Life coaching is a synergistic relationship between an accredited life coach and a client designed to help you tap into your full potential. Just as Olympic athletes wouldn’t think of training without the added insight, objective perspective and enthusiastic support of an athletic coach, many of today’s most successful business leaders, professionals, executives, entrepreneurs and CEOs use the services of a life coach to take their lives, careers, or businesses to the next level.

Part consultant, part motivational speaker, part therapist and part rent-a-friend, coaches work with high schoolers, managers, college students, entrepreneurs, and just plain folks, helping them define and achieve their goals — career, personal, or most often, both.

– Newsweek

Coaches have the ability to view things from afar — in what some call ‘helicopter vision’ — and to shed new light on difficult situations. Often they can act as a sounding board through tough decisions, help sharpen skills, and motivate.  

– CFO Magazine

An article in Public Management revealed a study where training alone was compared to life coaching combined with training. The study showed that training alone increased productivity by 22.4% while training combined with weekly life coaching increased productivity by 88%. Here is why:

1) Accountability. Most life coaches have three calls a month with their clients. This regularly scheduled call prompts clients to get more done than they would if left to their own devices. Think about it, if you work out with a personal trainer at the gym, you work much harder than on your own. Clients take bigger actions, set bigger goals and think bigger when they work with a professional coach.

2) Expertise. The trained life coach knows how to help you set the right goals, make more money, and structure your personal and professional life to achieve greater productivity with less effort. You’ll achieve more in less time with the input of an accredited Life Coach on your side.

3) Delivery. A well-trained coach knows how to use the right words so that you are naturally motivated. It doesn’t take brow-beating or nagging when you are working with a skilled life coach. Coaching typically works best with a weekly call so clients have time to integrate new ways of thinking and take action each week toward their goals. Most life coaching is done by phone and delivered in half hour to one hour coaching calls. The experience is challenging and uplifting. You’ll look forward to your weekly calls with your life coach. Find an Accredited Life Coach here.

4) Speed. Most people find that things start to happen very quickly after hiring a life coach.

Anyone! High schoolers, college students, entrepreneurs, executives, leaders, actors, musicians, creative people, managers, small business owners, start-ups, professionals and homemakers all reach their goals with the help of a life coach. If there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, there is room for life coaching. Not only will your life coach help you close the gap, your life coach will help you break through your limited beliefs and challenge you to think bigger.

• Setting and achieving goals and objectives
• Planning — life, business, and career
• Blasting through blocks and fears
• Clearing clutter
• Financial security and independence
• Balancing business and personal life
• Making key decisions and designing strategies for success
• Communicating powerfully and succinctly
• Building strong relationships
• Breaking through the glass ceiling
• Getting promoted
• Finding the ideal career/work or business
• Getting out of a rut
• Making an important life transition
• Starting a business
• Growing a business
• Living an ideal life
• Identifying core values and passions
• Fulfilling personal and emotional needs
• Getting organized
• Making and managing money
• Having more time to enjoy life
• Playing, having adventures, and a lot more fun!
• And much, much more…

Consulting. Life coaching can be considered a form of consulting. However, consulting is often information and expertise based. For example, you might hire a consultant to help your business with a specific problem. In which case, you’d expect your consultant to have knowledge and experience in that particular area. Life coaches, on the other hand, may or may not have a background or experience in your field. A coach is a life specialist, an expert on helping you develop all areas of your business and personal life. Unlike many consultants who propose a solution and leave you to implement it, the life coach stays with you to help you integrate the changes, new skills, and goals to make sure they really happen. This is one reason why coaching is so effective–it is one thing to have the information and quite another to actually make the change!

Therapy. Life coaching is not therapy. Coaches don’t work on past-based issues or traumas. Life coaches are not psychologists or psychotherapists. If you start the process of life coaching, and have not resolved a past issue, then it is very likely you will be referred to work with a therapist to resolve the issue. It is very common for unresolved traumas to stop us from getting what we want in our lives. Life coaches focus on the present and the client’s goals for the future. We help people move forward and set personal and professional goals that will give them the life they really want. Most life coaching clients are healthy, successful people who might be a bit stuck or simply want to make a big change in their lives and want the support of their own personal coach to do so.

Sports. Life coaching often includes principles from sports coaching, such as being your best, doing more than you think you can, working with a team, going for the goal. But unlike sports coaching, most professional coaching is not a competition. Your life coach will help you win in your own life!

Friend. A best friend or two or three is wonderful to have. But is your best friend an objective professional who you can trust to advise you on the most important aspects of your life or business? Sometimes our friends can’t tell us the truth as much as they would like to because they don’t want to risk losing the friendship. A good life coach is never afraid to tell you the truth and is willing to be fired at any time. Why not have a best friend and a life coach?

If there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, then there is room for life coaching. Why struggle on your own when you can get what you want out of life in a fraction of the time with the structure, support, and tools of a skilled life coach?