Life Coaches: What Do They Do?

Some things about life can be solved on your own: accomplishing forms, running errands or planning a trip. But just because you can do it on your own, it doesn’t mean that you always have to. Or that you’re better off getting something done or deciding on your course of action on your own.  Two heads are better than one, after all, and when one of those heads is trained to guide people in making the best possible choices for themselves, then the experience will be much improved. It’s in the maximising of options and opportunities in life that the worth of a life coach becomes apparent.

What Is a Professional Life Coach?

A professional life coach is a type of wellness professional. They help people improve their lives by acting as a guide to learn what it is that they value and want most out of life. To best serve a client in this way, a life coach must wear a lot of hats, sometimes acting as a supportive friend, other times taking the role of a trusted and impartial advisor.  Then, they take it a step further by keeping a person on track to living the fulfilling life they envision. Life coaches don’t only help you chart a course of action and strategise how to overcome obstacles; they are cheerleaders as well, encouraging you to do your best. Moreover, they hold you accountable to your actions, whether it’s about personal relationships, your career or life. A Life coach is more focused on NOW and HOW rather than WHY. By helping you figure out where to go from where you are in a healthy, constructive and supportive manner, they have the best chance to instil long-lasting change within you. A life coach is a type of health professional that helps people make progress in their lives to achieve greater satisfaction. Life trainers help their clients in improving their daily relations, careers, and daily lives. Life coaches can help you clarify your goals, identify obstacles that hold you, and then produce a strategy to overcome each obstacle. In creating this strategy, the life coach targets your unique skills and prizes. By helping you make the best use of your strength, the life coach provides the support you need to achieve long-term changes.

How Is a Life Coach Different from a Therapist?

Both life coaches and therapists are interested in a person’s well-being. It’s understandable if some of the benefits of one and the other overlaps. However, there are two major distinctions to the services provided by a licensed therapist and a professional life coach:  Achieving goals vs. healing trauma Because life coaching, and all other types of wellness coaching, emphasises the improvement of a person’s current circumstances, it is naturally goal-oriented; as previously mentioned, it focuses on NOW and HOW rather than WHY.  Life coaches will be expected to facilitate a person’s progress, help find their passions and empower them to achieve self-set objectives, especially when they feel stuck in a rut or want to break free of their current state, dream big and succeed. Therapy, meanwhile, focuses on a person’s mental health and fostering emotional healing. This means confronting deep-rooted issues that have led to general anxiety disorder, PTSD, depression and eating disorders with therapy techniques like cognitive reframing and mindfulness, psychoanalysis and corresponding counselling. The results of therapy are often reflected in mood improvements, healthier coping habits, lower anxiety levels, etc. Future-centric vs. Past-centric A life coach seeks to help a person make sense of their present goals and make the necessary adjustments in order to attain that goal or become that person they visualise; the goal is to know one’s ideal future and take steps to make it one’s present.  Coaches are certainly interested in a person’s background, but it is less about coming to terms with it and healing like with a therapist. It’s more useful as part of the foundation of the coaching strategy that they’ll be helping a person build — the present and the method towards the future instead of the triggering reason for the goal. Licensed therapists examine a person’s emotional stressors and trauma rooted in their past and connect them with negative patterns of behavior in the present. By identifying the source material of a person’s trauma, they can then begin the process of helping a person heal. They help a person release their psychological issues so they can be more at peace, move on and live life gainfully.

Who should Consider Getting in Touch with a Life Coach?

Life coaches are very flexible in their approach. Thus, anyone with a goal or in need of guidance and advice can seek out coaching services, whether it’s about handling a significant life change with grace or taking on a new career opportunity. Your reason for hiring a life coach could be as simple as wanting to live a happier, more fulfilling life, in fact. You could also reach out to a life coach if you:

• Are going through life events that are stressful and making your feel anxious
• Desire a more fulfilling social life
• Have negative self-thoughts and want someone to root for you
• Need to talk to an objective party about your creative process
• Think you can do better professionally
• Want professional help in breaking bad habits

What Do Life Coaches Do in General?

