How to Become a Life Coach
Before learning How to Become a Life Coach and taking the plunge into a new career, learn more about this profession and try to figure out whether it suits you. A life coaching job is not for everyone. Here are some of the aspects that you need to consider. Critical self-evaluation and self-analysis are required along the way.
How to Become a Life Coach - Choose Your Profession First
Find out exactly what this profession implies. There are all sorts of life coaches for different life sectors: finances, sports, health, career, business, personal, sentimental and spiritual.
What personal features and psychological structure do you need in order to be a good coach? I will only mention just a few, although the list is definitely much longer: empathy, compassion, good communication capacity, positive life vision and a balanced mindset. Learning How to Become a Life Coach starts by being a good listener, someone who understands when to remain silent and when to discuss things.
Don’t neglect the MONEY issue either, because you have to be realistic in terms of financial gains. If you want to make a living out of life coaching, then, you need to know what to expect. Statistics indicate that 73% of life coaches earn less than $10,000 in their first year, while just 60% find 10 paying customers in their second year of activity.
Learning how to become a life coach begins before you actually start training
You may not even be aware that you have the qualities of a life coach, until you actually give your day-to-day life a bit of thought. Therapists and counselors often have a natural inclination for life coaching. Yet, there are thousands of people out there who act as life coaches for their family, friends and co-workers, without having any kind of specialized training. These are the natural!
You know that you have the potential of learning How to Become a Life Coach with good work results if:
- your friends keep asking you for advice on all sorts of problems;
- if at work, you often get involved in business planning and management;
- if you have good knowledge of healthy living guidelines and you share them with others etc.
Training and certification
Training and certification are the main must-haves to actually call your life coaching attempts a career. If you attend a well-reputed life coaching school, you’ll benefit from a well-structured education and direct practical training. You get the actual tools that a professional needs in this business.
Yet, certification is more problematic because not all schools have accreditation, and there are no standard regulations or legal norms for this profession. The ‘official’ institution that has been recognized as ‘regulating’ in this budding professional domain is the International Coaching Federation.
In addition to the certificates given by the ICF, there are other training units that give their own certifications, as it happens with Coachville School. Before you decide what coach training school to follow, you have to carefully check the curriculum, the courses and whether or not they are optional.
Pay attention to the time-frame for the courses as well as to the costs of the program. Learning How to Become a Life Coach starts through school hence you have to make sure it’s a good school.