Becoming a
Life Coach
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Becoming
a Life Coach
 Becoming a Life
Coach is mechanically fairly straightforward. It involves around three to six
months intensive study of Life Coaching principles and practices including an
intensive training course and extended one-to-one coaching sessions. This may
then be followed up with advanced coaching in additional skills areas and in
operational support and business development assistance. For details on the
course content and structure you can simply look at The Course details. But Life
Coaching is much more than just a training course. Becoming a Life Coach is not
an easy option, nor is it a simple job, it involves embracing a philosophy and
an ethical structure as rigorous as any in medicine or psychology.
People who have experienced Life Coaching will often say that
it has had a fundamental effect on the way they live their lives. Usually they
initially investigated Life Coaching tentatively, perhaps with a degree of
scepticism, but with the hope that it would help them to find some kind of
"better way". Whether they initially wanted simply to improve their private,
business or social relationships or to develop their career path or to help
realise a particular personal motivation, or to fundamentally change the way
they lived their lives, almost all of them will tell you that Life Coaching has
in fact brought them a heightened degree of personal satisfaction and a feeling
that they have developed greater inner strength and focus. Also, many will say
that they are better able to understand themselves and their motivations and can
now move their lives forward with more purpose and direction, to not only
achieve their initial goals but to accomplish a great deal more. Almost all will
say that their lives have been fundamentally changed through Life Coaching
This is the challenge and the responsibility faced by the Life
Coach, and it is something that in many cases can only be realised through Life
Coaching.
Individuals on their own often find it difficult to create
change in their own life. They may feel the need to find something different,
something better, but they don't know what it might be, or how they might
achieve it. Often they lack, or feel that they lack, the courage to face up to
the challenge of making fundamental changes in their lives. Family, friends and
colleagues often cannot help because they have a preconceived view of the person
they think they know and have their own agenda for how that person fits into
their own world-view. They often will not support and promote change in others
if it threatens to force change in their own life-structure.
The Life Coach must have no preconceptions, no
predispositions, no personal agenda. Each client is a unique individual, with
their own needs, wants and desires. The Life Coach is there without condition;
not to judge or assume or impose; but to act as a sounding-board and a mirror,
allowing the client to understand for themselves the truth about their talents,
their desires, their personality and the ways forward in their lives.
Life Coaching is based on the truism that everyone can
achieve success in their lives, if only they can be brought to an understanding
of what success actually means for them, and so long as they can commit to a
positive course of action that will deliver success according to parameters
which they themselves define.
This is the task of the Life Coach, and only people who
wholeheartedly embrace the philosophy and practice of Life Coaching, who have
the moral strength to support and not to judge, who can communicate with
understanding, who can provide support without becoming a crutch, who can help
others achieve things beyond your own scope or aspiration and who can fully
commit to an intense professional relationship and let it go when the time is
right, only these people can become successful Life Coaches.
On top of these metaphysical requirements of course is the
ability to establish, manage, market and administer your own business, and the
drive to make it a success. Achievement Specialists can help you there
too, and that is part of our training regime, but before you enrol on one of our
training courses you should be sure that you have the commitment and resolve to
deliver the ethical service that will be demanded of you, and the focus to run
your Life Coaching practice in a manner which upholds the principles of Life
Coaching as enshrined in the LCH Life Coaching Diploma.
To help you to make the decision on whether you could be a
successful Life Coach, we have compiled a short quiz for you to go through. This
is not a test. We are not going to mark you on it or ask you how you think you
did. But, if you answer all the questions honestly then you should be able to
decide for yourself whether you have what it takes. Click Here to go to the Quiz, and Good Luck!
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