Life coaches often adjust their methods and techniques to suit the person they are helping. There are certain areas they can specialise in so they can give their mentees a specific course to help them on their way to success. Among those are:

• Personal Relationship Coaching. Every bond that a person has with another person differs from the last one. Thus, it may be a little tricky to navigate. Whether you are a person who is trying to get over their social awkwardness or someone who simply wants to strengthen personal relationships with your loved ones, a life coach can help you learn more about yourself so you feel more comfortable putting yourself out there.

• Career Coaching. There are two main ways a person can benefit from a life coach who’s helping with your career: they can either help professionals who are just starting out to figure out their career paths, whether they should take a job offer and how to become a more attractive prospect to employers, OR act as an advisor to already-established professionals who are thinking about switching careers or in need of an extra push to land a promotion. 

• Professional Relationship Coaching. Leading an entire organisation and making the best business decisions for a brand is one thing, but actually interacting with the human elements that are the lifeblood of any company and fostering meaningful and satisfying relationships is another. A life coach can help you cultivate a more charismatic and confident personality when dealing with the interpersonal elements of your job.
• Business Coaching. Many professionals looking to improve their business skills turn to a life coach. Among other things, a coach can act as a sounding board to a person’s thoughts on how they want to put themselves out as a decision-maker or how they’d like to be a more effective salesperson. With feedback based on the mentee’s thoughts, they can brainstorm the correct way forward to succeed in the professional space.

Why Do I Need a Life Coach/What Can They Do for Me?

We mentioned earlier that although you could make decisions by yourself, you didn’t have to go through the entire process on your own; you can and should look into getting the opinion of another person. By gleaning a fresh and informed perspective from someone you trust, you can explore more than a single line of thinking.  In this way, you can enrich your thoughts and gain new insights into the challenges, like negative behavioural patterns and mindsets that are getting in between you and your goals:

• Achieving a health or fitness goal
• Becoming more confident about grabbing opportunities as they come
• Bettering communication and leadership skills
• Boosting creative juices
• Gain clarity on your purpose in life
• Managing your work hours and social life better
• Overcoming anxieties
• Plotting out a satisfying career path
• Strengthening bonds with family and friends

Additionally, coaching is an evolving process that calls for accountability and timely adjustments. Because life coaching sessions take place regularly over a period of time, a coach can oversee the mentee’s progress, providing much needed support and motivation in order to maintain their pace — and, if necessary, change gears. Sometimes the track created at the beginning of the coaching relationship isn’t really the best fit after all, or a major milestone in life changes the mentee’s circumstances and overarching goals. It is the job of your coach to be attuned enough to your needs and use their own training and experience to guide you in a more appropriate direction.  In this way, mentees can attain their goals much faster and more effectively than if they relied on themselves and gone about their plans through trial and error.

How Is Daftein’s Professional Life Coaching Done?

Daftein’s life coaching method is holistic and adaptable, more focused on NOW and HOW rather than WHY. This allows coaches to understand the mentee’s needs quickly and respond accordingly. We also allow for some basic structure to act as the base of our coaching sessions: The initial session is set aside to establish what you want to get out of life coaching. Your life coach will ask questions to understand your motivations, the basis of your goals. Once that’s done, you and your coach will work together to identify obstacles and other pitfalls that might be keeping you from achieving them. They’ll focus on limiting beliefs and negative patterns of behaviour. Lastly, the both of you will agree on a plan of action. These will involve a set of smaller goals with specific steps that eventually lead up to your big-picture goal. You will also establish a timeline by which you can measure your progress and recalibrate your short- and long-term goals based on your motivations and desires.

Speak with a Life Coach Online

The current situation with the global pandemic has affected us all, upending lives and plans. In the face of this, it is even more important to keep goals and not let our hope for a better tomorrow wither away. If you are struggling to cope, need someone to help you stay on track or simply want advice as you reevaluate your objectives in both your professional and personal life, then reach out to Daftein’s coaches.  We are available to discuss your needs online and are ready to help you go over your lockdown priorities, get your life on track and achieve your new set of goals. To help you decide whether we are a good fit for your needs, we also offer a free chemistry session before we progress with a coaching program.