What is life coaching?
Life coaching vs therapy is a common question. Coaching is ultimately about helping you to reach your potential and live a full and wholehearted life in the way that you choose to. It’s about giving you more options – and the self belief and motivation to go after them. At Shore Coaching I use a form of life coaching that works with one of the most powerful internal resources that all of us have to make this happen: resilience.
A lot of people think coaching is about giving advice but that’s not the case. This is a process where the flow of information is client to coach and not the other way around. Coaches listen actively, reflect back, ask relevant or powerful questions and provide the encouragement that might be necessary to take next steps. This is what a life coach can offer:
- Guidance. Life coaching helps you to start thinking outside the box and find new ways to achieve what you want.
- Empowerment. Working with a resilience coach you’ll build up your self worth, self belief, confidence and willingness to take risks.
- Growth. Resilience coaching supports you in leaving behind what has held you back and moving towards what makes you feel happy fulfilled and excited.
- Accountability. A regular check in will keep you on track and ensure you get the most from the coaching process.
- Challenge. Working with a coach means having someone who can challenge you at just the right level, helping you to free yourself from negative narratives and limiting beliefs that have become habitual.
Are you ready to make a change?
What’s the difference between life coaching vs therapy or counselling?
There is a common misconception that a life coach will be much like a therapist but the reality is that the two are quite different. So, what can you expect from life coaching vs therapy?
- Therapy or counselling are almost exclusively backward looking and will focus on exploring events in your past. These events – or the residual feelings they created – can often come up in life coaching but the coach will help you to focus on how they resonate for you now and what needs to change to move forward.
- Life coaching is a structured process over 6-9 sessions whereas therapy or counselling tend to be open-ended and for a much longer period of time.
- Coaching is a very practical process – self-discovery and insight are used to identify goals and set practical steps to reach them. Therapy or counselling tend to focus more on mental health and may involve diagnosis.
- Therapy or counselling will usually have a focus on healing. Life coaching is focused on empowering.
If you’d like to know more about life coaching vs therapy get in touch.
I'm excited about moving forward with a new perspective on life..
Josh
“I came into Alex’s coaching sessions knowing I needed some help getting my head around ‘life’ but not really knowing where to start. Alex made it very easy to talk freely and in doing so reveal what intuitively felt like the right areas to address together. If I needed to simply understand the context of something, we would focus on that. Or, if it became clear that some practical tips would be helpful, Alex would map up some brilliant tools and techniques. The sessions were structured and productive but also left space to explore interesting things that inevitably pop up. I feel like I have learned a huge amount about myself with Alex’s insightful guidance and I’m excited about moving forward with a new perspective on life.”
I've started to look at my feelings in a completely new light..
Immy
“You are immediately put at ease by Alex’s calm, understanding, non judgmental approach. Somehow, everything Alex said was exactly what I needed to pick out parts of myself I didn’t even know existed. After spending so long ‘working on yourself’ it is easy to feel like you’re ‘all better’ as soon as things stop hurting so much. Alex’s coaching gives you a deeper insight into what actually might be going on inside your head without pressure of any kind.
Sometimes the answer is not so simple and it takes someone a lot more knowledgeable than yourself to properly understand what’s going on. This is where Alex comes in. Not only do I feel like I know myself better but I also have started to look at my feelings in a completely new light. I’m no longer scared of them but ready to give them space to serve their purpose and use them to identify and work on the parts of myself which need to be looked into further.
Thank you Alex. I couldn’t have asked for a better coach.”
We quickly got to new emerging goals..
Tracy
“I have just completed my sessions with Alex. My work and life plans changed from the time I made contact to when we began but we quickly got to new emerging goals and a structured workable plan. Alex is really clear in her questioning and I liked that. She said 2 particular things to me over the 3 sessions…that have stuck in my mind and made me look at my life very differently…I wish someone had said those things to me 20 years ago! I highly recommend Alex…I think I’ll be back for future sessions.”