In the early 1970’s a trend began to grow out of the traditional psychotherapy world. This trend incorporated new alternative theories and applications in the pursuit of changing people’s behaviour.
Specifically Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy became more accepted and the new concept of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) was developed. The integration of these applications boasted a much more systematic approach to tackling psychological issues and being able to achieve more measurable results in much less time than previously seen from past conventional methodologies. Also, the main focus tended to shift from exploring the past to be able to manage the present to exploring the present to be able to create and achieve the future.
Furthermore, the scope of these strategies and techniques expanded as it was discovered that success was possible not only in solving problems, but also in enhancing performance and achievement in subjects like business and sport. The term ‘therapy’ was no longer appropriate to cover the concepts and so the term ‘coaching’ was adopted. Soon, it was also realised that people’s lives could be improved in numerous ways through coaching. The client did not have to be the sufferer of some psychological issue or be a top executive or professional sport star.
People that just felt stuck, or needed to fulfil a new direction in their life could benefit from having a coach. People whose lives were doing well could also adopt the assistance of coaching as a means to achieve even more of what they already had. Parallel to this was the trend of ‘motivational speakers’ that were pushing people to go out and be more than they currently were; to enjoy more of what they deserved. This is what was finally termed to what we now know as ‘Life Coaching’
Since that era, there have been many seminars and courses held around the world. Life Coaches are available in every country in every language. Some focus upon a specific niche, some work with high profile clients, some work with charities and are more spiritually focussed. Coaching has developed from being a one on one arrangement to being delivered in groups. In modern day, we are now able to conduct sessions by video phone over the internet.
A life coach is helpful to virtually any aspect of life improvement, whether personal or professional. A life coach is somebody that offers you full confidentiality to discuss and explore. They are able to guide you from where you are to where you want to be. Often people hire the services of a life coach to help in an important or difficult transition that they are needing to complete in their life.
Life coaching is a term that covers a broad spectrum of aspects. Coaching is very widely used in business, from private one on one executive coaching to business start-ups and inter-departmental coaching in larger organisations. It is used in nearly all sports, with some of the best and biggest names having received and benefited from life coaching. Life coaching is very popular for repairing and/or enhancing relationships and for helping to achieve targets and goals.
A life coach is a guide, another angle of perception. A life coach is there to catch you when you fall, pick you up and push you back up to speed – to keep you on track. A life coach offers both support and accountability. They will empower you to challenge yourself and take you to another level, much easier and faster than you would achieve by yourself.
My personal approach of life coaching is a flexible, integrated system that incorporates numerous applications and strategies that I have learnt and used in my years of experience across many different subjects. I am very lucky to have a relatively full box of tools to be able to call upon to the point where I can be quite confident that I can help most people with virtually any topic.
Here you can read about some of the applications in my ‘tool box’ that I integrate in my personal approach to Life Coaching:
Hypnosis
Hypnotherapy
Psycho-Analysis
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Psycho-Sensory Therapy
Thought Field Therapy (TFT)
Strategic Intervention