Life coaching offers what personal training does for your body but for your mind. 

• Life coaching is a process where your coach helps you to dig beneath the surface of your thoughts, feelings & beliefs to help you understand internal beliefs, obstacles to your success & improved health & wellbeing.
• A life coach helps you maximise your potential to live life to its full extent regardless of your circumstances you can achieve a sense of life satisfaction and reach self-actualisation.
• Coaching enables you to live in alignment with your values & purpose connecting and developing meaningful healthy relationships and opportunities for growth. It requires work from you.
• You need to be ready to tap into your inner self and challenge yourself to learn and unlearn things, creating action steps to your success and alignment with your authentic self. 

Type of Coaching

There are different types of coaching – executive, leadership, workplace, career, life & wellbeing, relationship, group coaching & more. I describe myself as a wellbeing and life coach. There are many definitions of coaching, The International Coaching Federation (ICF), defines it as 

“Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential."

Coaching is focused on the present and future, although may revisit the past to identify helpful resources and or look at what may be preventing someone from moving forward in life. It supports people who are ready to explore, develop,  build their strengths, to make changes in line with their vision, values passions, & purpose.

Coaching can be helpful at times of change or transition, can support with issues such as stress, and confidence, can support in meeting specific goals and can be used for personal development. It can be short-term, long-term, regular, or intermittent, individual or group, online or in person. 

 Do you want a coach or a counsellor? 

Coaching and counselling have similarities, overlaps and grey areas. Both aim to provide support with emotional challenges or making sense of who we are or where we are in life. 

There is shared understanding it’s not about the coach or therapist directing someone else’s path, but supporting individuals in managing their mental health, physical health and wellbeing, relationships, responsibilities and more. 

Trained practitioners work within ethical frameworks that support confidentiality, safety and ‘do no harm’ and where rapport, relationships where trust is developed. I’m a qualified independent practitioner with a diploma in life coaching. I’m a member of the ICF international coaching federation that assures my ethical practice and insurance. 

Counselling provides support to those whose past experiences and trauma are holding them back preventing them with functioning or managing day to day life, for example experiencing depression or an eating disorder. It may involve exploring past experiences to understand more about the impact on your life now to feel better in the present. There are many different types of therapy it would be valuable to research counselling / counsellors to help with your decision-making about what service to access. 

Therapists can be searched for here:  

Find a Therapist (psychotherapy.org.uk) 

How to find a therapist: BACP Therapist Directory 

Coaches sometimes refer people on to therapy if it is mutually decided that this would be of greater benefit.