Who is in the driver's seat of your life? Have you let your work, routine or fear take over your life? Do you feel that you’ve lost control over the course of your life?

Let’s face it; if you are not entirely in charge of your life, you’ll find it hard to experience personal growth, advance your career or even start your dream business. That’s why you need to do some soul-searching, look honestly inwards, and find the inner strength to take your life to the next level. It’s only this way that you can live the life you have always wanted.

But sometimes, you just cannot do it alone, or it simply takes too much time. For one, life’s ups and downs can take a toll on you, and you might end giving up. That’s where a life coach comes in handy. This is a trained professional whose job is to help you become a “better you.” From making a career change to losing weight to handling loss and everything in between, a life coach has what it takes to help you transform your life and face what life throws at you with your chin up.

Do you want to become the captain of your life -- to take full charge of all facets of your life? If yes, a life coach can help. In this article, I will present to you several reasons why working with a life coach is perhaps the best decision you will ever make.

So what is a Life Coach?

To get a better feel for what life coach entails, I’ll touch a little on coach definition. According to Cambridge Dictionary, a coach is “someone whose job is to teach people to improve at a sport, skill, or school subject.” This is essentially someone who encourages, props up, and provides guidance to people, who are mostly athletes. Improve is the most important takeaway here.

The same can be said of a life coach. Borrowing a leaf from the definition of a coach, a life coach is a specialist who provides guidance and support in all aspect of a person’s life. It is a trained coach who helps people set professional and personal growth goals so they can move forward in their lives. As a life coach, I can help you with several facets of your life, including health, career, relationships, and business, just to name a few.

Of course, no two life coaches are the same. Some are trained in general life coaching, while others specialize in specific areas. Which begs the question: what makes a great life coach?

10 Traits of An Effective Life Coach

1. A Great Life Coach is a Good Listener

As a life coach, I talk, interact, and brainstorm with people for the most part of the day. As such, I find that active listening helps me learn more about my clients and what is going on in their lives. The last thing I want to do is come up with solutions or comment right in the middle of when the client is speaking.

No matter how you look at it, excellent listening skills are a must-have for every forward-thinking life coach who has the interests of the client at heart. A good listener is not someone who nods and pretends to be listening; it is someone who takes the time to focus on what the other person is saying genuinely. This way, the life coach can read in-between words and figure out what the client is not actually saying.

The truth is that active listening is a skill that is hard to attain. It takes lots of concentration, energy, and focus. That is why most life coaches who are active listeners only see a few clients each day.

That being said, many times I will pause clients if they go on a tangent, in order to help them focus, and move forward from describing the problem to creating a solution.

2. A Great Life Coach is Respectful of the Client

There’s no shortcut to this. A good life coach should treat every client with definite respect. As your life coach, I’m committed to respecting your decisions, your privacy, and your boundaries. Frequently that means if you don’t want to talk about specific hot-button subjects, I will appreciate that. Respect is part of life coaching honor code 101.

3. A Great Life Coach is Action and Result-Oriented

When you decide to work with a life coach, you want to see results, both short-term and long-term. That is why it is best to check out if your life coach is someone who sets goals. How else will you know if you are progressing?

4. A Great Life Coach is Trustworthy

Trust, as they say, is earned -- not bought, not demanded, and certainly not coerced. When it comes to life coaching, trust is king. It is what convinces the client that a life coach will deliver results. The bottom line is that a good life coach should be so trustworthy that you can follow what they are saying out of “sheer curiosity.” And for life coaching to work, you must feel safe and be comfortable enough to share your fears, dreams, and whatnot with the coach without the fear of being judged.

5. A Great Life Coach is Compassionate and Has Empathy

The big part of our job as life coaches is learning about the clients, their feelings, their needs, and their problems. That is why it crucial for a life coach to be compassionate and empathetic. By empathizing with the clients, I can identify with their issues and find ways to help them take their lives to the next level.

