Life coaching fundamentals
This is the October 2012 issue of the Integrating Awareness Newsletter. The theme for this issue is Life Coaching, with articles about:
- What is a Life Coach?, and what can a Life Coach help with;
- GROW-SMART; a commonly used model for Life Coaching;
- Life Coaching vs. Counselling; similarities and differences.
Life Coaching
Many years before the term Life Coaching became almost a household term, I used to think of myself as, and sometimes call myself, a Life Coach. What I meant with that was that I saw my job as that of being a coach in life skills, i.e. helping people develop their ability for getting the most out of their lives.
Later, when life coaching started being offered by people whose focus seemed to primarily be to help people be more successful in material and monetary terms, I stopped using the term to describe my own work, because I didn’t want my work to be confused with that narrow focus.
In the last couple of years I have again started using the term, however, because I think it is time to reclaim it for something that is more wide reaching than simply material success. And in all honesty, I also believe that life coaches these days no longer have such a narrow focus, but that there are lots of life coaches now that have a more refined definition of what success means. By the way, my own formulation of what success means goes something like this;
The true measure of success is the degree of joyous harmony in your life.
Really, the process of life coaching can be applied to pretty much anything in your life that you would like to take from “already quite good” to “excellent.” Anything from finances (yes, that too) to relationship to spiritual endeavours. Life coaching is a bit like counselling for people who don’t really have a problem that they need help in dealing with.
Actually, when I see people for counselling, the work often drifts toward life coaching as time ticks on and the client works through the initial problem that brought them to counselling. At that point, when they have discovered how useful it can be to have the assistance of someone with some degree of expertise in regards to personal growth and development, it is not uncommon that the client continues to come and see me, but then more so in the role of Life Coach than counsellor.
Rather than going into too much about life coaching in this newsletter itself, I have written three articles (see below) that go with it, which you may find interesting to read, if you want to know a bit more about what life coaching is about. And, of course, if you have an issue that you have been wanting to deal with, but are not sure whether it would best be addressed with counselling or with life coaching, contact me (by email or phone), so we can have chat about it, and perhaps figure out what the best approach will be to deal with the issue.
Articles about Life Coaching
What is a Life Coach?
Life Coaching is about providing you with the tools and support that you need, in order to live the life that you want to live. The role of a Life Coach is to help you identify what you want out of life, help you become aware of the obstacles that are getting in the way and stopping you from living the life that you want to live, and help you overcome those obstacles. Read more…
The GROW-SMART Life Coaching model
The GROW-SMART model is a process for goal setting and problem solving, which is commonly used in Life Coaching. It provides an effective, structured methodology that is easy to understand and straightforward to apply. It can be used to successfully deal with almost any kind of problem in everyday life. Read more…
Life Coaching vs. Counselling
In many respects Life Coaching is similar to Counselling; they are both aiming at making your life more rewarding and fulfilling. Often the two processes are overlapping and complementary to one another, but they tend to start from different positions. Read more…
I hope you found something that interested you in this issue of the Integrating Awareness Newsletter!
Until the next time,
Be well and enjoy Being!
Lars Andersson
