Life coaching involves working with clients to help improve their quality of life through various emotions and actions. A Life Coach will be there to support a client throughout the coaching process until they feel they have reached the goals they have set in place.
Life coaches will create a mentoring relationship in which clients feel confident and comfortable. There are three stages to mentoring relationships and the process it goes through to reach the end goal.
- Cultivation – This is where the mentee will learn from the experience of the mentor. Whilst this is happening the mentor is gathering knowledge and insights on the mentee to have a clear understanding of emerging issues.
- Separation – This stage would be the end of a relationship, however, challenges tend to arise at this point if one of the members is not ready to end the relationship. This may be because the mentee disagrees with the process the mentor thinks they have made.
- Redefinition – This is the point where the relationship reaches the same level after successfully working through the separation stage. This would mean both members feel confident and comfortable in the relationship ending.
Throughout each of these stages, the Life Coach will be working with the client to help enhance and satisfy them in the areas of life they are looking to improve. Coaching sessions will mainly use conversational pointers to help focus a client’s attention on their desired goals. Life coaching will consist of many benefits throughout each session which help build on the progress of the client and them reaching their goals.
1. Gain clarity & purpose
One benefit of a Life Coach is helping you find your purpose and clarity in life by understanding who you really are. Many people find it unclear to understand what it is they actually want in life, in order to know this you need to be confident in who you are and what you want. Aspects which contribute to this would be looking at what is meaningful to you, what brings you joy and what gives you a sense of purpose.
A Life Coach will use a combination of questions and open conversational topics to help uncover the purpose you are just unable to identify. At this point, they can map out the steps you need to help feel confident in your purpose.
2. A point of guidance
Life Coaches are trained to be level-headed, understanding and controlling emotions. One major benefit is having a point of guidance in life. When getting started with a Life Coach you will work on uncovering what it is you want from your sessions, how you are hoping to change aspects or your life and why you are doing this. After successfully doing this your Life Coach can map out a series or small goals which will make it clear what you are working towards.
This can naturally become a point of guidance you were previously missing to help achieve your goals.
3. Engagement
Engagement can quickly become a clear benefit to having a Life Coach as it can be one of the most difficult points when trying to get to a certain point. Life can quickly get on top of you as you strive towards your desired destination causing you to lose a sense of enjoyment in it all. A Life Coach will use a combination of mindfulness techniques to help you come back into the present moment.
From this point, they can start re-engaging you in your life, and coming back into a sense of reality working towards realistic goals.
4. Setting achievable goals
Some people may find it easy to set Life Goals and work out how they are going to achieve them, however, many people don’t know where to start and that’s completely normal. a Life Coach will benefit goal setting by helping you make a plan on how to set effective goals and the actions to achieve them. Throughout your life coaching session, your Life Coach will pull together your thoughts, wants and beliefs to help identify and visualise life goals for yourself.
This will be a result of conversations you have had throughout sessions meaning you will have a clear understanding of where you would like to be and the steps you need to take to get there making it easier to understand and stay on track.
5. Create a sense of accountability
Goal setting might not be the problem for you, it may be that you never managed to actually achieve them. This comes down to accountability for what you are wanting to achieve. Accountability is another benefit to having a Life Coach, regular sessions reflecting on progression, goals set and steps needed to get there will help you stay on track.
A Life Coach becomes a sense of support in what you are achieving which will naturally improve accountability to the end goals.
6. Encourages re-evaluation
Everybody is guilty of having continuous thoughts, beliefs or assumptions about themselves of what they do, whether they are negative or positive. Individuals will often find that certain thoughts can become mental blocks or challenges which stop them from achieving what they want. When you work with a Life Coach, they will help you become more aware of these types of thoughts and feelings to work towards overcoming or adapting their impact of them.
7. Improve productivity
Improving productivity can be a huge benefit of having a Life Coach; you may often feel like you don’t have enough hours in a day to achieve what you would like. When you start to work with a Life Coach, they will help you reflect and reframe how you are currently spending your days.
A Life Coach will use a variety of routines or structures which you could put in place to utilise your time and increase the opportunity to reach your goals.
