Let’s say you are interested in getting some personal life coaching but you do not have a lot of money to spend at the moment. After all, we are still in a recession and many might view life coaching as something of a luxury rather than as a necessity. You might be interested to learn that some life coaches charge less than others (but still offer stellar service). You might also be interested to learn that some life coaches will provide services on a sliding scale.

That is, if you give them a sense of your budget and what you are capable of spending right at the moment, they might be willing to offer you their services at a reduced rate on either a temporary or permanent basis. Not all personal life coaches are able or willing to provide their services on a sliding price scale, but some are, and it certainly cannot hurt to inquire. Those who do not offer such discounts will let you know right away, so that you can cross them off your list if need be. But others will be open to negotiating with you. Be open and receptive to what they have to say.

For instance, maybe they are willing to provide five sessions at a reduced rate, but after that their prices will return to normal. Or maybe they will be willing to offer you half sessions (that is sessions that last about half as long as they normally do) for half the price. You can still get a lot out of a “half session” if you are workiing with a good life coach who packs a lot of information into those half sessions. Perhaps you can meet once a month for a period of time. That way you only have to allot a certain amount of your monthly budget to your personal life coaching. As you can see, there are a lot of different options to present if you find a life coach who is willing to negotiate with you.

Personal life coaching can be a wonderful thing when you are able to find and use the coaching services of a reputable life coach. Unfortunately, there are some individuals who “hang out a shingle” as a personal life coach, but they actually have no business doing any life coaching because they have not been trained properly, or they offer bad advice or they try to sell you a million products. In other words, there are snake oil salesmen (and women) in any profession, and sadly, there are some personal life coaches who fall into this category, and you definitely do not want to get scammed by someone who claims to be an effective personal life coach, but who in fact is anything but.

This means that it is extra important to do your “due diligence” when researching any of the people you are considering hiring as a personal life coaches. If a person who is offering life coaching services is legitimate and has a good (or preferably excellent) track record, you will be able to find plenty of evidence backing up their claims. They will be affiliated with legitimate personal life coaching associations, for instance. They may also invite you to speak to some of their past or present clients so that you can get a better sense of how they work as personal coaches and if they customize their programs to suit the needs of each of their individual clients.

After all, each client has different needs, yourself included. You don’t want a personal life coach who approaches life coaching in a cookie cutter style, giving each client the exact same advice as all of their other clients. When interviewing each potential life coach, pay particular attention to how closely they listen to you when you are describing what you want to get out of the experience. An effective life coach is a good listener who takes his or her clients’ specific desires and needs into account when designing a life coaching program.

Did you know that the International Coach Federation or ICF has a membership exceeding 12,000 life coaches? Many of these life coaches are specialists in career coaching or business/executive coaching, but some of them focus on relationship development and personal growth. Currently, there are more female than male life coaches in the Federation. In addition, at the present time, more female clients utilize the services of life coaches.

If you are thinking about hiring a life coach, you may want to look into the ICF (among other organizations) to see if there are any life coaches in your area who might be a good match for you. Please note that there are several different training programs if you are interested in becoming a life coach, or if you want to find out about the training backgrounds of life coaches that you are thinking about hiring.

Typically, clients who seek the services of life coaches are in their mid-thirties to mid-fifties and they feel like they have arrived at a “fork in the road” of their professional and/or personal lives.  They very much want to move forward in life, but they also want to make sure that when they do move, they are moving in the right direction, not the wrong one. And they would like a little guidance, support and encouragement in making that decision.

As has been mentioned in other articles on this website, life coaching is not about providing clients with psychotherapy. It is about providing them with mentoring, encouragement and coaching. Clients who want to work on issues like depression or anxiety would be better off working with a therapist until they have reached some sense of resolution around these issues and feel like they are in a strong emotional state to move forward with their lives. On the other hand, if you already feel like you are in a healthy place, emotionally speaking, but you just want to get out of a professional and/or personal “rut,” then life coaching may be just the right option for you.

If you interview one life coach and find that you do not click well with that individual, the good news is that you are not compelled to hire that individual. After all, you will be investing your time, energy, commitment and money in your relationship with your life coach, so it is vitally important for you to feel compatible with that person, because you need to be able to work well together. Therefore, do not get discouraged if the first life coach you interview and consider hiring does not seem to be a good fit for you. Keep interviewing and searching until you find a life coach with whom you really click. You only want to work with a reputable personal life coach, after all.

Maybe you already have a great sense of exactly what you want to accomplish in your career (and your life in general), or maybe you don’t. Maybe you also have a very clear and well defined “five year plan” or “ten year plan.” Then again, maybe you don’t. Two of the biggest tasks that life coaches can help their clients with are goal setting and achieving goals.

What can good life coaches do? They can motivate you and help you dig deep when you are struggling and when you are worried that you may not have the inner resources to realize your dreams, or even to fully define precisely what those dreams might be. Not only that, but they can teach you specific ways to relax so that you are in a better state of mind for achieving each of these career goals (and personal goals) that you set for yourself.

These days, given the complicated financial climate and other stressful factors, people are even more stressed out than usual. And one of the other life tasks that life coaches help their clients with is stress management. After all, if you are feeling overly stressed out, you might feel a sense of emotional paralysis. And when you are feeling emotionally and/or psychologically paralyzed, it can be extremely hard to accomplish your goals. Different stress reduction techniques work well for different people, and what helps you relax may not help your friend or your neighbor.

By working one on one with a life coach on stress management, the two of you can figure out exactly which stress reduction methods might work best for you. Not only that, but a life coach can also help you put these techniques into practice in your day to day life. The less stressed out you feel, the more productive you are bound to be.

