Ten years ago, few of us knew what a life coach was, let alone tried one out. Now, according to the UK's Association for Coaching, at least 100,000 of us consulted one in the past year. No other form of counselling and self-help has taken root in our culture quite so rapidly. But why? At the core of life coaching is an attractive philosophy; that we all hold within ourselves the potential for change. It is a self-empowering approach to emotional development, encouraging us to take responsibility for our actions and thoughts. By changing ourselves, we change the way others respond to us, and the way we approach the world.
Life coaching draws on a number of disciplines including psychology and philosophy, as well as marketing and career counselling, so it's a flexible tool for solving a range of problems. Unlike psychotherapy, it doesn't focus on the past, but on where we are now and where we want to be.
To promise, as this plan does, that life coaching can change your life is clearly an ambitious claim. Shifting life-long habits, boosting confidence and self esteem, solving relationship issues these all sound like long-term goals. Yet the appeal of life coaching is that it can deliver dramatic results fast. If you work through the steps, what becomes clear is that making even relatively small changes in your life can have a significant effect on the way you impact on others and the way that others view you.
Life coaching can offer relatively swift changes because the discipline is action-based. If you're prepared to be ruthlessly honest with yourself and to commit to taking responsibility, it will allow you to see your life in a different way and change aspects of it for the better. This magazine offers 14 basic but powerful life-coaching steps. Please keep it as a reference as you may need to go back and rework some of the steps as time go by.