The term life coach might sound like a buzzword, a new age approach to getting your life together, a trend of the digital age. For most people, life coaches are still a perplexing figure floating in and out of their periphery, uncertain if they’re snake oil salesmen or if they remind them of their high school gym coach.
The promise is intriguing. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Leonardo Dicaprio, and thousands of entrepreneurs, parents, and high-achievers have raved about their ability to propel their goals forward. If you’ve found your way to this page, then you’re probably asking yourself is it time? Do I need a life coach?
Let’s start with defining what a life coach does. If you are on a journey of self-discovery and have identified some goals but aren’t able to push yourself to reach them, a life coach can provide guidance in navigating the changes you’d like to make. Athletes use sports coaches to help them thrive. They partner together to develop carefully crafted individualized paths to victory, playing on the strengths and weaknesses of the athlete. Life coaches do the same thing but with your life, or segments of your life you’re interested in advancing. They sit with you to identify the goals you’d like to attain and then examine some of the challenges you are already facing, or will be facing soon. They are a source of guidance and motivation on your road to success.
Life coaches are not therapists. They may spend time dissecting some of your mental blocks or drivers, but these discoveries are made in the context of pushing you to achieve big things in your overall future.
If you are feeling stuck in your vision and unsure of how to move forward, a life coach will help you pivot by teaching you techniques to get around your stumbling blocks, including identifying self limiting beliefs, and creating a custom plan for your specific goals. Life coaches will modify these custom plans as needed and offer specific strategies tailored to your personality.
If the answer to the question “Do I need a life coach” is “yes”, “maybe”, or “not sure”, then it’s time to dive a little bit deeper into the many different types of life coaches available out there to suit your needs.
Top Ten Types of Life Coaches
1) Mindset & Accountability Coaching
Accountability is a trending term in modern conversations around short term and long term planning, goal setting, and personal development. We define accountability as a willingness to accept responsibility for yourself, your actions, and your goals. Accountability is crucial to success.
In order to be accountable to yourself and to others, you need to start with the right mindset. In the pursuit of success, you need to be able to reprioritize what’s crucial and stay disciplined. Accountability is making that commitment to yourself.
Doing this on your own can be incredibly overwhelming, lonely, and you may find yourself suddenly crushed by some of the negative mindsets you’ve carried around for years. This is where accountability and mindset coaches listen to your goals and desires and then help you keep yourself responsible for reaching them. An accountability coach won’t be the person policing you. Instead, they will teach you how to police yourself.
An accountability and mindset coach is different from a more broadly defined life coach. Generic life coaches can help you examine your entire life for a revamp. Accountability coaches are more specific; they help massage out some of the mental blocks that might be keeping you from staying on track. If you are in the closing stages of a divorce or about to embark on a big transitional period, an accountability and mindset coach is not only able to help you break down and achieve your goals, they’re able to offer guidance on how to improve your head-space so that things flow more naturally. By helping you re-frame your mental outlook on your divorce, on your career rut, on the state of your health, you become revitalized and better prepared to tackle your life.
An accountability coach will not be your checking-in on you 24/7. Instead they teach you to gain autonomy in the promises you’ve made to yourself by helping you do the inner work you need. Some of the things you can expect to be discussing and implementing with an accountability coach include:
Defining clear goals with that are broken down into actionable items with dates associated
Exploring some of the setbacks you’ve experienced in similar situations in the past
Learning how to persevere through setbacks by shifting your mentality
Turning Tides Today Mindset & Accountability Coaching & Counselling offers online accountability and mindset coaching to help you get moving toward your dreams. If you’re feeling stuck in a rut and googling “Do I need a life coach?”, you have come to the right place that will help you gain momentum.
2) Divorce Coaching
Divorce is a force of grief that no one is prepared for. Divorce fosters it’s own powers of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In addition to the dissolution of a significant partnership, many people walk out of a divorce feeling lost and inundated by the changes in their life. Some people lean on therapy to help work through the trauma of the past but if you’re looking to propel yourself forward out of the divorce, a divorce coach can be a great resource for your growth in this painful period.
Divorce coaches help make the divorce process more actionable, instead of emotional. They help you focus and navigate the process of the divorce while keeping your goals post-divorce in mind.
3) Transitional Coaching
Transitional coaches are great for clients that are going through a big life change - from break-ups, to major career changes, to adopting children, etc. A transitional life coach is the right choice when you feel you need support moving from one chapter of your life to another. For example, if you have a career in finance but have always wanted to work creatively as a writer, you might reach a point where you feel suffocated by your original career choice but are too nervous or too disorganized to make a change. A transitional coach can help you build that game plan. The focus of this type of coaching is not so much on achieving your ultimate goal, at least not at first. Instead, you will work on making a clean, educated, organized transition to another life.
