Modern-day living is incredibly stressful, fast-paced and often overwhelming. The innovative and refreshing approach of life coaching makes a welcome change from invasive therapies that were
popular in the past. Unlike therapy, life coaching does not delve deeply into repressed memories, and it does not involve complex terminology or psychology. A life coach is able to help you analyse
and examine your life. A trained life coach can help you address work-life balance issues or even help you to identify that there is a work-life balance issue to begin with.

As a life coach, you provide your clients with an extremely important service because unresolved stress often leads to negative health consequences. When we live lives that are not in sync with our values, we feel drained because there is always a nagging sense that something does not feel right. In fact, even the decisions that we make may not feel correct, due to inner conflict.

As a life coach, you have the opportunity to help people enjoy happiness, health and leisure because all these aspects are as important to our lives as holding down a good job. Life coaching involves the creation of empowering life paths, in order to achieve personal and professional goals.

Foundational or core values are formed from circumstances, relationships and experiences right from our childhood days. Values define human beings and help them to lead a purposeful life. There are many values, and each person may internalise the values that resonate with them. Just as living with your inner values helps you lead a fulfilling and meaningful life, limiting beliefs can effectively hinder you from living fearlessly.

Limiting beliefs often prevent people from reaching beyond themselves and achieving their goals. They make us believe that we are less than we can be. One of the first and foremost tasks of a life coach is to identify clients' limiting beliefs and help them overcome their inner fears. Self-limiting beliefs drive our subconscious thoughts, actions and behaviours, and, very often, we are unable to grasp the reasons why we sometimes make the decisions that we do. Negative beliefs about yourself can create the very circumstances that you have been hoping to avoid.

Life coaches help people grow into the person that they wish to be, by enabling non-judge mental change for the better. The process is a synergistic one, whereby the coach works with the client, in order to facilitate self-discovery, through enquiry and creativity. The coach is then able to integrate the client's visions, values, goals and dreams, in order to help them overcome resistance and lead a life that is in alignment with their inner values.

Through the process of thoughtful and detailed enquiry, safe, open and transparent communication and collaborative goal setting, life coaches help clients understand where they are, where they want to go, why they want to go there and eventually how they can get there. As clients feel more accountable when they work with a life coach, they are able to achieve much more than what they thought they could achieve.

Life coaches facilitate self-learning and then help their clients translate the learning into an actionable plan that leads the clients to their goals. There are several types of life coaching that you can
consider. These include business or career coaching, confidence coaching, wellness and health coaching, group coaching, relationship coaching and personal coaching.

The attributes of a good life coach include sensitivity, empathy, detachment, excellent listening skills and emotional intelligence.

In general, communication skills have been hampered by today's high-tech, high-stress environment,
and we devote even less time to listening to one another. Active listening helps foster trust, establish
mutual respect, build relationships, ensure understanding and resolve problems. When we do not take
the effort to learn how to properly communicate, we are sti􀏐ling our growth, both personally and
professionally. Communication gaps occur when the person who is listening does not understand the
message in the same way as the speaker intended it to be understood.
Clients who come for life coaching may often be stressed and unable to properly articulate their
feelings. Observing body language and non-verbal cues can help you gain insights into your clients'
real emotions. Active listening is a crucial communication skill for life coaches, as they need to fully
understand their clients' wants and needs, before responding.
Good listening skills can help foster improved understanding and empathy and mean that you are
able to meet your client's needs more ef􀏐iciently, with minimum time wastage.
Silences can be used in the process of communication during life coaching. Positive, respectful and
constructive silences can help create a synergistic environment that promotes re􀏐lection of inner
emotions.

Self-limiting beliefs are usually at the core of our inability to progress and achieve success. One of the most important basics of life coaching is the ability to help your clients to identify limiting beliefs and
then formulate plans of action to help them overcome them. The T GROW model of life coaching is a simple yet effective life coaching model that helps you to help your clients in an empowering manner.

As a life coach, you can help clients progress with their agendas, by asking insightful questions that help them explore their own values and beliefs and how these affect their ability to achieve their goals. It is important to allow respectful silences to follow these questions so that your clients are able to think more deeply about their issues and fears

The language that people use, in order to express themselves to the world, as well as to themselves, is often deeply associated with their beliefs. In fact, we create our own beliefs, based on the language that we use to speak to ourselves and to others. As a life coach, you will discover that helping a person discover their own values and beliefs goes a long way in helping them reshape their thoughts and therefore their lives.

Although life coaching is not a regulated profession in the UK, for a long and lasting career as a successful life coach, you should follow the code of ethics and standards that are recommended by the ICF (International Coach Federation). The most important aspects to bear in mind are the boundaries with regard to your relationship with your clients and client confidentiality.

