Ravina, a retired defense pilot, is looking for a fresh start in a new space. A caring, thoughtful person, Ravina is the inevitable agony aunt for friends and family members. Having been successful in this role, Ravina wants her second innings to be a profession that enables people to live happy, sorted lives. Per a friend’s suggestion, Ravina considers taking up life coaching as a career.
Ravina is just one of the many professionals choosing to take the road less traveled – the life coaching business. Corporate professionals, stay-at-home moms, teachers, professors, yoga trainers, and dancers – all have one thing in common – a genuine interest in helping people live their potential.
Life coaching is the latest buzzword in the wellness domain. Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Hrithik Roshan, the band Metallica, and even the IPL team Kings XI Punjab, have hired life coaches to identify and achieve specific goals.
Do you find happiness and satisfaction in enabling others to achieve success in their lives? Are you considering life coaching as a career? Then the time is ripe. Let’s see why.
Why choose life coaching as a career?
Increase in demand for life coaching
The life coaching business is a rapidly growing market. The number of life coaches increased by 33% between 2015 and 2019. Millennials are a determined generation. They want to fulfill their ambitions, realize their dreams, and fix life issues. And they are open to taking the help of life coaches to do all these.
Passion & purpose
Life coaching as a career allows you to include passion and purpose into your profession. Life coaching is a great career choice for those who want to give back to society.
Flexible working hours
As a life coach, you can decide on your coaching sessions at your convenience. Flexible working hours give you ample time to focus on other aspects of your life, such as family, health, hobbies, etc. A lot of women are transitioning to life coaching as a result.
Good pay
The life coaching career can pay well depending upon how competent you are as a life coach and how well you position yourself as one. Starting life coaches with ICF certification from Regal Unlimited earn upwards of INR 60,000 to INR 1 lakh for a coaching engagement that lasts six months. The in the US, the average annual income from coaching is $62,500.
If you are interested in learning how to set up a flourishing life coaching business, don’t miss the blog of a life coach who gives tips from her personal experience. Read Vijay Rashali’s How to Start a Life Coaching Business
Life Coaching career open to all
You don’t need specialized educational qualifications to be a good life coach. The life coaching career is open to all who are so inclined. This does not mean anyone can begin practicing as a life coach. Coaching is an art and a science that requires proper training. An ignorant life coach can irreparably damage lives.
In addition, to be an effective life coach, you need some specific qualities.
Qualities a Life Coach Needs
A genuine interest in helping others
Life coaching is about enabling another person to live to their full potential. The complete focus is on the client. A life coach derives satisfaction and fulfillment in their client’s victories and accomplishments.
Ability to build trusting relationships
Clients find it easy to open up when they feel comfortable with their life coach. Do you generate trust in people naturally? If not, build yourself in that area if you want to take up life coaching as a career.
An active listener
A good life coach listens more and talks less. Therefore, every aspiring life coach has to be a good listener. The art of active listening involves listening to what is expressed as well as what is not. This gives the life coach an idea of the client’s wishes, goals, and desires. Deep, active listening allows life coaches to understand strengths, limiting beliefs, and thought patterns.
Keen observer
A life coach can notice subtle nuances in client behavior that can lead them to assess the client’s state of mind and self-awareness.
Asking the right questions
In life coaching, the life coach skillfully poses questions that bring solutions from the client. Knowing what to ask and when to ask is vital.
No prescription of solutions
The life coaching career isn’t like mentoring, counseling, or therapy. A successful life coaching engagement works on believing that the client has all the answers. The life coach only defogs thinking and enables the client to arrive at the solution. Therefore, life coaches must be non-judgemental and non-prescriptive. Most life coaches find this to be the biggest challenge.
How to become a life coach
One can start coaching without any formal training. Life coaching is unregulated, and many self-styled life coaches abound in the life coaching business. However, as mentioned earlier, it is dangerous for clients and damaging for the coaching profession to pander to untrained, uncertified life coaches.
Therefore it is best to have formal training in life coaching. There are a lot of training institutes that train and certify life coaches. There are online training and certification programs.
Out of these, coach training institutes and certification programs approved by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) are the best. ICF is widely considered the gold standard in professional coaching. ICF monitors and maintains the highest standards of coaching. They also have the largest network of professional coaches in the world.
How to get a life coaching certification
Life coaching is one of the many specialized areas in professional coaching. So the basic principles of coaching and core coaching competencies hold for any niche, including life coaching.
To become a life coach, you must first get certified as an ICF coach. Once you become an ICF coach, you can choose life coaching as a career path.
ICF’s first coach certification level is the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) certification. Many training institutes provide the ICF-ACC certification.
Learn in detail how to get life coaching certification through our blog, How to Become an ICF Coach
Train to be an ICF-certified life coach with the best
Here’s why you cannot get a better deal than us!
- We have trained over 300 coaches.
- We are known for our high-quality training by the best coaches in the business
- We enable you to build your coaching muscle through the ICF-mandated 100 hours of coaching practice.
- We handhold and mentor you through your credentialing
- Our Coach Accelerator Program can help you quickly materialize your entrepreneurial dreams
- We offer last-mile support in ICF-credential renewals
- You can take your coaching quotient to the next level through our coaching intensives – Coaching Unlimited.
Do you have further questions regarding becoming a life coach?
Whatsapp us your queries and we will answer them all.
FAQs
What is life coaching?
Life coaching is a creative, thought-provoking process where a life coach enables a client to set and achieve personal, professional, or both goals. Life coaching can help achieve work-life integration. A life coach can help improve work performance, self-esteem, stress management, etc.
Does life coaching really work?
According to different studies done over the years, life coaching is highly effective. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study revealed that more than 70% coachees show improved work performance, better communication skills, and healthier relationships. 80% of people who undergo life coaching show an increase in self-confidence.
What are the benefits of a life coach?
Having a life coach has the following benefits –
- A life coach holds a mirror to you, thus increasing self-awareness.
- Life coaching is empowering. All solutions come from you rather than from someone else. And you are in charge of the coaching process at all times.
- In life coaching, since the motivation to change comes from within, the resulting attitudinal and behavioral changes last longer.
- Life coaching is known to enhance performance.
- Life coaching increases creativity and flexibility.
- Life coaching improves health and relationships
At Regal Unlimited we have the best in class Leadership Coaching programmes. We at Regal Unlimited adhere to Coaching the ICF way.
For more information reach out to us info@regalunlimited.com.