6. A Great Life Coach is Patient

Coaching someone towards success and personal development is no easy task, and certainly not a day’s job. Getting the desired outcome can take one month, two years or even longer. If you crunch the numbers, that’s hours and hours of coaching sessions, exercises, and lots of back and forth. Regardless of training, life coaching is no place for lazy or impatient people.

To get the best results, work with a life coach who has a track recording of being patient while helping their clients to break through challenges that they might have been facing all of their lives. Remember you’re not going to lose 20 pounds in two weeks or get that promotion after a few days -- it takes work and lots of help from a life coach.

7. A Great Life Coach is Passionate about Helping Others

This is perhaps the most critical quality of a life coach worthy of your top dollar. It should be someone who is motivated primarily by the need to help others. The last thing you want is to place the future of your career, health and overall well-being in the hands of someone who wants to make a quick buck out of your situation.

If they are in it for the dollars, you’re better off taking your money elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong; as a life coach, I cannot live on good intentions and love, but the money should be the reward for doing an effective and meaningful job.

8. A Great Life Coach is Inquisitive

Learning about a client life’s expectations, ambitions and goals take a lot of curiosity and interest. An inquisitive life coach is someone who is not only curious but also great at asking relevant questions. What’s more -- you need to work with someone who isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions. A coaching relationship is not friendship. Your coach should not shy away from challenging you, pointing out your blind spots, and habitual strategies that simply do not work for you. At the same time, they should do it in such a way, that it will not discourage you, but empower you to take action in new ways.

9. Great Life Coach is an Embracer of Change

A good life coach knows that change is inevitable. This is someone who is ready to embrace new ways of doing things, new technology, and a new approach to coaching.

10. A Great Life Coach Builds on Your Strengths

A good life coach takes your strengths and uses them to better your life. But that isn’t all. They also use your areas of growth to your advantage.

Benefits of Working with a Life Coach

Are you debating whether to hire a life coach or not? Are you curious about what a life coach can do for you, your career or your business? In today’s complex world, achieving personal growth, developing your job, and improving your overall life is no easy walk in the park. Lucky for you, a life coach can help in more than one way. Remember, life coaching is different than therapy or counseling; it’s all about realizing positive outcomes in your life through a forward-looking approach.

Helps you Gain More Clarity

One of the best benefits of working with me is that I will help you get more clarity on what you want in your life, career or business as well as discover and plan how you can get it and why you actually want it. The chances are that you already know what you want in your business, life or career. Perhaps you know that you are not happy in your current job, but you don’t understand why.

As your life coach, I will help you set clear-cut goals, ones you actually want to achieve. Moreover, I will help you gain more clarity and distinguish between what you should do or could do and what you really want to do. That’s the key to setting actionable life goals, and a useful life coach should help you create a workable, dynamic strategy that enables you to realize your dreams.

Helps you Gain More Confidence and Overcome Insecurities and Obstacles

In my practice, I’ve discovered that insecurities, low-confidence, and poor self-esteem are a recipe for stagnation in life. The truth of the matter is that we all have views and perceptions of our abilities, weaknesses, and strengths. This self-talk can create a can’t do attitude which can hamper your career or business development. Despite being baseless, these self-limiting beliefs can nurture insecurities and weigh down your self-confidence.

Once you’re filled with self-doubt and suffer from low confidence, many times because of delaying taking action, you become your own stumbling block to achieving success. As your life coach, I will unravel and debunk these limiting beliefs and help you overcome them. I will also provide you with the right tools and strategies you need to examine and alter your thoughts and self-perception. This way, you can have a favorable view of your abilities so that you can move forward.

Helps you Conquer your Fears

Making it far in your career or as an entrepreneur takes lots of guts. And just like self-limiting beliefs, if you harbor any fears, you might end up holding yourself back. Whether you want to switch careers, going through a midlife crisis or want to lose some weight, if you are fearful you cannot get far. You need to heave yourself out of your comfort zone and realize that many times, the only thing holding you back is your fear.

