Life coaching is not a career that you can wake up one morning and start. It’s a job that comes with a huge responsibility. This is why people who are interested in life coaching are required to take some steps to become a certified life coach.
Read on to find what you need to become a phenomenal life coach.
What’s a Life Coach?
A life coach is a person equipped with the right skills, knowledge, experience, and certifications to help you identify who you are and what you’re meant to be. But, the duties of a life coach don’t stop there. After helping you identify your individuality, the coach also helps you become that person.
At every stage of one’s life, a coach is needed to help you maximize your full potential so you can achieve phenomenal results. The coach provides the support and motivation that a person needs to advance in life and career. Whether you’re a student, leader, regular staff/worker, or even a CEO, a life coach will help you improve your performance to achieve more.
There are various types of life coaches, each of which are designed to assist you in specific areas of your life.
Life Coach Vs Psychotherapist
Some people mistakenly associate the concept of a life coach to be the same as that of a psychotherapist. Although there’s an interrelationship between them, they’re different.
Life coaches are more focused on your present and future. They’re keen on building all areas of your life and cutting out influences that might negatively affect your life.
Psychotherapists, on the other hand, look back at your past to understand your present as well as how to help you. They don’t really put more focus on your future as a life coach does.
3 Things You Need to Become a Certified Life Coach
1. The Right Motivation
Before you go into a career as a life coach, you have to sit down and think about why you want to become a life coach. Check if you have a passion for this career. Try to understand your motivation for choosing this particular career. Is it because you want a career deemed ‘simple and stress-free’?
If that’s your motivation, you’ll have a hard time coping because life coaching can be stressful. This is because, in addition to thinking about yourself, you have to think about all your clients. You’ll need to keep them motivated even when you’re passing through a rough time.
The right motivation for choosing a life coaching career is that you want to help people. It should be that you can understand people and make them comfortable enough to share their fears, worries, and ambitions with you.
You should have a passion for inciting people and pushing them to succeed. With the right motivation and passion, you’ll definitely go far as a life coach.
2. The Foundational Characteristics
It’s not enough to have the passion for a career as a life coach, but you should also have the foundational skills and characteristics needed to succeed as one. Can you put the needs of others before yourself willingly, or are you all about the money?
You should try to find out how others perceive you and if people can confidently approach you for encouragement and advice without feeling scared or embarrassed.
How is your general attitude towards people? You need to ascertain if you’re patient and courteous even when someone’s babbling on about things you couldn’t care less about. Also, try to see if you’re biased or judgmental in your ways of accessing situations. This will help you know whether life coaching is for you or not.
You need to have the right foundational characteristics of life coaches before you dabble into life coaching. Not everyone is cut out to be a career coach. If you don’t possess most of the characteristics below, sadly, life coaching is not for you.
The major characteristics of a good life coach include:
- Great Listening Skills
- Passionate and Empathetic
- Not Judgmental
- Observant
- Clearly Communicative
- Persuasive and Educative
- Honest and Unbiased
- Courteous and Kind
3. A Certified Life Coach Teaching/Training Institution
Asides the right motivation and the foundation characteristics, you still need to receive professional training to become a life coach.
There’s more to life coaching than just listening to clients and helping them achieve their goals. It’s not just something that’ll come off of your head. You need to apply life coaching techniques and methodologies to help you achieve results with your clients. Thus, you should get certified as a professional life coach
People interested in life coaching can take professional courses, like iNLP Center’s Life Coaching Course. iNLP Center’s life coaching course is a certified course designed to help you touch and change the lives of your clients.
In the course of the program, you’ll be introduced to the in-depth concept of life coaching and what it entails. Life coaching courses are designed to teach you strategies and principles that’ll help you connect emotionally and intellectually with your clients to help them achieve their goals.
Enrolling for a life coaching training will guide you to know the right life coaching pathway that suits your abilities. With that, you would know if you’re meant to be a career coach, health and wellness coach, romance/relationship coach, or a spirituality coach.
Asides teaching and educating you about the right way to coach clients, NLP’s training will allow you to take the certification exam and become certified as a life coach. You need to have a life coaching certificate because that’s what showcases you as a professional life coach. Besides, topnotch life coaching credentials will help you gain the trust of your clients.
Benefits of Enrolling in a Topnotch Life Coaching Training or Course
The kind of program you enrol for partly determines your success when you start your own life coaching to help people.
Here are some wonderful benefits of enrolling in a world-class life coaching program:
- You’ll be taught how to establish a healthy professional client-coach relationship with your clients. The program will help you create a conducive environment where your clients will feel comfortable enough to share their worries and also seek actionable insights from you.
- A topnotch life coaching program will help you craft out a practical coaching process that’ll guide all areas of your life as well as that of your clients.
- You’ll be guided on how to observe people and understand them even without them saying much. Additionally, you’ll be taught how to catch individual factoring strategies that’ll enable you to motivate and empower clients.
- You’ll be shown practical life coaching sessions that’ll help you structure yours. Also, you’ll be implored to practicalize your life coaching sessions as you would have it when you start attending to clients.
The important benefits mentioned above entails the necessity of enrolling for a qualitative life coaching program. Remember, you’re a product of what you’re taught.
Duties of Life Coach
There are several types of life coaches, and they focus on different areas of one’s life. However, some might be able to coach you in all areas of your life, depending on their experience and expertise.
Helper in the Identification of Purpose
Life coaches have two major purposes, they help you realize your goal and achieve that goal. They’re skilled enough to analyze your way of life and understand your truest potentials.
For instance, your life coach might observe your interests and realize that your truest strength and passion lies in writing rather than teaching. A life coach will not only help you realize your path in life, but such a person will also help you get on that path.
Creator of Actionable Plans To Help Achieve Goals
You might have realized your purpose but not know how to achieve it. You might even know how to achieve it but not go through with it due to procrastination. This is when you need a life coach to help you figure it out.
Your goal might be to transition from a lecturer to a politician. Thankfully, a life coach would help you achieve that through actionable plans. Although the life coach might not be in the best position to guide you about your proposed career path, such a person would be able to give you intelligible tips that would help you towards your goal.
Towards that goal of becoming a politician, for instance, your life coach might nudge you to take a course in governance, join a political party, volunteer at social programs, and more. Most times, life coaches use the technique of setting a timeline to help clients achieve goals.
Motivator on the Path to Achievement of Goals.
The duty of a life coach also encompasses being there with you all through the difficult journey. This is to ensure that you don’t give up halfway. Life coaches motivate you to stay focused on achieving your goals.
They can incite and ignite you, not to give up even when the going gets tough. It might be that you want to go on a fitness plan (losing weight through healthy dieting and working out) or lose the motivation to continue.
Your life coach would be in the best position to motivate you and make you continue until you achieve your fitness aspiration.
Conclusion
Once you have the right motivation, topnotch life coaching characteristics, and a world-class life coaching training center, you’re right on your way to becoming a professional life coach.
You should also know that other than the three major things needed to become a certified life coach, you still need to have a legal business certification before you start offering life coaching services. Once you have that, you’re absolutely set for your life coaching career.