Just as a soccer team benefits when exposed to the guidance of an experienced coach so people reap the benefits when they have access to someone who eases them on a journey of growing from strength to strength as people as well as guiding them through transitions.

Good life coaching help an individual to get to know himself better. It’s classified as one-on-one personal development that offers both enrichment and empowerment. Life coaching encourages a person to be the best that they can be, to embrace new challenges and to gain from experience. It focuses on both enablement and reflection.

Life coaching draws upon several tools and techniques from various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, neuroscience, positive adult development and career counselling to assist people in identifying and achieving their goals.

How can life coaching make a difference in someone’s life?

We’ve all been in situations, at some time or another in our lives, where we feel like we’re stuck in a rut. It could be due to a relationship that we’re in, or a situation at work, where we’re struggling to have a good relationship with a particular colleague. You may be feeling like there’s no challenge left in the work that you do and what you’re at a loss as to whether you should move on or even make a career change.

Alternatively, you could even be piling on the kilos and wonder if it’s worthwhile joining a gym and embracing a healthier lifestyle. The challenge is that you don’t feel like you can go it alone. You need someone to walk this path with you, someone to listen, to be your confidant. In all of these cases, a professional, trained life coach can be the difference between getting out of that rut and getting stuck even deeper in that rut.

A lot of people will attest to the fact that all they needed was a professional, positive person to listen to them. This person is objective and helps them through making the right decision for them. This is the way in which professional life coaching can make a difference in someone’s life.

There are many examples of how life coaching can help an individual. Whether it’s about learning a skill for the first time or whether it’s about improving a specific ability or unlearning an undesirable trait the process of life coaching can help an individual to identify and reach their goals.

For what period does life coaching last?

Life coaching may last for one session. Alternatively, it could continue for years, depending on the individual, the goal and the obstacles in a person’s way. Some people attend life coaching sessions sporadically. Every situation is unique, as unique as the person requesting that life coaching session.

Life coaching can be seen as a journey. Sometimes an individual will consult a life coaching in respect of a specific problem or obstacle that they’re facing. As the relationship between the life coach and client grows, the coach’s credibility increases and trust is like a magnet as it draws the client back for further encouragement, input and motivation.

What happens during a life coaching session?

In a session, the life coach uses various techniques to help a client create a plan of action for his situation. This goes hand in hand with helping the client get to know himself, to identify his goals, increase his confidence and commit to making any changes the coach has helped the client to determine.

While some coaches prefer to follow a more formal, structured approach to their sessions, others are happier to go the more informal route. Depending on the goal at hand, life coaching may strive to impart life skills, personal fulfilment, time management, career change, fitness routine or assistance and communication skills.

Life coaching clients are usually in a better position to communicate where they’re at, what they want to achieve and what they think that they should do to achieve their goals. Coaching not only facilitates change. The process it instruction as well because coaches need to impart skills to their clients.