What Is Life Coaching?

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Updated August 15, 2024

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Interest in life coaching is growing from the client's perspective and among students exploring different career paths. But what is a life coach, and how do you become one?

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Life coaching is growing in popularity as a profession and a service for individuals and organizations. According to the International Coaching Federation (ICF), there was a 54% increase in active coach practitioners from 2019-2022.

Discover what life coaching is, how it differs from therapy, and the process of becoming a life coach in this guide.

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What is a Life Coach?

Life coaches draw on their specialized education, unique life experiences, and targeted training to help people identify and work toward key personal development goals. They provide services in both one-on-one and group settings through private practices, individual meetings, site visits, and teleconferencing platforms.

Through life coaching, clients may:

  • Boost their self-confidence and self-awareness
  • Build healthier and more reliable decision-making abilities
  • Achieve clarity on personal and professional goals and paths
  • Find new ways to take strong, determined actions toward key objectives
  • Maximize their potential

Coaches guide clients to these benefits through a variety of specialized approaches, including targeted questioning, visualization exercises, and reframing techniques. Coach practitioners may also use methods borrowed from mental health disciplines like psychotherapy. For instance, some coaches draw on cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) models.

Some well-known and high-profile life coaches include:

Life Coaching vs. Therapy

What is a life coach, and how do coaches differ from therapists? While these careers share some similarities, there are significant differences between life coaches and therapists.

Some major similarities include a core focus on empowerment through self-awareness and self-improvement. Both life coaches and therapists offer customized and confidential sessions for discussing personal challenges, problems, or struggles. They also aim to improve their client's happiness and personal fulfillment.

However, there are significant differences between them:

Goals and Focus

"Therapy is about helping you to identify what particular life experiences you've had that limit the way that you show up and how you see yourself in this world," notes Jisun Sunny Fisher, Ph.D., a New Jersey-based licensed psychologist. This observation aligns with the core focus of therapy on confronting and resolving the past.

Meanwhile, life coaching looks toward the future. While life coaches consider their clients' personal histories, they constantly orient them toward empowered, decisive, future-facing action.

Approaches

Therapists apply targeted, clinically developed techniques rooted in decades of theory, research, and science. As Dr. Fisher observes, "Therapy goes through actually exploring what particular life experiences you've had in the past and clearing a lot of the baggage and the hurt and pain."

While life coaches sometimes draw on established therapy techniques, many use their own unique approaches. This flexibility gives coaches more freedom and agility, liberating them from following a strictly defined set of therapeutic principles.

Licensure and Regulation

Therapists need professional licenses to practice. Counselors need at least a master's degree, while psychologists must hold doctoral degrees. Thanks to these extensive training requirements, therapists are qualified to diagnose and treat mental disorders and mental health conditions.

Life coaching is unregulated. Some reputable organizations offer certifications, but these are not standardized. There are no specific educational requirements to become a coach practitioner.

When to See a Therapist vs. a Life Coach

Both therapy and coaching can help individuals find fulfillment and happiness. But knowing which one is best for you as a client can be tricky. And making the incorrect choice can delay progress.

"I actually have had some clients come to see me and say, 'I've gone through years of coaching, but I feel like I'm right back where I started,'" Fisher says. "It makes so much sense because it doesn't matter how much coaching you go through to be the best version of yourself. If you haven't gone back and faced your shadows and done the healing work, all the stuff that we add as part of the coaching … really doesn't help us to show up authentically."

Life coaching is not a fast-track pass to happiness and fulfillment. As Fisher says, if there is trauma to work through or healing to be done, that must be addressed before life coaching. However, there's a point at which therapy's positive effects begin to plateau.

"Just the therapy alone, the therapeutic component, isn't enough for us to actually be equipped with the resources and the clarity that we need to say, 'This is the kind of person I want to show up as in this world.' And that's where the coaching piece comes in," Fisher says.

If you are still unsure which option is the right fit, schedule a consultation with a therapist or life coach. They can determine if you are a good candidate for their services.

