There are so many paths you can take these days to improve your life — whether it’s through taking classes, getting a mentor, furthering your education, or getting additional training.
However, if you want to improve your overall approach to life and really see significant changes, there’s a specific industry that can help you: life coaching.
Although the job description of a life coach can be difficult to pin down at times, one thing is abundantly clear…
Finding a good life coach can be a game changer in many areas of your life.
If you’re considering life coaching, but still aren’t sure what it’s all about, we’re here to share what you can expect when you work with a life coach.
What Is Life Coaching?
A life coach is a wellness and personal development professional who helps you improve yourself in order to find greater fulfillment in your life.
Some people like to compare life coaches to therapists or psychiatrists. But while both professions can (and should) have a place in your life, their approach to supporting you is quite different.
Most of the time therapists help people work through their past in order to analyze their patterns and take them from dysfunctional habits to functional ones. They focus on the past more than the future.
A life coach, on the other hand, supports you in analyzing what you’re doing now in order to improve your future.
A therapist is also more likely to offer you direct advice or recommendations. When you work with a life coach, they want to help you arrive at your own conclusions and access your highest form of thinking. It’s a holistic approach to improving your life, and they’ll rarely just tell you what to do. Instead, they work to help you find your own answers.
Life coaching is a rapidly growing industry. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of life coaches in the US grew by 33%.
As more people experience the outstanding results of hiring a life coach, it’s safe to say life coaching isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
5 Reasons to Work with a Life Coach
Despite the growing popularity of life coaches, you may still hold some stigma or skepticism around life coaching. After all, it is a relatively new industry, and fairly unregulated when compared to something like psychiatry.
Nevertheless, the results of working with a good coach will speak for themselves. Let’s take a look at some of the main reasons why people choose to work with a life coach.
1. To Gain Clarity
When it comes to achieving any goal, clarity is an often-underutilized tool. Transformation Coach and Arootah consultant, Lauren Bonheim, ACC, offers some insight on why clarity is so important.
“I like to think of having clarity through a puzzle metaphor,” explains Bonheim. “When you’re completing a puzzle, you can complete it without looking at the puzzle on the front of the box… but it’s a lot harder, so you’re kind of just guessing, not knowing what pieces go together or what the bigger picture looks like. But when you’re able to reference the photo on the front of the box, the puzzle pieces come together a lot easier — it helps guide you to fit all the pieces together.”
A good life coach will know exactly what questions to ask to help you get clarity on your goals and see the bigger picture.
2. To Create a Strategy to Achieve Your Goals
Setting a goal is one thing, but achieving it is another. If you’ve ever set a New Year’s Resolution and abandoned it, you know just how much harder it is to achieve a goal than to plan it. Discipline is an entirely different skill.
Advisor, mentor, and Arootah consultant Rodney Mueller explains what you can expect when you create a strategy to achieve your goals with a life coach.
“Ask yourself this question about your goals: If you achieved your goal, what’s the experience you believe it would provide?” he says.
Questions like these help you form the foundation of your goal strategy.
“Because the truth is, most goals are just symbols for what we really want,” Mueller adds. “We don’t want the money or the promotion, we want what we believe it will provide us.”
3. To Keep You Accountable
Accountability is present in every corporate, educational, and social structure out there. So how do we leverage accountability in our personal lives?
Sometimes, just checking in with someone who understands what you’re trying to achieve is enough to stay on track with your goals. If you know you have to give a report to your coach about the progress you’ve made, your brain is more likely to stick to the goal-setting strategy you’ve planned together. Think of it like doing your homework. You’re much more likely to finish your assignments if you know your teacher (or coach) will be checking in on them.
4. To Challenge Limiting Beliefs
Everyone has limiting beliefs, or cognitive blind spots, that might prevent them from reaching a certain goal. You may feel that you’re incapable of getting into an exercise routine because you’ve never done it before, or you’re not a good public speaker because all your past attempts have failed. A good life coach will challenge your limiting beliefs and help you break through whatever is holding you back.
The challenging part of limiting beliefs, or mental blocks, is that often our brains view them as facts. If you’re trying to achieve a goal or improve yourself, but you feel the facts and circumstances are against you, it’s no wonder you won’t achieve that goal.
When your limiting beliefs are challenged, you become limitless.
Kayleigh, an Arootah client, describes the shift she felt during her first life coaching session.
“I feel like I’m now able to look at things from outside my own perspective,” she says. “I can put myself in someone else’s place and give myself the advice I’d have given a good friend. I wasn’t feeling pressured at all, but we kept easily finding my truth throughout the session. It was wonderful!”
5. To Gain Confidence
Having the confidence to try something new, step out of your comfort zone, or improve your relationships will always benefit your life immensely.
A life coach helps you feel more confident in all your endeavors because they teach you to trust yourself.
Can you imagine what you could accomplish if you had the confidence to do anything? That’s the kind of possibility life coaching opens up for you.
“It was just great to talk to someone about something I was struggling with without them having too much at stake in helping me come to my own conclusion,” adds Kayleigh. “It was great to have someone listen and help me imagine the situation from someone else’s perspective.”
The Bottom Line
The powerful results of working with a life coach will speak for themselves, and a good coach will teach you to improve your own life on your terms — not improve it for you.
When it comes down to it, how you view your circumstances will always dictate the results you achieve. Life coaching allows you to think about your circumstances in a way that’s beneficial to you and your goals, while inspiring you to take concrete actions to enhance your life.
By all means, don’t take our word for it! Have a conversation with a life coach yourself to see how drastically your life can improve. Schedule a free, 30-minute introductory call with an Arootah Life Coach today.