What Is Life Coaching?
Life coaching is a practice with the aim of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaches use multiple methods that will help clients with the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists nor consultants.
Life coaching has roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training. Life coaching also draws inspiration from disciplines including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring, and other types of counseling. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification and behavior modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in helping their clients.
Some assert that life coaching is akin to psychotherapy without restrictions, oversight, or regulation. The State legislatures of Colorado after holding a hearing on such concerns, disagreed , asserting that coaching is unlike therapy because it does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a client's current and future behavior. Additionally, life coaching does not delve into diagnosing mental illness or dysfunctions.
