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Life Coaching: Defined and History

Life coaching is a practice with the aim of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaches use multiple methods that will help clients with the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists nor consultants.

Life coaching has roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training. Life coaching also draws inspiration from disciplines including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring, and other types of counseling. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in helping their clients.

Government bodies have not found it necessary to provide a regulatory standard for life coaching nor does any state body govern the education or training standard for the life coaching industry, the title of "coach" can be used by any service provider. Multiple coaching schools and training programs are available, allowing for many options (and sometimes causing confusion) when an individual decides to gain "certification" or a "credential" as they apply to the coaching industry. Multiple certificates and credential designations are available within the industry. [1]

Four standards and self-appointed accreditation bodies are internationally recognized: the International Coaching Council (ICC) , the International Coach Federation (ICF), the International Association of Coaching (IAC) and the European Coaching Institute (ECI). No independent supervisory board evaluates these programs, and they are all privately owned.

Some assert that life coaching is akin to psychotherapy without restrictions, oversight, or regulation. The State legislatures of Colorado after holding a hearing on such concerns, disagreed, asserting that coaching is unlike therapy because it does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a client's current and future behavior. Additionally, life coaching does not delve into diagnosing mental dysfunctions nor analyzing the past.

According to a survey of coaching clients, "sounding board" and "motivator" were the top roles selected for a coach. Clients are looking for a coach "to really listen to them and give honest feedback." The top three issues clients seek help on are time management, career, and business. [3]

Personal coaching

Personal Coaching is a relationship which is designed and defined in a relationship agreement between a client and a coach. It is based on the client's expressed interests, goals, and objectives.

Personal Coaching is a learning process. A Personal Coach may use inquiry, reflection, requests and discussion to help clients identify personal and/or business and/or relationship goals, develop strategies, relationships and action plans intended to achieve those goals. A coach provides a place for clients to be held accountable to themselves by monitoring the clients' progress towards implementation of their action plans. Together they evolve and modify the plan to best suit the client's needs and environmental relationships. A Personal Coach acts as a human mirror for clients by sharing an outside and unbiased perspective on what they are observing about their clients. A Personal Coach may teach specific insights and skills to empower the client toward their goals. Finally, a Personal Coach encourages the client to celebrate the achievement of milestones and goals.

Clients are responsible for their own achievements and success. The client takes action; and the coach may assist, but never leads or does more than the client. Therefore, a coach cannot and does not promise that a client will take any specific action or attain specific goals.
Personal Coaching is not counseling, therapy or consulting. These different skill sets and approaches to change may be adjunct skills and professions. The Personal Coach recognizes his/her limitations, and refers the client for other services as ethically required.

Business coaching

Business coaching is the practice of providing support and occasional advice to an individual or group in order to help them recognize ways in which they can improve the effectiveness of their business. It can be provided in a number of ways, including one-on-one tuition, group coaching sessions and large scale seminars. Business coaches are often called in when a business is perceived to be performing badly, however many businesses recognize the benefits of business coaching even when the organization is successful. Business coaches often specialize in different practice areas such as Executive Coaching, Corporate Coaching, and Leadership Coaching.

Business coaching is not the same as mentoring. Mentoring involves a developmental relationship between a more experienced "mentor" and a less experienced partner, and typically involves sharing of advice. A business coach can act as a mentor given that he or she has adequate expertise and experience however, mentoring is not a form of business coaching. A good business coach need not have specific business expertise and experience in the same field as the person receiving the coaching, in order to provide quality business coaching services.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching

“People with goals succeed because
they know where they are going. It’s as simple as that."
~Earl Nightingale

Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. [1]

For an individual, procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the disapproval of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. These combined feelings can promote further procrastination. While it is normal for people to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.

Perfectionism: Traditionally, procrastination has been associated with perfectionism, a tendency to negatively evaluate outcomes and one's own performance, intense fear and avoidance of evaluation of one's abilities by others, heightened social self-consciousness and anxiety, recurrent low mood, and workaholism. Slaney (1996) found that adaptive perfectionists (when perfectionism is egosyntonic) were less likely to procrastinate than non-perfectionists, while maladaptive perfectionists (people who saw their perfectionism as a problem; i.e., when perfectionism is egodystonic) had high levels of procrastination (and also of anxiety).[4]

Types of procrastinating

Relaxed: View their responsibilities negatively and avoid them by directing energy into other tasks. It is common, for example, children to abandon schoolwork but not their social lives. Students often see projects as a whole rather than breaking them into smaller parts. This type of procrastination is a form of denial or cover-up; therefore, typically no help is being sought. Furthermore, they are also unable to defer gratification. The procrastinator avoids situations that would cause displeasure, indulging instead in more enjoyable activities. In Freudian terms, such procrastinators refuse to renounce the pleasure principle, instead sacrificing the reality principle. They may not appear to be worried about work and deadlines, but this is simply an evasion.[6]

Tense-afraid: Usually feels overwhelmed with pressure, unrealistic about time, uncertain about goals and many other negative feelings. Feeling that they lack the ability or focus to successfully complete their work, they tell themselves that they need to unwind and relax, that it's better to take it easy for the afternoon, for example, and start afresh in the morning. They usually have grandiose plans that aren't realistic. Their 'relaxing' is often temporary and ineffective, and leads to even more stress as time runs out, deadlines approach and the person feels increasingly guilty and apprehensive. This behavior becomes a cycle of failure and delay, as plans and goals are put off, penciled into the following day or week in the diary again and again. It can also have a debilitating effect on their personal lives and relationships. Since they are uncertain about their goals, they often feel awkward with people who appear confident and goal-oriented, which can lead to depression. Tense-afraid procrastinators often withdraw from social life, avoiding contact even with close friends.[6] From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching

“Life coaching is a fairly new field in the last 30 years. Maybe, there are things you might be able to see some of the seeds of life coaching. But I would say as a profession, it is probably may be 25 years old. It might have seen its first year in the 1980s. It began more as like business consulting or executive training's in a corporate executive. "7 Habits of Highly Successful People" was one of the first books to focus on life coaching.”

Source: Robin Hoffman, the president of Heart Paper Scissors, a healing center that teaches people how to problem solve by using art.

“Change is the law of life,
and those who look only to the past or the present
are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy