Why should anyone pursue life coaching? In some quarters, the very profession of life coaching has gotten a bad rap. In 2005, Spence and Grant (p. 143) described life coaching as a “free for all,” that is, an unregulated profession with low quality control, no real methodology, and little obvious value to add to people’s lives. This blog post explains some of the reasons why life coaching is important and relevant in its own right.
Take academic coaching. As an academic coach, I’ve worked with over 4,000 graduate and undergraduate students to help them achieve success in domains ranging from writing a dissertation to understanding statistical models, from developing good note-taking habits to understanding how to structure learning goals. One of my recent clients had a self-described ‘statistics block.’ They were afraid of statistics because of the dryness and complexity with which this subject had been presented to them, and they were consequently unable to begin processing their dissertation data. In assisting this client, I drew upon my knowledge of how to present and explain statistics to students with math anxiety, hundreds of whom I have interacted with over the years. As a coach, I combined general motivation with specific knowledge of what was needed to solve the student’s statistics block. In this role, I complemented the indispensable work that the student’s therapist was already doing in terms of facilitating the emotional stability needed for the student to keep from dropping out. I don’t know if this student was receiving brain training through neurofeedback, but it’s easy to envision how protocols to reduce anxious brainwaves and increase calm brainwaves could also have helped them.
The best coaching is about knowing, communicating, and reinforcing minute details. As a life coach with a focus on academic achievement, I have a treasure trove of such details to impart to clients. I’ve been able to accumulate these details because of the time I’ve spent in my profession, just as therapists accumulate other kinds of details from their client interactions. If I tried to wear too many hats, I couldn’t add as much value as a coach.
I consider therapy (and brain training) to be the forest, whereas life coaching consists of the trees. Therapy and brain training work at a high level–they stabilize the emotions and the brain, help people to integrate and understand their experience, and otherwise promote psychic and social function. Afterwards, life coaching points clients to understanding and implementing the details–details to which they can better attend after being stabilized by therapy and brain training.
Therapy and brain training are the pillars on which life coaching rests. The mind and the brain underlie whatever we do, and improving their function prepares us to benefit more from life coaching. That’s why we position life coaching as the tip of the pyramid whose base is therapy and brain training.
