On a day-to-day basis, coaches face many challenges. Life Coaching is an ongoing process, a method of continuous development and a significant learning experience for both coaches and clients. As a process it’s important to not be afraid of taking a wrong turn but then learn from ‘mistakes’.
The key to this is realising that these aren’t ‘mistakes’ or failings in the first place. What many people regard as mistakes are in fact lessons, experiences and opportunities to learn and develop, but because the majority aren’t aware of this they trudge through life depressed, anxious, stressed, resentful and angry.
Florence Scovel Shinn in her book ‘The Game of Life and How to Play It’ has some helpful tips to say about mistakes and learning. So does Napoleon Hill in his phenomenal book ‘Think and Grow Rich‘.
A good Life Coach must demonstrate resourcefulness and help people to see that if they think they have failed in the past, this does not need to resemble or have any bearing on their future as long as they use the learning experience in the right way.
Listening skills, holding the client accountable for any goals set and giving as much advice, knowledge and guidance to the client is a vital role of the Life Coach. To do this the Life Coach must ensure that he or she is studying the right information themselves in order to give out the right information.
There are many ways to train to be a life coach both in person and on-line. One such on-line example is iNLP Center.
In my experience as a coach I believe the biggest challenges that Life Coaches face boils down to how authentic and sincere they are, in other words is it a vocation or just a job? If it’s a vocation then great both coach and client have a real chance of success, because if a Life Coach is constantly working on themselves with the right knowledge it goes without saying that he or she will be a top of the range coach, who in turn will produce top of the range results for their clients.
If it’s just a job and the so called coach doesn’t believe in what they are doing, or just doing it for the money they won’t last very long. And that is the problem here. A lot of people think Life Coaching is an easy way to make a living and feel good about themselves. All you need to do is sit and listen to a person’s woes, offer some fluffy advice and job done.
If you have this type of attitude about Life Coaching my advice would be don’t do it!
Interested in Life Coaching ? Want to find out more?
Contact us at Irwin Edgehill Training and discuss our Life Coaching services . Email: info@irwinedgehilltraining.co.uk or call 07842 435921.