4) Dating Coach
It’s tough out there for those looking for love and commitment. If you have been going on countless dates or have spent years on your own, it might be time to get a little bit of help. Dating coaches aren’t an online dating website or a matchmaker service. Instead, they help you create a plan for your dating life.
A significant part of this type of coaching is to look at some of the repeated patterns that may be holding you back from healthier partnerships. Additionally, dating coaches can help you build higher quality online dating profiles to attract the right fish. They’ll teach you the skills of dating mindfully, as in going for partners that are truly promising matches, instead of repeating self-destructive behaviours. A great side-effect of spending time with a dating coach is that your confidence begins to sky rocket and you become inherently more self-assured and happy, attracting mates that mirror those qualities.
5) Career Coach
If you’re facing major career issues like lack of recognition/promotion at work, or if you’re thinking about a career change, or even retirement, your career might feel like an all-consuming, anxiety-inducing monster in your head.
Career coaches are specifically meant to help those who are having troubles with work. Through conversations with your career coach, you can discover the type of work that would be most stimulating for you and suitable for your talents. From here, these coaches can help you build an actionable plan to embark on a new career path.
If you’re facing issues at a workplace where you’d like to continue to grow, a career coach can work with you to identify the skills that you need to develop, and strategies to gain recognition at the office. If you’re contemplating when to retire, a career coach will help you work through the various scenarios to make it a reality.
Additionally, there are small business coaches that guide entrepreneurs to clarify their vision for their business, while also helping them build a map of how to get to their ultimate objective. These coaches often understand the ins and outs of running a small business and can provide advice on business management, how to handle the stress of running your own business, how to find partners, etc.
6) Executive Coach
Executive members of enormously successful companies are often seen as illusory figureheads, disconnected from their company, policies, and values. In today’s age, where revolutions are happening on our front steps, executives need to be educated, informed, and clear on their objectives as they lead a company into the brave new world.
Executive coaches work with company leaders to help them develop healthy relationships with their employees, clients, and potential partners. They help mold executives into accountable, transparent leaders that inspire their teams to be their very best.
7) Financial Coach
Most people struggle with money at one point or another. Whether you’re sitting on a pile of it and are uncertain of what to do, or if you’ve been grappling with debt and having a hard time saving, an external force might be the best thing for your finances.
A finance coach is specifically educated and trained in financial decision making. They can help you make educated decisions on where to best invest your money. They can also teach you how to consolidate debt, how to avoid it, how to create budgets, and how to make better financial choices overall.
8) Health and Fitness Coach
“Do I need a life coach when it comes to health and fitness? I already have a trainer.”
Personal trainers are a wonderful source of education when it comes to learning about exercises for your specific goals. A health and fitness coach goes a little bit further and instrumental in long term success.. Health and fitness coaches create a more holistic plan for your health goals. For example, they will go beyond caloric advice and help you structure your days so you get more organic exercise. They’ll look at other areas of your life which may be affecting your health and athletic performance including your sleep patterns, stress levels, working hours, work settings, and so forth.
Health and fitness coaches are with you beyond the gym, offering support in the planning of your daily life, helping sculpt your physical, social, and mental health.
9) Mental Health Coach
Mental health issues affect all of us throughout our lives. If you are experiencing troubling mental health symptoms, it is important to connect with your doctor, therapist, counsellor, family and friends to help build a support system for your recovery.
A mental health coach is an addition to this system and does not replace the need for psychiatric or medical help. These coaches are another pillar in your support structure and can help teach you specific life long skills on how to manage stress in your day-to-day. They are there to help you plan and create balance when it comes to reaching your personal goals, and can help you rebuild some of your confidence.
There are even more specific mental health coaches who specialize in things like sobriety. A sober coach provides one-on-one assistance to those who are trying to step away from substances.
10) Spiritual Coach
A spiritual coach is a great resource for those seeking personal divine growth. Spiritual coaches can use their training to help clients move through difficult moments in their life, allowing them the push to use their intuition and sacred beliefs to guide their path. This is a wonderful option for those who are interested in mindfulness practices but don’t know how to begin or advance.
Are you still asking “Do I need a life coach?”
If you’re still not sure, here are a few juicy statistics compiled by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) that prove the effectiveness of coaching:
80% of clients improved their self-confidence
73% of clients improved their relationships
72% of clients improved their communication skills
67of clients improved their work-life balance
So, do I need a life coach? At some point, yes you will. Life coaches are the associates that will help you attain those dreams that feel so far out of reach. If you want to move from a state of heartbreak to enjoy a fruitful dating life, or pivot careers to something more suitable to your personality, or finally stop dieting and make permanent healthy decisions for your body and mind, you’re more likely to succeed with a coach.
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