Life coaching is a little different from psychotherapy and counselling, although it shares some similarities.
The coaching process helps you to address specific personal projects, business successes (or lack thereof), general life conditions and transitions from one stage of life to another.
Coaching guides you through obstacles in either your personal or professional life and helps you to choose a course of action that takes you from where you are to where you want to be.
A life coach is someone that empowers you to make, meet and exceed your goals in life. Whether you want to reassess your priorities, gain some direction or challenge negative belief systems, a key aspect of coaching is confidence.
Coaching has been defined as, “the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another,” and is a tool for assisting personal growth.
While a number of different approaches to coaching exist, my preferred approach is for cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC).
What is CBC?
The form of coaching I used is known as Rational Emotive Behaviour Coaching (REBC) and it follows the same philosophy as REBT, namely that it is not the events in life that disturb you, but what you tell yourself about those events that disturbs you.
So, if you are thinking, feeling and acting in a way that you don’t like, but don’t seem to be able to change, it’s not because of the ‘thing,’ it’s down to what’re telling yourself about the ‘thing.’ Change what it is that you tell yourself, and you change how you think, feel and act.
And that ‘thing’ can be anything: A setback in personal or professional growth, a relationship problem or interpersonal difficulty, a difficult decision you can’t quite make, an unhealthy lifestyle, performance issues and more.
REBC is a highly effective approach that provides practical coaching tools and approaches set within an easy-to-follow framework that offers a sensible, solution-focussed approach to mastering your limiting beliefs and achieving your goals.
REBC is not the same as therapy, which usually assumes there is something wrong that needs fixing, and it’s not the same as mentoring (which is where you shadow someone in the same field as you, but farther ahead). Nor is it about giving advice. It assumes you have all the inner strength and resources you need to deal with life’s challenges and your coach (me) is there to help you draw them out.
