When to Choose a Life Coach?

You may be at a stage in your life when you’re considering looking for help with something specific in your life, but the big question is whether you need a life coach or would a counsellor be a better option.

Of course, the decision is a deeply personal one, but it’s also important for you to understand the differences between them both, as well as how each will benefit your life journey.

While it is worth spending time digging into the pros and cons of each, it may be more worthwhile considering the following analogy to help you decide.

If you were looking to climb Mount Everest, and you could only take one person with you, who would it be? Would you choose someone who would ensure you’re in the right physical condition to climb the mountain, looking at past medical history and previous injuries? Or would you rather have your own version of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who supported and guided Edmund Hillary to conquer Everest, and saved his life?

See the roles have similarities, but the work and the way the sessions are structured differ greatly. It’s not that one is more valuable than another, but one might be better suited for a particular situation.

For both professions, they work to move clients forward, making positive changes in their lives. Therapists/counselors will do this through diagnosis and treatment, very much from a healthcare perspective, and look for a particular result in mind. Often that result is the stop to a certain behavior.

For a life coach, there is little focus on the past and behaviors associated with the past. Instead, it’s about moving people forward in small steps in a short period of time.

That time element is another area where the professions differ. A counselor may need many sessions to ‘unpick’ the past, whereas life coaching sessions usually only last a few sessions if it’s a simple issue to resolve.

So what kind of guidance can a life coach offer?

• Clarify to achieve goals
• Creation of business plans
• Ways to improve communication
• Working to break free of financial restrictions
• Help to achieve a good work/life balance
• Help when stuck in growing a business
• Help with limiting self-beliefs
• Increase motivation
• Learn a new skill
• Identify, set, and achieve new habits and goals

However, a counselor may be better suited where there are:

• Past emotional or physical traumas
• Broken relationships
• Struggles with depression or mental health issues
• Problems with abandonment or attachment
• Coping with bereavement whether through death or divorce

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Both professions will have great tools to help you.

The bottom line is that counseling therapy is for the past, whilst coaching is for the future. How you carve that up is up to you.

About the Author: Gordon Hall is a trained Christian life coach and a church pastor in the north of England. Find out more at https://christianlifecoach.co.uk.