8. Improve self-awareness
Understanding the impact you can have on others and clocking your flaws, strengths and personality attributes can be difficult for you to pick up on yourself. An important part of self-awareness is the ability to reflect on yourself. One benefit of working with a Life Coach is session to session will involve reflection on aspects of your life, which in turn will improve self-awareness.
9. A new perspective
When trying to make any changes in life, it can be difficult to unattached yourself from the perspective you currently have on that particular aspect of life. Working with a Life Coach will provide you with advice and guidance from an individual who is unattached from the situation completely. This will help provide you insights on how to get to a particular goal from the outside looking in.
10. Improved self-confidence
As you begin to work with a Life Coach, they will be identifying unlaying issues or challenges which are preventing you from being your best self. Lack of confidence will continuously be an issue which is holding you back from achieving a particular goal; a Life Coach will help you believe in yourself by setting out a series of small goals which allow you to visualise yourself getting to that point. As you reach each goal, your confidence will improve.
11. Maintain healthy relationships
Relationships are everywhere; a loved one, friendships, colleagues or family all are equally as important as the others when it comes to maintaining and building them. Creating strong relationships contributes to overall happiness and life satisfaction. A Life Coach will help you work on yourself whilst recognising more of what is happening around you; this will help improve relationships in any area.
12. Find happiness
Understanding what happiness is as a clear definition is difficult when everybody has different versions of happiness. A Life Coach will use a series of open conversations and rhetorical questions to help understand what makes you happy. They will discuss what you want to achieve in life, what is your end goal or what you deem as happy to help you understand this. As you progress through your coaching session, you will gage a clear understanding of what makes you happy and how you can incorporate more happiness into your life through the decisions you make.
13. Be open-minded
In order to be open-minded, you need to appreciate and recognise that there are different ways of doing things outside of your own opinions. A Life Coach can provide you with an open-minded approach to thinking which teaches you to think outside of your own thoughts.
14. Unlock potential
Often people are underperforming in comparison to their full potential, and that is often because they aren’t sure how to utilise it or even know it’s there. As you work with a Life Coach, they encourage you to be open-minded and explore new ways of thinking; you will create a sense of creativity in a new way of thinking.
15. Eliminate negative thoughts
Individuals who often start seeing Life Coaches tend to experience negative thoughts which sometimes seem uncontrollable. This can have a lasting impact on life satisfaction and seems inescapable. However, a Life Coach will use their knowledge and skills to provide a different perspective on these thoughts. Coaching sessions will provide you with the understanding you need to reframe and rework these thoughts for a positive outlook.
16. Stay motivated
One challenge to achieving anything is trying to stay motivated in reaching that end goal. One of the most important benefits of Life Coaching is having a clear reason to maintain discipline and maximise your effort over challenging times. There may be times when this is harder than others; Life Coaches will use a range of conversational techniques to help you work through this.
17. Reduce stress
Stress is a common issue for many people which can be caused through finance, career, personal or physical reasons. Whatever issue it may be a Life Coach is trained to recognise the triggers of your stress and map out a way to overcome it. This may be through the use of relaxation techniques or eliminating negative habits impacting stress.
18. Enhance creativity
The core benefit of Life Coaching is just having somebody to sit and talk through all aspects of life with from a different perspective. In turn, this can enhance creativity; the combination of you discussing your thoughts, feelings and emotions alongside the use of coaching questions, you will start looking and thinking differently, which will spark creativity.
19. Create personal values
Values are set in order to recognise and understand the value in a particular thing wether that’s as a person or a business. Setting life values for yourself will impact every action you do, as you become more aware of the way you currently live.
20. Accept criticism
Thinking you can accept criticism and actually accepting it can be two very different things, but realistically criticism is the key to growing and progressing in anything. A Life Coach will education you in being open-minded in accepting feedback and looking at ways this can help you progress.
Conclusion
In conclusion there are many benefits behind Life Coaching which is why this is such a sought after investment. The key thing to remember when looking to start life coach is that these individuals are trained with the skills and knowledge they need to help you better yourself in the relevant areas. To get the most from your Life Coaching, carry out thorough research in finding the right Life Coach for you then get started!