Criticisms of Life Coaching

Life coaching has faced criticism since the beginning of the profession, largely because there is no governing board or licensing body that regulates the field.

"You could have absolutely no experience or training in coaching and still call yourself a life coach," Fisher says.

This allows all kinds of people to market their services as "coaches." Most are well-intentioned, but some are motivated purely by money.

Another factor contributing to the skepticism toward coaching is its association with the self-help movement. This genre of books, workshops, and videos boomed in the 1990s and surged through the 2000s. Best-selling books like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "The Secret" have helped millions of people.

However, the self-help genre has also provided an opportunity for fraudsters like Werner Erhard, Osho, and Keith Raniere to exploit people's desire for fulfillment. These are the most notorious examples, but there are many individuals marketing their services who aren't necessarily devious — just ill-equipped to provide advice professionally.

The field's lack of regulation is a double-edged sword. While it can certainly attract insincere opportunists, it also allows those who are truly passionate about helping people to make a living without the huge investment of time and money needed to earn a psychology license.

"Regulations exist to protect the public from being deceived about any particular promise that they're being told will be delivered," Fisher says. "But I feel like sometimes the pendulum swings the other way completely, where it's overly regulated."

"... I don't want people to feel completely limited from being able to provide a service they feel passionate about and they're capable of doing," she explains.

What does this mean for potential clients? Be vigilant when searching for a life coach. Here's what to look for as you explore your options.

  • Experience

    The amount of time that a coach has been working in the field is worth considering. But more important, find out if they have experience that is relevant to your goals. If you're planning to start a business, look for a successful entrepreneur in a similar field. If you dream of moving abroad, look for a life coach who is also an expat. If you're just seeking general fulfillment in life, look for someone who has overcome the same type of challenges you're experiencing.

  • Credentials

    Despite the fact that education is optional, nearly three-quarters of life coaches hold certification from a professional coaching institution. However, there are plenty of quick-earn certificates that don't require much time or effort to complete. Do a quick Google search to find out more about the type of credential or certification a life coach holds.

    ICF-accredited programs are generally considered the gold standard in the industry. The organization's website offers a search feature to verify that a coach has completed an ICF-accredited program.

  • Client Testimonials

    This can be an important indicator in determining whether or not a coach is successful at helping people. When reading client testimonials, look for specific details about how the coach benefited them. Be wary if all of the testimonials sound like they were written by the same person.

How to Become a Life Coach

Since life coaching is an unlicensed and unregulated profession, there is no set path to becoming a practitioner. Some coaches draw on compelling personal histories, unique experiences, or professional successes to attract clients. Others combine schooling with targeted training.

Academic degrees that may help prepare life coaches for professional practice include graduate-level programs in counseling or psychology. Some schools offer master's degrees in psychology with life coaching concentrations. These programs help aspiring coaches build a toolkit of clinically tested and proven skills.

Educational institutions and professional organizations also provide coach training and certification programs. The ICF maintains a database of recognized and accredited programs, which you can use to help guide your search. You can also learn more about coaching credentials and professional standards through the ICF.

Dr. Fisher emphasizes the importance of formal training and the authority that certification carries. "Certification and training programs are actually really valuable in terms of [learning] how we approach a client and the types of questions we ask," she says. "And it helps us to set a framework for how we approach whatever it is we're specializing in."

Frequently Asked Questions About Life Coaching

Who should see a life coach?

People seeking to identify and address barriers to their future personal and professional progress typically get the most value from life coaches. Therapists focus more on helping patients deal with traumatic past experiences.

It varies. Life coaches follow individualized professional development paths, and there is no set way to become one. One possible path involves earning a master's degree in counseling or psychology before completing a life coach training or certification program. This route may take 7-8 years.

The ICF 2023 Global Coaching Study reported that average annual revenues or incomes from life coaching have reached $52,800 per year. According to the ICF's analysis, this figure represents a 12% increase from 2019-2022.

Life coaches charged an average of $244 for a one-hour coaching session in 2022, according to the ICF 2023 Global Coaching Study. That hourly rate represents a 9% increase compared to 2019.

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