Coaching can't hurt anyone. Or Could coaching be harmful?
Key ideas
What is life coaching?
What is the need in the industry?
Misleading messages from "experts".
Is coaching a scam or life solution, depending on what you choose to believe.
You've seen email pop-ups, an advertisement adds for a better life, marketingpromos to generate 6,7,8 $ figures a month, quotes taht world is yours and anything is possible just sign up for a course or press the button to buy. Have you? You probably asked yourself too, is it a scam or for real? Have you guess, should you try or sign up just to see what's there?
It is curiosity - a very normal desire to know or learn, an eager desire that arouses interest.
I am still running into many conversations where after my professional introduction, “I am a Life Coach”, I hear back so" what exactly you do? and who are you again? I stop taking it personally because I chose the profession that I love and live for, a profession that I am in 24/7 because to me you all in or out. I continue to embrace the responsibility to be by my client's side while they transform and empower their lives.
Before we label something, let's figure out what are we talking about here.
Coaching is the best method of taking anyone from where you are today to where you want to be. A Coache's job is to tap into your creativity & resourcefulness through confidential, non-judgmental dialogue, and sometimes this involves surface strategies like goal setting or habit change. The life coaching industry focuses on personal and professional improvement and effectiveness.
Most of us sometimes need professional help to get where we want to be, help to see other perspectives, view life from a different angle, re-phrase our thoughts, cheer up when we feel stuck. Because life goes on and nothing stays still, so ups and downs are part of our daily life, and let me tell you it a lot of ups and downs where you involved in personal, professional, community activities wearing multiple hats every day. By addressing and simplifying problems, where by working with a coach, you working out solutions on how to unstuck, move forward, overcome, resolve, understand and gain clarity.
We were born with the potential to survive, adapt to life changes and capable to learn how to live a mindful life, but society, family print, the cultural impact has a big effect on our belief system, mostly limiting beliefs.
Our acts form our thinking in what we believe we should do or not to do. When thinking is constant and actions are repetitive this is how we create habits that eventually lead to our lifestyle and how we view the world around us.
So far sounds like a vital tool to our life, where is an ugly truth?
Why people are skeptical about the industry and coaches can't clearly identify themselves what exactly they do.
Life Coaching is currently a $2 Billion Industry. In what many believe is a slow economy, the self-help industry is still booming. Conservative estimates are that Americans are spending over $11 billion in the self-help industry alone.
*According to the 2012 ICF Coaching Study Executive Summary
Since the business industry is profitable that doesn't require yet strict regulations and cutting edge technologies open even more opportunities to just wake up in the morning and proclaim yourself a coach. But, not all coaches are created equal that lead to one of the misconceptions and have an unclear picture for the industry and profession as a life coach.
Scamming VS Guidance:
When you in search or need of a life coach, mentor, consultant it is important to inquire about what training, education, certification, and experience a coach brings to the table.
Coaching professionals don't cure mental illness, it is a psychology field, but it can and does hurt people when delivered by unknowledgeable "experts". Coaches don't work with crises, and clients are high-functioning individuals who are responsible for their own choices.Over-hype: the marketing, last-minute sale, over-promises, mislead.
Over-hyped coaching often encourages people to focus on not always attainable goals, such as becoming millionaires in the next 3 to 6 months or find a Zen and life balance in a week, create happy relationships after the 2-day course. Everyone wants more money or at least thinks they do, happy relationships, so get-rich-quick or find a partner or your dreams overnights are always popular in an over-promising marketing pitch, fast food for your mind. That set the client even further from a realistic outcome. Life more complex than that, and once a week coaching call or meeting will not fix or magically create a life we see in the movies or campaign pictures.
It might sound shocking but - It WORK! Months of work, processing and leaving through self-realization and development.
Information charge. In the coaching industry, you give the best content for free with a mission to impact people (at least it my understanding) to add value, because people don't pay for information, they pay for the structure, accountability, coaches skills and time.
Pay attention when your coach asks questions leading you to your conclusions. A coach who gives advice, or worse, directives on “what to do” doesn' create any benefit to your progress of resolution and self-empowerment. Life coaches are there for helping YOU get YOUR stuff in order/done, not for jumping in good deed to take advantage of using the success of their clients' life ideas.
How is it feel after you met with a coach or hang up the phone/video chat after your 1st session? Does it end with you feeling inspired, motivated, and with a plan? Last thing you want to feel more confused, discouraged, frustrated and on top of it charged.
What exactly the take away here:
If you are not willing to do the changes necessary, then not even the best life coach could guide to the desired life/business outcome.
Life coaching isn’t a trend. Coaching has many years of the grown industry over the decades. The coaching industry will continue to grow because the demand for change is only going to accelerate. We live in an era of constant, daily changes. Coaches are needed to empower people with the focus, training, and accountability to achieve the consistent results they demand in the most important areas of life. They help assess and define the gap between where the client is and where they want to be.
Being a life coach and have constant education, experiencing own life transitions, may don't put me into stereotype as a "success coach" as society and industry create. And luckily for me, I am not claiming myself to be "knowing all", learning a lot from my psychology and counseling background you can't realize your true issues and fit into the " success coach" label at the same time. As a proffesional, rthicly and out of respect to your clients, it a “must” to be trained, working through ouw self-developmet in order to contribute into people lifes.
Coaching is a true path to yourself, that makes you humble, uncomfortable and prepare for unknown change for better and by lack of self-care letting hurt yourself, by jumping for a shiny offer, or well-marketed add you put yourself in the world where someone else gives you advice based on their perception of you or set the tone how to move forward.
Take control and lead toward the direction of your desired life.