When it comes to reducing your stress level, it helps to keep an open mind and a willing heart. You may need to try some methods that you are not familiar with or that seem silly at first (such as deep breathing techniques and visualization, listening to quiet, peaceful music, practicing Yoga, and/or other relaxation methods).

After all, when you keep an open mind about these matters, you tend to get the most out of them. In other words, don’t knock stress reduction exercises till you try them, because you just might be happily surprised. (Many people find that amping up their current exercise routine is the best way for them to relax and regain their sense of focus.)

Sometimes people get stuck in behavioral patterns that they are not sure how to get out of, and when this happens, it can be very helpful to seek the advice of an objective third party. In certain instances, a therapist may be the right person to call upon to break out of such patterns, but in other instances, a life coach may do the trick. If you just feel sort of “stuck” and you do not feel particularly mired down by depression and/or anxiety and/or other psychological issues, then a life coach may be able to help you get a handle on what it is you want to accomplish and how.

An effective life coach can also help you figure out what you have been doing up until this point that has been impeding you from achieving your goals. After all, sometimes learning what NOT to do any longer in order to achieve your goals can be just as helpful (or even more helpful) than learning what to do.

As you already know all too well, life can be full of distractions. Here is a small scale example of just how distracting life can be: You turn on your computer with the intention or goal of writing an article, but soon you get sucked into reading some of your favorite blogs or news sites, and you lose sight of why you turned on your computer in the first place.

If you had your life coach sitting on your shoulder (like one of those “good angels” in cartoons), whispering to you to stay focused on the task at hand, chances are you would not get sucked into all of those distractions and you would be able to stay focused on what it is that you want to do until you complete your task. A life coach can also remind you of just how great it feels to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself.

Much in the same way that a personal trainer can keep you focused like a laser beam on your health, diet and fitness goals, a life coach can help you retain your sense of focus and help keep your “eyes on the prize” whenever you feel your attention drifting off in one direction or the other. Even the most responsible and focused people can find their attention drifting from time to time, and sometimes all that is needed is just the gentlest push back in the right direction. A good life coach can provide this push as often as necessary.

If you feel like you are at a crossroads in your career (and/or your life in general), or if you feel like you need to “jumpstart” some aspect of your career or personal life, you may benefit from the services of a life coach.

Many adults tend to get bogged down by the numerous responsibilities they have in life. After all, life can get quite overwhelming and busy at times, and when that happens, it can be easy to lose sight of your sense of purpose. When you are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed in this way, it can even be difficult just to lift your head above the water for a long enough time to assess or reassess your career goals and objectives (as well as your other, non-work-related goals and objectives). That’s where a good life coach can come in to the picture.

Life coaching evolved out of the career coaching movement. However, not all life coaches specialize in helping people identify and achieve their career goals. Some life coaches are more focused on helping people achieve their goals in their relationships or in the more general area of “personal growth.” And some life coaches are generalists rather than specialists in the sense that they do coaching in all of these areas. If you are seeking a life coach, you will want to investigate the areas of expertise of the coaches you are considering.

Like an athletic coach, a life coach uses a wide variety of methods to get you the results you are seeking, depending upon what is called for in a given situation. Some people respond best to gentle encouragement, whereas others need a life coach to use more of a “tough love” approach to help them identify and achieve their goals, and some need coaches who are comfortable alternating between these two different coaching styles. Whatever methods are required to get you moving toward achieving your life goals are the methods that your life coach will use.

A lot of people find that they benefit enormously from the individualized attention that they receive from their life coaches. An effective life coach often seems to have an intuitive grasp of the right questions to ask, the right statements to make, and the right tone of voice to use with you to get you moving in the right direction. Sometimes a life coach is just the right person to help you learn specific ways to ignore all the distractions, “static” and “white noise” in life so that you can really get down to the core of what it is you want to accomplish in your life and what you need to do to get there.

Often when you think of the word “coach,” you may think of your health and/or gym teacher who doubled as a coach in your high school’s athletic program. Or perhaps you think of some of the more famous coaches in professional sports. In other words, the term “coach” frequently has very specific (and often sports-related) connotations in many people’s minds. The term “coach” also has other connotations, of course, such as “mentor” and “guide.” In other words, a coach is someone people turn to for guidance, support, encouragement and training in one endeavor or another.

Well, think of a “life coach” as a person who provides general guidance, support (and sometimes training, too) for adults who are seeking guidance in one or more areas of their professional and/or personal lives. Life coaching, as a profession, is rooted in business coaching, which has been around for decades. As a field, it draws from personal development principles, leadership and managerial executive training programs, social psychology, developmental psychology and organizational psychology, among other fields.

A life coach sets up a practice in order to assist paying clients who are working on setting and achieving a series of personal and professional objectives. They use a wide variety of techniques when working with their clients.  Something very important to keep in mind about life coaches is that they are not psychologists, and they do not “treat” clients who may be struggling with mental health issues in the same way that therapists do. This is an important point because sometimes clients seek out a life coach when what they actually require is a therapist.

Life coaching originated in the business coaching field, which tends to focus on leadership training for business executives. Over time, business coaches recognized a need for a broader type of coaching, which is how the field of life coaching came into being. Today, many life coaches agree that one of the chief originators of their field was a former college football coach by the name of Benjamin Karter, who became a motivational speaker later in life. As athletic coaches are prone to do, his speeches typically focused on mentoring, role modeling and on helping people identify and then work hard to achieve their life goals.

An effective life coach needs to be a great communicator and sounding board, as well as a source of support and even inspiration. Some of the specific issues that they can help their clients with are learning how to manage their time and resources better, figuring out how to “keep their eyes on the prize” and how not to lose their sense of focus and discipline when trying to achieve their career and financial goals. In other words, a life coach can help people clarify what they want to achieve and then help them achieve it by providing the necessary encouragement, even (or perhaps especially) when the going gets tough.