Life coach is defined as ‘a person employed to help people attain their goals in life’ (Oxford Dictionary) and ‘an advisor who helps people make decisions, set and reach goals, or deal with problems’ ( Marriem-Webster Dictionary). We could define a life coach as a professionally trained person who helps people maximize their potential, set and achieve their goals, increase self-confidence, reduce stress, and change their life.
‘Working with a life coach can help not only in achieving goals, but also in improving overall well-being, resilience, and reducing stress, anxiety and depression’ (as confirmed in Psychology research studies, performed by Anthony Grant, Ph.D. director of the Coaching Psychology Unit of the School of Psychology, University of Sydney).
‘A Life coach can help you achieve much more in less time, than if you would do it on your own’ (statistics from the American Society for Training and Development provide insight that a person’s probability of achieving a goal increases from 50% to 95% when one has a coach/mentor to keep him/her accountable and helps to put the idea and plan into action).
Oprah Winfrey had stated that one of the reasons she has achieved the success she has is that she has worked with a Life Coach (Martha Beck) for more than 25 years.
“Coaching helps you stop the crazy mind chatter in your head that tells you all the time that you’re not good enough.” (Oprah Winfrey)
The International Coach Federation (ICF) found that: “Professional coaching brings many wonderful benefits: fresh perspectives on personal challenges, enhanced decision-making skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence. And, the list does not end there. Those who undertake coaching also can expect appreciable improvement in productivity, satisfaction with life and work, and the attainment of relevant goals.”
‘Metropolitan Life Financial Services offered an intensive coaching program to part of its retail sales force. They found that productivity among those salespeople coached increased by an average of 35%, while 50% identified new markets to develop. Perhaps most important, Metropolitan has retained all of the salespeople who had the coaching—a big deal, since industry statistics show that each representative who leaves a company with three years’ experience cost $140,000 to replace. In all, the coaching program which cost about $620,000, delivered $3.2 million in measurable gains: A 5.16 ROI.’ (Source: “Executive Coaching: An Investment in Creating Masterful Leadership,” The Rowell Consulting Group, www.enhanceleaders.com)
“Today’s managers, professionals, and entrepreneurs are hiring coaches to help them with time management, a change in career, or balancing their work and personal lives. People are looking to coaches as sounding boards and motivators who can offer a fresh perspective on career and life problems — but without the conflicting agendas of a spouse, family member, or even a mentor.” (Fortune, 9/28/98)
“Working with a life coach can help a person not only achieve goals, but also increase overall well-being, and reduce stress and anxiety” (the results of a psychological study, conducted by Dr. Anthony Grant, director of the Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney).
Statistics from the American Society for Training and Development showed that the probability of achieving a goal increases from 50% to 95% when a person has a coach, or a mentor who will is to encourage and help her turn her goal/idea into reality. Many of my clients told me that they have achieved more in 6 months while working with me than in 6 years on their own.
Your beliefs about yourself, what you are capable of, what is (im)possible for you, and what you deserve will set the subconscious limit for what you are able to have, be(come), or accomplish. If you are feeling stuck in any area of your life, chances are that you have subconscious limiting beliefs that are holding you back.
The following two examples from sport demonstrate the power of beliefs. Before 1945. people believed that you could not run a mile in under 4 minutes, this was a belief that everyone shared, which meant it was an easy belief to back up with evidence. In 1945. Roger Banister ran a mile in under 4 minutes – instantly breaking that belief, and the following year 37 other runners ran a mile in under 4 minutes!
Vasily Alexeev, a world-class Russian weightlifter, could not lift 500 pounds, though he routinely lifted 495 pounds. In 1974, his coach played a trick on him to prove a point. He put 500 pounds on the bar and told Vasily the bar had 495 pounds on it. Thinking it was only 495 pounds, Vasily lifted the bar as usual. After Vasily was told he had lifted 500 pounds, he changed his belief and was able to do it in the competition.
