What is life coaching?
I know I’m biased, but life coaching is awesome…Life coaching is a space for reflection, powerful questions, and support that helps people gain clarity about what they truly want from their lives.
When I first qualified as a coach back in 2017, I used to cringe at the words “life coach”. Working with one felt embarrassing, training to be one felt mortifying. And yet…I couldn’t stop myself. I was in, after my first session, I experienced the power of it deeply and undeniably and I was convinced it was the path for me. To have someone hold space, reflect back, and help me find a way through, felt profound. I was fortunate to have found a coach that I resonated with, given my circumstances at the time.
It wasn’t long before I had signed up to qualify myself and over the past decade, I have been working on myself and on my craft as a coach. It’s in this blog that I want to tell you about life coaching and how it can support you in all areas of your life; wellbeing and mental health, relationships, friendships, career, rest, travel. Ultimately, in how it can help you to be who you ACTUALLY are. To peel back the layers of conditioning that don’t really serve you and take a step out of your own way.
First, a note on why I initially found it unbelievably awkward when I started my training…I had a misconception that life coaching was akin to someone telling you how to best live your life. This is the direct opposite of what life coaching is. And if it ever feels like that, I’d loudly be whispering in your ear to run. Because there can be a fair bit of that within the industry.
So that seems a good place to begin…
Life coaching is NOT advice
I want to set the scene. When I think about life coaching, my whole body fills with a softness, a compassion, that says “I’ve got you”. It feels like a space where it is all welcome; dreams, hidden parts, challenges, vulnerabilities, deepest unspoken desires, embers ready to be stoked…
Life coaching is space. Space for YOU to define, clarify, become sure of what you want. Of what you mean really when you say those things. It is a space that can hold it all without judgement.
Okay, so scene set. It’s a safe space. And not a space that says “you sit there whilst I tell you how to do it. Whilst I give you a tonne of unsolicited advice” – no, no, no.
Within the life coaching space is questions
Open ended, non-judgemental, questions. To help you, the beautiful soul of a client, to go “ah-ha!”
All of the things you say you want. We spend time defining them. Getting to know each of them intimately, what they mean to YOU. Not what you think they need to mean, or what they mean to your family members. We focus on YOU. The space is entirely yours.
It’s quite something to realise who else’s voices live rent-free in your mind. It’s something even more potent to ask yourself whether this voice still requires or deserves space in your mind, or if it’s time to reclaim some more of your own truth.
The life coaching questions are never “why?”, they are curious, not judgemental. They are there to unearth YOUR own truth.
Coaching questions might sound like ‘How are you defining success for yourself?’ or ‘What is happening in your life that tells you things are in alignment?’
So often in life, we go through without ever stopping to consider the answer to such things – we follow the defined path set for us. Sometimes, it works well, sometimes, it is not the path for us at all and it can take a long time to notice because it can feel good to fulfil the expectations of those around us.
Life coaching hears you
A good coach can help you to hear yourself by listening to not only the words you are saying, but also how you are saying them. As a coach, I am looking out for dissonance – whether you may be saying ‘everything is good’ whilst also speaking at a very fast pace, or perhaps you are telling me you don’t know why you want a certain thing, but I can tell you are stopping yourself from saying what’s really on your heart.
As much as seeking dissonance, I am also listening for coherence and alignment. The things you say that bring a genuine smile or shoulders back. I am also listening out for patterns, how comparison might be a theme that runs through all areas of your life. Or how people pleasing isn’t helping you in your relationships, friendships or how it means you always back down at work, and end up feeling trodden on.
Life coaches are listening to you globally (words spoken, tone, body language, context). My work is in being a mirror, so that you can also hear the things you may not be saying to yourself, to have time to realise and notice more of the truth of you.
And what about Therapeutic Life Coaching?
In my practice as a life coach, I go beyond the typical goal setting and moving from A to B that we are trained in. I love the coaching models as much as the next coach AND, more than anything, I love to help you get beneath your surface. I found in my first few years as a coach, that goal setting, whilst it is undeniably powerful, it doesn’t make enough space for the depth of the women I love to work with.
Many of the women I work with have a depth they haven’t yet had the space to explore. A lot of unspoken words or unidentified feelings that lay dormant, waiting to be seen and heard. This is where therapeutic life coaching comes in. Together we can work on tools for identifying feelings, for raising awareness of how your nervous system is, for looking at self-soothing, and self-compassion too.
Therapeutic coaching allows us to look at the whole wonderful human that you are. With your multitude of glorious facets. Together we work on figuring out what your actual needs are and how to go about meeting them. Therapeutic coaching goes beyond traditional goal setting and mindset work. That is potent and important work, but that is what comes later, once we have worked with your foundations.
And when I say ‘foundations’, I mean those questions you may have, that linger around, that say, ‘who am I?’, ‘Is this really it for me?’ and ‘I feel like there is something more for me, but I have no clue how to figure it out’. Or maybe the thoughts that keep you wondering how you keep falling into people pleasing or letting go of your boundaries.
Therapeutic life coaching is coaching aimed at making you feel better, in whichever ways you need to feel better.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering “Is this really it for me?” or feeling like there’s more of you waiting beneath the surface, coaching might offer the space to explore that.
A space where you can hear yourself again.
