Why is it better to avail the services of a life coach as opposed to continue struggling on your own?
If you are feeling overwhelmed with your life events and need some guidance and help with making decisions or better choices, should you call a life coach or simply keep going on your own? Would a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist be a better option?
Who is a life coach?
Simply stated, a life coach is someone who is certified to coach you about life. A life coach could be a combination of a mentor, a guide, a counselor and a director. A life coach is also not as intimidating as a psychologist who indicates behavioral issues on your part or a psychiatrist, which presupposes mental health issues. A life coach can be compared to a sports coach, someone who understands your game, your strengths and weaknesses. Someone who can give you skills and tools to enhance your strengths and hone your weaknesses to become your strengths. A good life coach not only mentors and counsels you, but also shows you why and how to deal with stress and handle overwhelming events efficiently.
Why not friends or family?
Why would someone simply not seek such help from friends and family instead of talking to and depending on the direction of a stranger?
While friends and family can often be helpful, it is not always the case. It may even be that those friends and family are the cause of the stress. They are also emotionally invested and may not be as impartial as a life coach would be. Due to these personal relationships, there may result even more conflict and finger pointing, since they know too much about each other.
Then again, you may not be open to sharing your problems with your family and friends, because these would then make you feel vulnerable and exposed. You may also not like the advice that they offer because you are familiar with their way of thinking and of their mind set.
What about a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist?
Life coaches offer services that are different than those of a counselor. Counselors can help you with certain specific decisions about your study courses or career choices, based on your resources and options. Life coaches on the other hand, help you to figure out why and how to understand yourself so you can equip yourself to deal with stress causing situations so you don’t become too overwhelmed. They give you tools and skills to analyze and discern the best course to follow.
The services of life coaches are also not as extreme or as expensive as a those of a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Using the services of a life coach may help to diffuse the stressful situations and events, thus preventing them from brewing and escalating to such levels as to require more expert or medical diagnosis.
Just as a football coach encourages players to play certain positions that they are best fitted for so they can utilize their abilities and skills for best results. Spectators see more of the game and can always tell the players what they should have done or who they should have passed the ball to. How many times have you yelled instructions to the players from the sidelines?
This is exactly why a life coach can direct you to find solutions. They are not emotionally invested like your family and friends, or the psychologists or psychiatrists who may by more than you need for simply untangling some events.
What to look for in a good life coach?
A good life coach presents scenarios, directs, advises and encourages. He does not insult or demean clients for weaknesses, poor performance or if they occasionally fail. He uses that opportunity to help them understand how they could have got better results by using their skills in a different way, thus enabling the clients to learn from their own experiences and acquiring the ability to use it in the future instead of always looking to the coach to do it for them.
A life coach is not necessarily perfect or someone who has resolved all their own issues. They may have their own issues that they are trying to work through. It simply means that they have learned how to resolve the issues and are working on them more efficiently than they did before. This experience is what enables them to help others also. Just because a football coach is not a good player, does not mean he is not a good coach. After all, we are all perfectly imperfect and that is okay.
What is the difference between a life coach and a spiritual life coach?
A life coach is someone who helps clients work with their life events and situations related to life choices and decisions affecting the outcome of those choices and decisions. Relationships are an important part of that dynamic. Others are responses and reactions to what others may trigger in them. Learning when and why to choose their battles or which ones to walk away from, so life can continue to flow instead of feeling stuck or feeling like they are caught in a whirlpool, are going around in circles and not getting anywhere.
A spiritual life coach on the other hand helps with all those situations as these affect a person’s spiritual growth. As a person becomes aware that they are more than just a body, mind and a warehouse of emotions, and want to learn more about their purpose for being here and the spiritual significance of the life lessons they are learning, a spiritual life coach can guide them to an understanding of who they are as human beings, how powerful they really are as spirit and how they can remember, realize and empower themselves once again to become balanced and whole again.
To recap…
In conclusion, a life coach and a spiritual life coach is an underused, very little understood, and in fact often misunderstood resource that can be really beneficial to many people. We as a society have become so used to waiting for something to break down before we start fixing it. If we learn the advantages of maintenance of our resources before something actually breaks down, we would be able to do it efficiently and at a much lower cost. Just as with our vehicles, we do not wait for it to break down, resulting in expensive repair costs, but we have periodic maintenance check-ups, oil changes, tire rotations etc., similarly we can seek advise and help before reaching a breaking point.
