Mentorship June 20, 2018
Life coaching can help us love ourselves.
We need to talk about life coaching.
My first exposure to the up-and-coming field was when I began training for my scuba diving certification. My entire group divided into pairs, or “dive buddies,” and I got matched with a lovely girl who happened to work for NASA. Curiosity got the better of me and I began asking her questions, probing to find out what it’s like to be a part of such a robust organization.
To my surprise, she told me of her plans to leave NASA and eventually become a certified life coach. A giggle and a look of confusion were all I could muster up—I had no idea life coaching was a rapidly growing one billion dollar industry. She tried selling me on it, but I wasn’t buying. A little research led me to believe life coaching was just a fad with an unjustified price tag.
All that changed when I began listening to Brooke Castillo’s podcast, which has become the official audio bible during my transition from college to career.
Brooke provides actionable advice on everything from communication to overeating and alcoholism. Her candid tone and sincerity brighten up my morning and prepare me for the day’s challenges. She’s real, hard-working and dedicated to helping people add value to the world. In short, she’s just AWESOME.
Here’s why we need to take life coaching seriously as a way to self-love.
There is a definite similarity between life coaching and therapy, but also a key difference: Focus.
Therapy generally pinpoints problems of the past and how they relate to current struggles. The aim is to diagnose and heal through analysis and introspection.
On the flip side, a life coach addresses current problems and helps create plans that will lead to results. It’s much more about action than analysis—they want clients to recognize their goals and achieve them with alacrity.
In other words, therapists focus on the “why” and life coaches figure out “how.” Therapists address the past, while life coaches work on the future. And for those who have dealt with the past, therapy may be unproductive.
That’s what makes life coaching such a powerful self-love tool: recognizing current desires and creating actionable plans to accomplish them puts your mind in a better place. Humans love sequence, and life coaches provide the antidote to our cluttered minds.
Navigating our lives through the most comfortable perspective—our own—may seem like the best idea. We feel sure of ourselves and, with the help of Google, feel like we know everything already.
The truth is that when we limit our perspective to only our own we risk never changing, and we can’t love ourselves if we don’t grow.
Everyone can benefit from a fresh perspective, and a life coach can provide it in a clear and honest way.
Not only are life coaches spectacular for shaping and refining your worldview, but they are also amazing at getting you to understand yourself on a deeper level. We’ve all likely been asked a question about our interests and motivations while fumbling in the back of our mind for the answers. It may seem easy, but knowing yourself and what you excel at is challenging and takes practice.
Life coaches have the advantage of training that can pinpoint strengths, weaknesses and interests of a person. Their job is to grasp the trajectories you need to take to improve, and part of that is getting you to understand yourself better.
The overarching goal of a life coach is to help their client find their purpose in life.
According to Tony Robbins, a master life coach and one of Harvard Business Press’s “Top 200 Business Gurus,” we must take massive action to produce massive results—and that starts with self-love.
