What is a life coach? Trees, humans have recently found out, make friends with one another. They also heal each other by sending “food” to each other through the mushrooms that sprout near their bases. Once upon a time, humans did this as well. Not as much through mushrooms, but before the digital age gripped our interpersonal relationship habits and customs, people used touch and sharing as a way to connect with one another. There are people who feel this void very deeply, and fill this void very effectively. Life coaches and their clients build a synchronous relationship where mutual benefit is the basis and currency. When there is a gap between where one is and where they want to be, a certified life coach acts as a conduit and catalyst to activate their creative potential into movement and realization.
What Is a Life Coach?
They have been called “rent-a-friend”, “personal cheerleaders”, and “part-time therapists”, but life coaches are so much more than that. There is an increasingly rare segment of people who have the ability to put themselves in another’s shoes and empathize with their experiences. What is interesting about this field is that it’s very specific to whatever someone is going through in the moment that is impeding their growth and success. While therapists, counselors, and consultants look at their clients’ circumstances under a microscope, a life coach takes an aerial view of qualities, traits, issues, and situations that have influenced a person’s state of mind. They then show clients how to frame these circumstances as features that shape how one can move forward instead of how one is being held back. Here are some ways to respond to the increasingly popular question, “What is a life coach?”:
- Personal Life Coach: this area focuses on finding out what a client’s immediate goal is for their personal lives and helping them reach it. Some areas they cover include confidence and self esteem, self identity, and managing grief, loss, or sadness.
- Spiritual Life Coach: finding out higher purpose and calling, and discovering the obstacles that might be preventing that search is this genre’s focus.
- Holistic Health Life Coach: these life coaches are usually certified in an alternative healing methodology such as Reiki, herbalism, acupuncture, or art therapy, and use their expertise in those fields to help clients life a balanced life based on energetic self-healing.
- Relationship Coach: the work that these coaches do is to help couples diffuse the power struggle within their relationship and move toward reciprocity and agape love.
Over 30% of adults in the U.S. have sought CAM, or complimentary and alternative medicine. Almost 70% of them say that they’ve achieved a higher level of self-awareness as a result of access to a life coach. It’s been statistically proven that most of us are doing life wrong. Lost in a sea of comparisons to be made, Joneses to keep up with, and social media malarkey, life coaches help people bring their humanness back into balance.