As your life coach, I will challenge you to get out of your comfort zone, and conquer your fears one after another. The ripple of effect of overcoming your worries will then be felt in every aspect of your life.

Helps you Come Up with More Effective Techniques and Strategies to Achieve your Goals Quicker

I have many techniques and strategies in my toolbox that I can use to map out the way forward for you. Through your life coaching journey, you will realize that you have more options than ever of achieving your goals more proficiently and more efficiently. More than that, I will use challenging yet exciting exercises to help you define which path is right for your life, career or business. Besides, I will ensure that you remain committed to work towards those actions, and help you deal with any roadblocks.

Helps you Evaluate All Your Potential Options

Even if you know what your goals are, do you know which actions are going to deliver desired results? When you work with me, I will avail to you tools that will help you explore and evaluate more options than you ever imagined. With my help, you will be able to examine the pros and cons of each course of action relative to achieving your goals. More importantly, I will make sure that each action you take resonates well with your core beliefs and values.

A Life Coach Is Dedicated to Encouraging, Supporting, and Motivating You

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was someone who is 100% dedicated to assisting you to achieve your career and business goals? As your coach, I will devote my time to celebrate your milestones, support you in whichever way possible, and shower you with encouragements and motivation. With me on your side, even tough decisions and tasks become effortless. I will listen to you, make it all about you, and guide you every step of the way.

Helps Bridge the Gap

What stands in between where you are currently and where you want to be? That’s what interests me as a life coach. I will leverage proven techniques and the right tools to bridge this gap and help you get there faster. After all, if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you will always get the same results. I will work with you to explore and discover what you might want to do differently to achieve your dream. And best believe me: I will be there to support you from start to finish.

A Life Coach Offers an “Outside” Opinion

As an entrepreneur or business owner, there is a good chance that you’re working on your own or with a partner. Oftentimes that means the advice and opinions you get are those of your coworkers, family, friends or employees. But, who is going to provide you with an external view or perspective?

That’s where I come in. As a life coach -- and unlike those close to you, I am more of an objective outsider who will help you keep things in perspective. For one, I won’t hesitate to tell you when things aren’t panning out. I will honestly tell you where things don’t seem to add up. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear a completely honest opinion for a change?

Wrap-Up

The benefits of working with a life coach are immense, but more crucially it’s a great investment - in your future, your happiness, and your entire life. The life skills, the tools, and the knowledge you will gain from life coaching will keep giving throughout your lifetime. All these benefits, however, can be attained only when you work with the right life coach for you.

Sasha Raskin, MA, is an international #1 bestselling co-author , the founder and CEO of Go New , a transformational education program, a life, and business coach and a psychotherapist in Boulder, CO. He is working on a P.h.D in Counseling Education and Supervision and is an adjunct faculty at the Contemplative Counseling master’s program at Naropa University, from which he also graduated. Sasha has been in the mental health field for more than 10 years, worked with youth at risk, recovery, mental health hospitals, and coached individuals, couples, families, startups, and groups. He has created mindfulness stress reduction and music therapy programs within different organizations. Whether it’s in person or via phone/video calls, Sasha uses cutting-edge, research-based techniques to help his clients around the world to thrive.

As a coach Sasha Raskin provides individual and group coaching in Boulder, Colorado, and worldwide via video and phone calls, drawing from over ten years of experience. His services include: life coaching, business coaching, career coaching, ADD / ADHD coaching, leadership coaching, and executive coaching. Schedule your free 20-minute coaching phone consultation with Sasha Raskin

As a counselor in Boulder, CO, Sasha provides individual counseling in Boulder, CO , family therapy in Boulder, CO, and couples therapy in Boulder, CO, marriage counseling in Boulder, Colorado, and couples intensives / couples retreats, drawing from over ten years of clinical experience. Schedule your free 20-minute psychotherapy phone consultation with Sasha Raskin

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