No matter how much time, effort, and energy we put in into achieving our goals, if we have any limiting beliefs about ourselves (we feel undeserving, or we don’t truly believe that we’re capable of achieving that goal) we can sabotage ourselves in the process. Therefor, as much as it is important to take action on our goals, it is also very important to work on our mindset. Working with a life coach can help you to identify and reprogram any limiting beliefs that may be holding you back, strengthen your self belief, and adopt the right mindset for success (in different areas of your life).
Regardless of the reason you sign up to work with a life coach, the benefits that you gain as a result of coaching will have a positive impact in all areas of your life, even years after the life coaching process has ended. For example, if you work with a life coach to increase your self-confidence, this will have a positive impact not only on your self-image and self belief, but also in your career and finances (networking, presentation skills, public speaking, performing on stage or being more visible on social media, starting a YouTube channel or a podcast, etc…), your relationships (success at dating, or being able to communicate your needs and desires more confidently and assertively to people around you), and even the overall quality of your life (feeling more confident to try out new interesting things, do things you’ve never done before, or sign up to learn new languages and skills).
People hire a life coach for the same reason athletes hire a personal trainer – to stay focused on their goal and achieve it. Statistics from the American Society for Training and Development have shown that the probability of achieving a goal increases from 50% to 95% when a person has a coach or mentor.
“Part consultant, part motivational speaker, and part ‘friend for hire,’ coaches work with managers, entrepreneurs, and everyday people to help them achieve their goals—professional, personal, or both.” — (Kendall Hamilton, Newsweek)
Many of my clients told me that it has helped them tremendously to have me asking them every single week what steps they have taken to achieve their goal and following up on their progress. Having someone to hold them accountable to work on their goal really helped them to bust through the excuses and gain extra motivation to work on their goals.
But, it is also important to note that a life coach is not there just to cheer you up and tell you that ‘you can do it‘. A good life coach will also help you to identify the limiting beliefs that may be holding you back (if you truly do not believe that something is possible for you, you will naturally consciously or subconsciously not feel motivated to invest your time, money and effort in attaining it).
A good life coach will also help you to overcome the mental resistance to change by teaching you the powerful techniques and tools that will help you associate working on your goals with pleasure (not pain!) and recommend you the most effective strategy (personally tailored to you and your strengths, weaknesses, limitations, and resources that you have at your disposal) to achieve your goals in a way that will feel joyful and also be very likely achievable to you.
I often heard my clients saying: “You made the change easy for me” and: “I’ve tried to achieve that so many times before, but I could never be consistent and make it happen. You make it achievable for me, practical, easy, and I was even having fun while doing it.”
“Coaching is an action-oriented partnership that, unlike psychotherapy which delves into patterns of the past, concentrates on where you are today and how you can reach your goals.” ( Time, 10/16/00)
Self discovery work during the life coaching process can help you to get clarity on what do you want to improve, change, and accomplish in your life. It can also give you the clarity about your core values, beliefs, strengths and weaknesses. If your goals are not aligned with your values and your genuine desires, even if you achieve all your goals and obtain massive success, you can end up feeling unfulfilled in life.
You would be surprised how often I’ve heard in my coaching practice people saying: “I have achieved everything that I wanted, and I am earning more money that could ever dreamed of, but I am not feeling fulfilled”. It is very important that you take some time to reflect on not just the goals you want to achieve, but also your values, your beliefs, how your ideal lifestyle would look like, how your ideal working day would look like, what kind of contribution do you truly want to make in the world, what makes you genuinely fulfilled and what drains you, and are the goals you ant to achieve aligned with your value and driven by your true desires or other people’s expectations of you, low self-worth, or socially constructed paradigms that you are trying to fit in. Life coaching can greatly benefit you in this process.
A life coach can help you objectively look at the problem and come up with a creative and most effective way to solve your problems and challenges, with resources (money, time, skills, knowledge, network) that you currently have. A life coach can also give you objective and unbiased advice about any of the challenges that you may be facing in your life or career.
