A Life Coach is someone who is always in your corner and helps you achieve your personal goals. Life coaches help you uncover what’s blocking your success and happiness in areas of your life such as relationships, career, health, personal growth, and more. A life coach can help you identify priorities and guide you to discover what your passion really is, how to achieve it, and how to remove the emotional and psychological barriers that are preventing you from reaching your goals.

Life Coaching Certification – What Credentials Should Your Coach Have?

It may surprise you to know that there is absolutely no regulations or credentials required to be a life coach.

If you conduct a quick Google search, I’m sure that you will see lots of people claiming to be a certified life coach, or advertise some kind of life coaching certification. In actuality, a life coaching certification can be anything from a weekend training class, to an internet based two-hour self-study course.

This can be quite concerning with trained, licensed mental health professionals! That’s because unless your life coach is an experienced psychotherapist, they likely have no in-depth training in human behavior, psychology, sociology and social interactions, personality theory, or emotional and mental health. Perhaps you are not achieving your goals because you don’t have someone holding you accountable (which a life coach would do!), but maybe you are not achieving your goals because you have a mental health issue, such as, adult ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Only a licensed psychotherapist, who is also experienced as a coach, will be able to accurately evaluate for that.

How Can a Life Coach Help You?

A life coach can help you by:

Holding you accountable in order to achieve your identified goals and dreams

Keeping you focused and on track

Giving you new and more effective strategies to manage your life

Helping you with stress management and other emotional issues

Collaborating with you to design a concrete plan to get you where you want to be in your life

Helping you improve your relationships

Helping you be more effective and productive at work or home

Teaching you how to get more satisfaction out of life

Helping you better understand and improve your physical health