This is a frequent question I am asked whenever I tell somebody that I am a Life Coach.
Some people think life coaching is therapy, some people think it’s a form of mentoring, and others think of a coach as a motivational friend.
Well, they’re somewhat correct in these assumptions. But, not entirely.
A major misconception is that a life coach is somebody who is going to listen to your problems of the past, diagnose you with what is wrong with you, and then send you on your way with some goals set.
The people who believe this to be true would be incorrect.
One of my favorite aspects of life coaching is that we don’t focus on or emphasize the past in any way. Focusing on the past is not future-focused.
For a moment, visualize and think about a past experience that brought you negative emotions.
How did you feel at that moment of time and afterward?
Really think about an event in your life that was a burden on your mental health, and remember those emotions in detail.
How do you feel now after placing yourself back in that mental space?
My guess….probably more negative!
Here’s why:
When you begin to live in those emotions of your past, you begin recreating that life for your present self.
The life coaching process focuses on where somebody is at right now in their life, and establishes where that person wants to be. We have no reason to backtrack.
If you are looking to focus more on your past, to resolve past experiences, or to overcome addictions, then a therapist is the better option.
An integral role of the life coaching process is bringing about massive self-awareness in the individual being coached. This is one of my favorite parts of coaching because it’s the first step in to everlasting growth. It’s not incredibly common to hear about somebody who takes time to break down and analyze all the areas of their life by themselves.
How Can a Life Coach Help?
- Build your self-awareness and gain clarity for what you want
- Client accountability to boost productivity
- Identify your skills, create a vision, and capitalize on your capabilities
- Development opportunities based on what fits best with the client’s goals, personality and vision
- Increase your overall satisfaction in specific areas of your life you want to change
- Improve your energy and morale
- Discover solutions to overcome blocks, obstacles, fears, and/or insecurities
- Set goals and create action plans to reach your goals at your most optimum pace
- Encourage and support holistic growth during the entire process
Do You Need a Degree to Be a Life Coach?
The answer? No.
The sad truth is that anybody can claim to be a Life Coach. I mean, I’ve seen people who lose weight and then claim to be a self-made Life Coach because they finally realized they needed to have a better diet or work out more.
Somebody can join a multi-level marketing business, start selling their products with the term “coach” slapped on their name, and then they blast on social media that they are now a Health and Life Coach, all while selling them products.
This unfortunate truth sometimes tarnishes the credibility of a Life Coach’s true ability and background.
How Do You Become a Life Coach?
There’s a lot of credible routes to go about becoming a Life Coach.
I personally received my certification through a 3-month intensive program at the Life Purpose Institute, which is nationally accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and has a ton of great programs to gain a real understanding of how to be a life changing coach.
Another highly credible and recommended Life Coaching program is the iNLP Center. They have a robust offering of coaching programs, aside from just Life Coaching, which can deepen a coaches understanding of how to effectively coach clients and/or team members.
Here’s what my training process looked like, for me:
Group video calls and lessons with my class. Twice a week, two hours each.
Publicly coaching other students in my class after each lesson
Coaching outside individuals for a combined 60+ hours of coaching hours outside of class hours
An extensive public demonstration of my coaching competency in front of my whole class and instructor
A final written test
Doing this all while working a 9-5 full-time job, building my coaching brand (which is still an everyday process), and
Safe to say, I did pass!
No, this is not a “look at me and what I can do” moment.
That’s not my intention at all.
This is really what I did.
I believe it is important for people to get a realistic look into how I acquired my certification to give a little bit of perspective on my process.
To wrap this all up, I’d like to leave you with this….
What dream have you believed you don’t have enough time to chase?
Time is nothing when compared to our aspirations. It comes down to desperation and willingness to go ALL IN on our process, regardless of the number of set-backs. If you become desperate to reach your goals, then set-backs will mean absolutely nothing.