“A coach just has a different perspective. Still to this day, the best have coaches because the coach can see what you can’t see because you’re in the forest, they’re outside of it.” (Hugh Jackmann, actor)
A life coach can help you make important life decisions (such as moving to another city or country, choosing a career or study, making a career transition, getting married…). by helping you to get a clarity about what do you really what to do in life or in your career, asking you powerful self reflective questions, providing you with a neutral and unbiased feedback and powerful exercises (coaches may use the tools based on positive or cognitive psychology, emotional intelligence, NLP…) that will help you in gaining the clarity and making the right decision.
Note: a life coach is not there to tell you what to do, or what you should do. A life coach will help you to make the best decision based on the resources at your disposal, pros and cons of the decision, clarity you gain during the coaching process, your core values, long term goals, and your life vision.
Life can help you to organize and plan your time, increase productivity, and reduce stress and overwhelm. I was able to help in my coaching practice event the busiest entrepreneurs, CFOs, and CEOs to carve out more free time (some of them were able to carve out 2 to 3 hours per day, or even the entire Saturday free with the time management tools and strategies that we personally tailored to them), and finally get the time to devote to their health and wellness, enjoy fun activities with their kids, and romantic date nights. I personally love helping my clients to leverage technology and automate everything and anything that they can, so that they can devote their precious time to their personal and professional growth, scaling their business, taking care of their health, and spending time with their family.
Likewise, I also love helping my clients with scaling their passive income (so that they can work fewer hours), outsourcing (cheaply available) services that take a lot of their precious time, and eliminating distractions (f.e., some of my clients discovered during the coaching process that they were spending up to 45 minutes a day in What’s Up group chats, while others could save up to an hour a day just by switching of Instagram/social media notifications and intentionally dedicating 15 minutes a day to scroll over social media and reply on comments and DMs).
A good life coach can help you to master the time management: automate, delegate, eliminate, and plan your day and your week in a way that you have the time scheduled up for every-thing that matters to you.
“Today’s managers, professionals and entrepreneurs hire coaches to help them with time management, career transitions and work-life balance.” — (Fortune Magazine)
When I was giving corporate Emotional Intelligence workshops with my colleague Lata Singh, in Delhi (India), back in 2017., I would ask the HR manager if they would hire candidates who have an ‘impressive’ resume, but do not believe in themselves and cannot clearly communicate their value (why the company should hire them and why they are the right person for the job). The answer I’d get was:
“Of course I wouldn’t hire them! If they do not believe in themselves, why would I believe in them? Why would I hire them?!’
Similarly, when people offer their services to potential clients, without the belief that they are ‘the right person for the job’ and that they can truly help the potential client, they can fail in closing the deal and selling their services. If you do not believe in yourself and your services, products, and expertise, how can you expect other people to believe in you, your products, or your services?
Some of the most common reasons why clients were signing up for life coaching sessions with me over the years were to increase their self confidence, or/and to overcome the impostor syndrome and perfectionism. Since low self worth is the fundamental block of self confidence and major underlying reason (root cause) why people suffer from the impostor syndrome and perfectionism, I personally find strengthening self worth to be of essential importance in any self development and mindset work, which is why Self Worth Coaching is one of the major components of my life coaching sessions and programs (I even wrote the book about strengthening self worth!).
Strengthening self worth and increasing self confidence (self belief) are the benefits of life coaching that can greatly help you not just in the way about how you feel about yourself and your confidence in your ability, but also in your personal relationships, professional success, and even your net worth (as the saying goes : ‘Your self worth determines your net worth’.
“Coaching can certainly help you strengthen your sense of self-worth, focus on your goals — and get there, fast.” (The London Daily Telegraph, 3/22/99)
“Coaching is an action-oriented partnership that, unlike psychotherapy which delves into patterns of the past, concentrates on where you are today and how you can reach your goals.” (Time, 10/16/00)
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