any obstacles you encounter on the way to a coach can be supremely helpful. You can avoid unnecessary mistakes if you keep talking about your plans from time to time with your coach.

2. Offers a perspective shift

You get an unbiased, third-person’s point of view on any hurdles that might be stopping you from reaching your goals. This can be a significant impact because most people tend to get stuck in a specific worldview, often banging their head against a closed door while turning a blind eye to a new window filled with opportunities open right in front of them. 

3. You’ll have a role model

A life coach can be a good example to emulate. They can be a positive influence on your life. Your conversations will spark your curiosity and give you a burst of motivation to make your journey easier.

4. You’ll run out of excuses

Of all the problems that hold us back from the life we truly want to live, most are in our heads. When a task seems difficult, we make excuses and refuse to find workarounds that might make the job easier.

In such a case, having a life coach can serve as the ultimate accountability boost. Since your coach holds you responsible for meeting your goals on time, you’ll no longer have any valid excuse that the task is “too hard” or that the process takes “too long.”

5. You feel encouraged

An important part of achieving your goals on time and enjoying the process is celebrating small wins. A life coach will help you do that and make you feel appreciated. 

You will also have a better understanding of your own strengths. Your coach will assist you with identifying and fine-tuning them so you can get out of the loop of negative self-talk and learn to look at what lies ahead instead of focussing on the opportunities you might have missed.

What to keep in mind before considering life coaching

However, as incredibly effective it might be, life coaching is definitely not a magic pill. Employing a life coach won’t bring forth a sense of “instantaneous achievement”. Here are some potential pitfalls of life coaching, and the prime reasons why so many people have a negative impression about having their own life coach.

1. Life coaching doesn’t give immediate results

A common misconception among people is that a life coach will provide you actionable steps which will help you achieve your goals immediately. Sadly, that’s not the case.

A life coach will help you understand your goals, your strengths, and your weaknesses, and then design a strategy that works best for you accordingly. Ultimately, the onus for doing the work is on you, as is the responsibility of updating your coach about small wins and hurdles you face along the way.

2. Life coaching can’t treat mental health issues

As mentioned earlier, a life coach is different from a therapist. If you have a mental health condition like ADHD, depression, or anxiety, only a qualified professional can help you.

However, it is possible to get results if you are seeing a therapist and a coach at the same time, as long as you keep separate expectations from both. 

3. Life coaching will only work if the coach is suited to your needs

A relationship coach might not be able to help you get a salary hike. Similarly, a fitness coach might not be able to help you with your alcohol addiction.

Since coaching is such a specialized field of study, you can only get results when you hire someone who is specifically suited to solve the problem you are seeking to resolve. In addition, the coach’s coaching style has to align with yours, and your way of tackling situations has to be matched. That’s why a clarity call is so important so you can make sure of all these before making a commitment and then regretting it if things don’t work out as you had planned.

How to work with a life coach

If you feel like you’re ready to work with a life coach and welcome transformation into your life, here are the steps you can follow to make sure you have a good experience the first time around:

1. Find a coach

A good place to look for prospective coaches is by browsing through a coaching directory. Get yourself a life coach now from the Coach.Me directory of some of the most high-rated life coaches in the world.

2. Hop on a clarity call

As mentioned before, most coaches offer a free consultation call so that you can have a conversation with them. To determine if a coach is best suited to what you are looking for, you have to know the tips to make the most of your first coaching call. Check this article for a few tips to help you choose the right coach.

3. Your first coaching session

Life coaching is like a partnership where two people — the client and the coach — work together to achieve a common goal. During your first life coaching session, your coach won’t impose their wishes on you or force you to make any decision whatsoever. 

They will simply let you talk and help decipher your goals and what habits or limiting beliefs are stopping you from reaching them. Since coaching sessions are confidential, you can feel free to express your innermost thoughts, feelings, and opinions without the fear of judgment.

4. After the first session

In all probability, you will leave the first session with lots of ideas buzzing around in your brain. It’s best to journal your feelings so you can compare them with later sessions as you progress. Your coach will also likely give you a set of tasks you’ll complete before the next session.

5. Subsequent sessions 

There are no standard guidelines about how long a life coaching session should be. It can last from a few minutes and go up to a few hours. Likewise, the frequency of the calls also varies from coach to coach, and you can work on a cadence that suits your goals and the urgency of your current motive behind getting a coach for yourself. 

Find more resources about life coaching here

1. Why Would a Person Pay for a Life Coach?
2. What Do People Expect From a Life Coach?
3. 8 Myths About Life Coaching
4. How Long Should You Work With A Life Coach?

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