Benefits of Coaching

What could you benefit from working with a professional life coach?

Here are 10 fair expectations you can have:

1) Sharing

If you find yourself overthinking or bottling up your feelings, a life coach is a person who will hold a safe space for you and allow you to articulate what's on your mind. Just the mere act of having someone to talk to can be highly beneficial.

2) Presence

Coaches are professional listeners. Unlike friends or family members who often have their own opinion about your life, a coach is not there to judge you or jump into giving advice. Instead, he/she will focus on you and stay fully present throughout the conversation.

3) Powerful questions

What's a distinctive strength of a trained coach is his ability to ask the right questions. Those may be obvious, curious, or provocative questions, which when posed well can bring amazing insights.

So why is that important?

What if you discover that what you've considered a problem is not the real problem? What if you find out that what you've wanted hardly scratches the surface of your true desires? When you experience an insight, it is transformative and can be a game-changer for you.

4) Clarity

Coaching conversations lead to more clarity. You increase your awareness about who you are and what is meaningful to you. That is a major step toward setting clearer goals and attaining them.

5) Less blind spots

A coach can help you imagine a greater possibility for yourself. She/he can also draw your attention to any blind spots you may have.

We know ourselves best. Yet, in our daily lives, we tend to follow the same routines and behaviors, so certain things may remain hidden from our sight. Coaching provides a fresh perspective and a new set of ideas about how to approach a situation.

6) Accountability

When it comes to taking action, you will not be alone in it. A coach makes an excellent accountability partner. He/she can be with you every step of the way, even when the going gets tough.

Procrastination is not uncommon. However, when we make a commitment, decide on a timeline, and discuss it with a coach, chances are we will do it and not want to break our word.

7) Results

The combination of clarity, goals, and action steps breeds tangible results. How do we know that? Well, you're closer to what you really want in life and/or experiencing it in the moment. In each coaching session, you usually define your desired outcomes and what success looks like for you. The coach is there to guide you and keep you on track.

8) Tools

Another benefit of working with a trained professional is that she/he has likely coached other people who have faced similar challenges as you. Coaches typically come across a lot of valuable tools and resources, which now you'll have direct access to. Furthermore, coaching can awaken your innate ability to be resourceful.

9) Consistency

Having regular coaching conversations supports you in building new habits and lifestyles. Coaching is not a one-off event. It's a process, and that is the beauty of it. The consistency you develop by showing up for your coaching is transferable to other areas of your life.

10) Availability

A professional coach is someone you can reach out to when most needed. Scheduling a quick online call with your coach before an important event or decision-making is an easy and convenient option. Having a coach in your corner at those moments can make a ton of difference.

Bonus: 5 Unexpected Benefits of Coaching

These could be some extra gains from working with a coach:

1) Listening to your own voice

If you find a coaching session insightful, listening to the recording of it can practically double the experience. You may be thinking, “I don't have time to listen to a recording. Why do that?”

This additional reflection time is when a lot more learning happens.

2) Taking ownership

Try describing any challenges that you have now. We often talk about what's happened, what the circumstances are, how others react, what they do. A coach would naturally require you to speak in the first person by saying I. “I want to, I do, I am.”

Talking in the first person empowers you to take responsibility for the statements you make and reveals that you are the person in charge of your own life.

3) Insights in between sessions

Coaches could offer packages that contain a number of monthly, biweekly, or weekly sessions. What’s interesting is that you reap the fruits of coaching not only during a coaching conversation itself but also before and after it. New insights can start popping up all the time.

It turns out that there's a lot of inner work going on in between the sessions, which makes coaching such an immersive process. If you have this opportunity, consider keeping ongoing communication with your coach via voice and text messages and not just waiting for your next appointment.

4) Being in the flow

While there's a sense of structure in coaching, the sessions can also be quite unpredictable and fluid. One way to increase the benefits of coaching is to trust your intuition when selecting a topic for your next coaching call.

At times, even seemingly small, trivial questions can lead to an epiphany. Right when you feel like you have mastered a subject, you may find out that there’s yet another great insight in store for you. Coaching mirrors the flow of life.

5) Self-coaching

Coaching develops your ability to think more thoroughly and not leave questions hanging in the air. In other words, it eliminates lazy thinking.

You may say, “Well, if I can self-coach, why do I need a professional coach?” The answer is you do not need a coach. However, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to have a coach in order to make your journey smoother, more guided and pleasant.

If you would like to continue exploring coaching, consider applying for a Free Coaching Conversation.

And remember, it's your experience that matters.