Career Profile: Life Coaching

Life coaching is a brand new industry offering a very needed service. So what is life coaching exactly? Well the name sort of says it all. Life coaches aim to help people figure out their needs and wants and help them to create and achieve a life path. In contrast to therapists, life coaching focuses on the future. Life coaching is action-oriented and solution-oriented. It isn’t meant for people with serious psychological torment but instead those who are relatively well-off in need for an infusion of positive energy. Life coaches focus on balancing their clients lives and helping them to achieve positive results. Life coaches come from all different types of specialties.

Specialties:

The most popular specialty for a life coach to take up is career and professional coaching. Most people have heard of career coaches before, in fact in some sense most people have had career coaches. The Wall Street Journal did an article on how to find a career coach recently which you can find here. You should make sure that the career coach is qualified to help you with your needs, make sure they know your industry and have relevant experience. Avoid any large upfront fees or coaches who don’t offer a free consultation. These people are probably in it for the money and you’ll likely end up overpaying. Make sure that you find somebody who is a good personality fit. Just because your best friend or sibling felt a connection to a particular career coach doesn’t mean you will, it’s a very personal process and you want to make sure you’re working with somebody who understands you and who you feel comfortable with.

Another potential speciality for a life coach to adopt is relationship coaching. A relationship coach can help you with all of the relationships in your life. A relationship coach should be somebody who you can easily communicate with and somebody who you’re willing to get very close with. You should make sure that they have a lot of relevant experience and that they offer a system that can help you move forward.

This is of course also more technical coaches such as diet coaches and fitness coaches who you should connect with through professional health references. These people should be people who are highly technically qualified and who have the ability to motivate you.

There are also coaches who can help you with all aspects of your life, but these coaches may not be able to get you as far in these aspects of your life as more specified coaches. It just depends what you are looking for and what you need.
Benefits & Drawbacks:

Life coaching can be a highly rewarding career, it allows you to make a positive impact in people’s lives and allows you to share with people what you have learned in life. Life coaches can set their own hours, continually take classes to learn how to help people and get to establish meaningful relationships with all different types of people. In contrast to therapists they don’t have to diagnose somebody as having something wrong with them but can instead focus on the positive.

At the same time it can be hard to establish credibility due to the lack of a professional licensing system which can make it hurt to develop a client base. Life coaching is a new field and thus there aren’t a lot of people who are necessarily out there looking. You’ll have to find a way to bring people in.