What is Life Coaching? Life Coaching is a practice of assisting clients to determine and achieve personal goals. A coach will use a variety of methods, tailored to the client, to move through the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapist (although therapist may become coaches). With roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training, life coaching also draws from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring, and numerous other types of counseling. The coach applies mentoring, value assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal setting, and other techniques in assisting clients. Coaches are to be distinguished from counselors, whether in psychotherapy or other careers. There are several different training programs and coaching institutes available, though no official regulatory standard currently exists. There is no governed education or training standard which a person must achieve before they may appoint themselves a coach. As a result, anyone can call themselves a Life Coach and take on clients. Additionally, there is a high degree of confusion around the terms ‘certification’ and ‘credentialing’ as used within the coaching industry and there exists a wide variety of certificate and credential designations, the status of which are still in flux. Coaches tend to specialize in one or more areas: career coaching, transition coaching, life or personal coaching, health and wellness coaching, parenting coaching, executive coaching, small business coaching, systemic coaching and organizational or corporate coaching. Coaching for women writers, coaching for entrepreneurs with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). And even coaching for mothers are examples of some of the newer, specialty niches now seen in coaching. Now there is coaching young people done by Turn Around Coaching Inc. (Us) There is some controversy surrounding life coaching, primarily because of its current unregulated, unstandardized nature. Critics assert that the practice of life coaching amounts to little more than a method of practicing psychotherapy without any restrictions, oversight, or regulation or any protection against malpractice. However, the legislatures of Colorado have ceased to pursue this kind of request after hearings on the matter, asserting that coaching is unlike therapy in that it does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past, instead focusing on effecting change in a client’s current and future behavior. How TAC helps students © Turn Around Coaching, Inc. (TAC)