Can life coaching help me sort out my life?

Coaching is a modern and rapidly growing method for helping others to improve, develop, learn new skills, find personal success, achieve aims and manage life change and personal challenges. It is effective for all situations, whether in personal life, career, sales or corporate and business life. Life coaching, personal coaching and similar coaching of this type is different from training. Coaching draws out rather than puts in. It is reactive, flexible and enabling. It is non-judgemental, helps people to develop and grow in a variety of areas. This is leading to the development of separate coaching specialisms that are becoming new coaching disciplines in their own right, covering: personal coaching and life coaching, coaching for life-change, parenting, self-esteem and confidence, self-fulfilment and self-discovery; career coaching for advancement and job choices; leadership and management coaching; coaching for sales and business success; executive coaching for corporate performance and director development.

According to The Coaching Academy and Business Balls.com coaching is the world's second-fastest growing business skill. Coaching is now a profession, and one that is seeing rapid growth, primarily because for many people it is a uniquely satisfying career. All coaches have something in common - they are people that want to help others be the very best that they can be.

Coaching is about getting the very best out of someone and enabling them to make decisions that will improve their life. Coaches are hired for very many different and diverse reasons, for example: to climb the career ladder faster; to feel more fulfilled at work; to regain self-esteem; to improve relationships with family and partners; to learn parenting skills that benefit both the child and parent; to gain a spiritual meaning to life, or a desire to 'get sorted'.

The profession is growing and coaching is becoming widely acknowledged also because people realise just how effective coaching is. Coaching is a relatively new and different profession - different from psychology, counselling or therapy. The big difference between coaching and these professions is that coaching doesn't claim to have the answers. A coach's job is to work with clients to help them find the answers themselves.

Also, when a person experiences being coached, their motivation comes from working with a coach who is him/herself an upbeat, positive role model. In this way coaching is a unique way of developing people. Coaches agree that helping clients to reach their full potential through this approach produces great satisfaction. Helping clients discover where they want to go and helping them to get there is now a proven methodology, which is fuelling the increasing popularity of professional coaching.

The very nature of coaching means that it's a profession that is centred around 'making a difference' and helping people. Common factors and reasons for coaches entering the profession:

· they like people and want to bring out the best in them · they want to do something more fulfilling in their lives · they want personal and financial freedom · their family, friends and colleagues previously turned to them for advice and help - they have natural 'people' skills.

Coaching entails helping yourself grow and become more self aware, at the same time, helping others to overcome problems in their lives.

Interestingly, a great deal of life coaching and personal coaching is conducted on the telephone. Many coaches never actually meet their clients. For several reasons coaching is just as effective over the telephone as it is face-to-face. In fact, many clients prefer to speak over the telephone. This makes the process very convenient for both coach and client, and it offers greater flexibility for people with a busy lifestyle. Coaching using the telephone offers other obvious advantages:

· coaching can be conducted wherever coach and client happen to be - anywhere in the world · there's no travelling time or cost involved · since little preparation needs to be done, telephone coaching sessions can be arranged with minimum prior notice · coaches do not need offices, meeting rooms, staff or other expensive overheads This being said, face-to-face coaching is becoming increasingly popular, as clients want to meet their coach and also enjoy the personal contact and appreciate the one-to-one feel of the coaching session. The coach and client can meet at a mutually agreeable venue, a quiet corner of a café, the client’s home or office, the coach’s office or wherever is convenient.

A coaching session is typically thirty to forty five minutes and rarely longer than an hour.

The reputation of coaching is growing along with the use of the concept - and coaching is becoming increasingly associated with modern recognised requirements for success in life, work, business and organizations, notably the qualities of excellence, integrity, humanity and facilitative learning (as distinct from traditional 'training')

As previously stated, coaching is increasingly sub-dividing into specialist and new applications. There is already a considerable coaching presence and influence in the following areas:

· spiritual coaching · self-esteem and confidence · parent coaching · corporate coaching · financial coaching · business coaching Just as coaching is not the same as advising, so neither is coaching the same as consultancy. Coaching and consultancy are two very different disciplines, with different methods and aims.

Significantly, a consultant is a specialist in his or her field; whereas a coach is a specialist in coaching, and need not be a specialist in any other field.

That is not to say coaches do not benefit from having expertise in a particular field, in fact approaching coaching from a particular expertise or niche is becoming more prevalent among newly-trained coaches.

Typically good coaches will use and follow these principles:

· Listening is more important than talking · What motivates people must be understood · Everyone is capable of achieving more · A person's past is no indication of their future · People's beliefs about what is possible for themselves are their only limits · A coach must always provide full support · Coaches don't provide the answers · Coaching does not include criticising people · All coaching is completely confidential · Some people's needs cannot be met by coaching, and coaches recognise clients with these needs Life coaches and personal coaches come from all kinds of backgrounds and professions. Not surprisingly, coaches tend to like people, and many coaches come from 'people' and 'caring' professions.

So, to answer the original question “Can Life Coaching help you sort your life out?” Yes, I think it probably can. Life coaching is what you make it. If you wish to set and achieve goals, accept yourself and become everything you are capable of becoming then Life Coaching is for you.

Maggie Currie is a leading expert on confidence and self-esteem coaching and is the only Dawn Breslin™ Accredited Life Coach Practitioners and Group Trainer on the Isle of Wight and one of only very few in the UK having graduated from the Dawn Breslin Training Academy.

Maggie is also an accredited Corporate & Executive Coach and Personal Life Coach, having graduated from both Newcastle College and The Coaching Academy and has considerable experience in coaching individuals in their personal lives, in addition to their careers. Additionally she is qualified in various holistic therapies and loves to help people not only relax and rejuvenate but live the lives they want to live.

In addition Maggie is an accredited Practitioner of NLP. Her holistic and lively approach to personal development from the delivery of the training and coaching continues through to on-going support for results. No ifs, no buts, just results.

Maggie is passionate about helping people to rebuild their self-esteem and their confidence and loves to watch people change in front of her. She loves to help everyone she can to really live their best lives and enjoy themselves to the full. Not only that she practices what she offers to all her clients and lives her life to the full and enjoys it all; to find out how Maggie can help you visit her website at www.creedencetraining.co.uk and take your first step to changing your life. This could be the first step you take to transform the look and feel of your life --- forever!



Can life coaching help me sort out my life? - To learn more about this author, visit Maggie Currie's Website.

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