What The Heck Is A Life Coach?

What can a Life Coach do for you, how can it help someone accomplish goals, break through life plateaus, or deal with life events that has left feelings a person finds hard to deal with and is negatively affecting their life? What is the difference between coaching, mentoring, and consulting? Read on to discover what a life coach does, three benefits of life coaching, and difference between coaching, mentoring, and consulting. Accountability Accountability is one of the huge benefits of having a coach. Many times people start a project or business and have no one to answer to so that they can accomplish the task they have set out achieve. Coaching provides a weekly accountability check of the clients progress. Many people know the steps to take to achieve their goals, they just need someone to hold them accountable when they get off track with because of inevitable distractions. Goal Setting A coach helps a client set goals for what they want to achieve for a given task, dream, or business. Many times people have what seems like an endless amount of ideas swirling around in their head and do not know what to do with them. A coach can help a client set goals and gain clarity through a plan of action. The coach and the client agree on what actions will be done every week and holds the client accountable for executing the plan. When a client has trouble completing what has been agreed upon the coach helps the client get at the heart of what is holding them back from attaining their goals. Support Everyone needs someone to talk to at one time or another. A coach supplies support for their clients through providing a safe and supportive environment that amounts to a "No Judgment Zone" for clients. The main purpose of a coach is to make a client feel as though anything can be shared with the coach with no judgments being passed on them. The coaching environment is one of the few safe havens a person has access to where someone can share any idea, life event, personal tragedy, most awkward moment or anything else that has happened in their life and no one will pass judgment on them or look at them funny. Breaking a client's trust by exposing business or personal information to someone else is the worst ethical violation a coach could commit. Coaching vs Mentoring and Consulting Many people confuse coaching with consulting and mentoring. A consultant is an information based professional in a specific field and is hired to teach only the information pertaining to that subject. A mentor is a person who has accomplished something in life that someone else wants to accomplish. The mentee follows in the footsteps of the mentor to accomplish that task. Coaching is a client focused action -oriented support service that helps individuals set goals and develop a plan to accomplish those goals. Life coaching can provide a person with many benefits that just talking with their best friend does not provide. Positive non-judgmental feedback is one benefit that everyone needs at sometime in their lives and is essential when someone is trying to accomplish something that a they have never accomplished before in their life.