Life coaches help clients gain improved self-awareness through intensive and powerful questioning

techniques that promote self-inquiry. Asking the right questions and giving the client the space in which to answer allows them to reflect and ponder the answer. If you ask a different question, you can set in motion a new thinking process. Open-ended questions serve as an effective communication tool in the life coaching process and facilitate expanded learning. They can be used in order to facilitate goal setting, action implementation and to allow the client to obtain perspective on their own values and fears. You can rephrase questions, to sound more informal and friendly, in order to prevent the client from feeling intimidated.

Correct questioning can help provide useful insights and help with the process of self-development. The set of questions for each client will be unique and geared towards helping the individual overcome their challenges.

Effective questioning skills form the foundation for transformational life coaching, and there are several different ways in which to trigger self-exploratory thinking. Different types of questioning, such as predictive, diagnostic, generalisation, information-seeking and priority and sequence help the client think about issues from new perspectives. They are also able to propose their own solutions to challenges.

The best way in which to use this tool is to keep the questions solution-orientated and nonconfrontational. Pay conscious attention to your body language and non-verbal cues. Consider dividing a problem into smaller and more manageable chunks, so that you can help the client resolve it step by step. It is also very important to provide them with space in which to think, consider and examine. Taking the initiative to build and having an interest in building a rapport with your client enables you to enter into their world and speak their language. A good rapport is about building a deeper connection. Synchronising body language and non-verbal cues helps relate to clients and establishes a subconscious sense of a strong rapport.

Learn to be genuine and authentic in your behaviour because people have a sixth sense when it comes to detecting false friendliness or concern. Life coaching is all about the client, and your efforts must be channelled in that direction.

Everyone has dreams. Some people may be able to follow through with them and achieve what they want, while other people are often held back, due to internal fears, discouragement, criticism and low self-esteem. Life coaching helps you tap into your strengths and resources, in order to get what you want. It helps people discover their values and strengths and use these, in order to attain their goals. This, in turn, leads to greater happiness and fulfilment.

A plan of action helps give clients the necessary direction, momentum and motivation, in order to achieve their goals. Sometimes, goals may not be achieved. There are essentially two reasons for this: either the goal was unrealistic or the client's habits did not support the completion of the specified actions. Please bear in mind that goals that are not backed up with a realistic action plan are never attained. In fact, even after tailoring an action plan to your client's needs, they may not have implemented the actions laid out in the plan.

In the absence of a plan of action, goals remain dreams, without the accomplishments required in order to turn these dreams into reality. Inconsistency, inner fears, limiting beliefs, a perceived lack of internal resources (for example, knowledge) and external resources (for example, money or time) often act as excuses for not completing actions. As a life coach, it is your job to keep clients on track,
by helping them overcome obstacles.

If you are starting out in your career as a successful life coach, you need to consider becoming proactive, when attracting clients. If you sit back and wait for your clients to approach you or promote you by word of mouth, you may have to wait a long time. The tips described in this module help you attract clients to your business. The very first step involves deciding on the niche in which you wish to specialise, followed by thinking of a simple, unique name for your life coaching business. It is best to avoid cryptic, complex and clichéd names. Life coaching is not simply about chatting with a client over coffee, collecting payment and moving on to the next café.

Remember that most of us do not have hundreds of thousands of pounds to invest in our business, and clients will certainly not come running to us just like that. You must be prepared for it to take a great deal of time and effort to build a life coaching business because what you are essentially trying to build is credibility. It is not necessary to employ expensive online marketing agencies, to help you set up your life coaching business. By spending a little time learning the basics, you can help enhance the visibility of your business.

Building up your own life coaching business takes time and effort and is not an easy task. You need a unique selling point, and this mainly involves the 'who' and the 'what'. In terms of life coaching, this means what services you are going to sell and who you are going those services to. In addition, you require marketing strategies and networking. You want to be sure of attracting the clientele from which you know you can benefit.

A large part of the decision regarding pricing depends on the affordability levels of your target market. For example, if you are specialising in the area of redundancy, you may have many clients who belong to low-income groups and, therefore, may not be able to pay much. However, if you are dealing with five clients every day, a lower rate may be worth your while. Your ideal price would match your skills, confidence and background, as well as your target client profile.

Clarify your intake process, so that you accept the right type of clients for your coaching services. Do not accept just anyone, as this will lead to you lowering your expectations, and you may risk damaging your reputation, in terms of your efficacy and results. Turning away the wrong clients can help you make space and time for the right clients.