Life Coaching - Is it for you? - written by Georgina Kirk

If a genie gave you three wishes and created a new life for you, is this what it would be like? If you are not living that life, it's high time you were! A life coach can help you to discover the genie inside you and make your dreams come true.

Life coaching is not about telling you what to do. It's about showing you the wide range of options you've got, encouraging you to make changes and supporting you in your journey towards fulfilling your dreams.

Life coaching generally takes the form of regular, one-to-one sessions of an hour or so, either face to face or over the telephone. The coach will help you to focus your goals and to devise small steps towards meeting them. The coach will also hold you accountable for your progress.

Life coaching is not counselling or psychotherapy. The latter two are about finding emotional resolution to problems, present or past. Life coaching is about changing your behaviour; there is little analysis and lots of action. Your coach will not spend much time discussing with you how you feel, although he/she will challenge the negative beliefs that are holding you back, in order that you may ditch them and embrace your exciting future.

Have you always wanted to start your own business/work abroad/climb Mount Everest? Do you want to get fit/learn new skills/expand your social circle? If so, what is stopping you from doing it? A life coach can erode your fears, build your confidence and help you to live the life you've always dreamed of.

Life coaching is not the answer for everybody. If you have experienced trauma and/or had a very unhappy or frightening childhood, life coaching will probably not be of use to you until you have worked through your issues with a psychotherapist. However, if your problems are more in the realms of not being able to get yourself organised, being too busy to think about what you really want out of life or always giving "should" priority over "want to", life coaching can be of limitless value to you.

With the support of your coach, you can make radical changes to every aspect of your life or you can choose to focus on a specific area. For example, you can concentrate on landing your ideal job, on enhancing the job you've got, on gearing up to start a new career/a new life abroad/a new life as a parent, or on getting the most out of your social and cultural life. A life coach will help you with any of these - it's completely up to you.

It's easy to find yourself a life coach on the internet. Don't worry if there doesn't seem to be one in your area, because you can always be coached by telephone. Most coaches will offer you a free initial consultation, during which you can gauge whether life coaching is for you and whether this coach's style is going to suit you. This means that, by getting in touch with a life coach, you have nothing to lose and a whole new life to gain. What are you waiting for?