For many ladies, the American Dream is no longer a white picket fence and a lacy apron. You might want to build a family, but you know you don’t have to give up your career to do it.
You want to be fulfilled in every aspect of life.
That’s all within your grasp, but you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, there’s one strategy that helped Oprah, Leonardo DiCaprio, Serena Williams, and Eric Schmidt (Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet). You guessed it: hiring a life coach.
The Benefits of Hiring a Life Coach
Is a life coach really worth the cost? Instead of an expense, you should recognize that it’s an investment in yourself. Here’s what you stand to gain.
1. Having a Receptive Sounding Board
Have you ever had a problem you couldn’t figure out and you came to the solution just by telling someone about it? Perhaps that person said nothing at all, or perhaps they pointed out something you’d missed.
As much as you may love your closest friends and family members, they don’t always have the objectivity you need. A life coach is well-versed in the art of constructive honesty.
While your coach cares about your feelings, they know the line between caring and enabling. They can be the objective sounding board you need. Find out more about how life coaches can help you refine your ideas.
2. The Benefit of Distance
There’s an old saying that goes, “Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.” In other words, you’re focusing so much on the little details that you can’t see the big picture they create.
It’s easy to get too close to a situation and lose your ability to see it clearly. A life coach, on the other hand, can give you an outsider’s view and help you translate your thoughts.
3. A Motivational Push
In the world of weight loss and fitness, the benefit of a workout buddy is well-known. In many cases, it’s the deciding factor between achieving your goals and losing your motivation after a week or two.
The same holds true for other goals in life. No matter how much passion you have when you start, we all have times when our motivation wanes. A life coach knows when to tell you to take a break to prevent burnout and when and how to boost your motivation.
4. Laying a Roadmap
It’s not a shock that young people struggle to adjust to life after high school, college, or graduate school. At that point, you’ve spent your entire life following instructions. All you need to do to get from point A to point B is to follow the plan your teachers lay down.
When it comes to a career, you’re on your own in the blink of an eye. A life coach can talk through where you are and where you want to be. Most importantly, they can help you figure out the steps you need to take to get there.
If that’s your key goal, it’s ideal to find a coach who’s in your industry. They may have the expertise to know how to navigate the niche and rise through the ranks.
5. Identifying Your Roadblocks
No one sails through their life and career without any setbacks. Some of these might be beyond your control, but we all have our own roadblocks that hold us back as well. Perhaps you don’t handle stress well or maybe a lack of confidence is standing in your way.
Most of those roadblocks aren’t permanent, but they take some work to get past. A life coach can help you figure out what they are and find ways to break through them.
6. Differentiating Between Ambition and Impossibility
Have you ever told a child they could be whatever they want to be, then get hit with a response like, “Okay, I’m going to be an elephant”?
Some people never reach their goals because they’re never able to define those goals in the first place. Ambition is a beautiful drive, but you need to be realistic as well.
It can be challenging to visualize a realistic end point by yourself. You might not know enough about your industry or about your own potential. A life coach can help you define your goals and make them achievable yet challenging enough to help you realize your potential.
A good coach can do this on a smaller scale as well. At times when you don’t do as well on a task as you would have liked, your coach can help you perform better next time or stop you from being too hard on yourself.
7. Helping You Get Back Up
To make sure you have realistic expectations, let’s get on the same page: hiring a coach doesn’t mean you’ll never fail. You will, as we all will because we’re human.
The challenge is how you deal with those failures. Without a motivational influence, you can lose direction and throw in the towel. A life coach can help you stand back up and tell you how to get back on track.
8. Guidance For the Freedom-Rich
In a typical workplace, guidance from a boss gives us a form of security and comfort. Sometimes it’s frustrating to answer to someone else, and that’s why so many people dream of being entrepreneurs.
When you do achieve self-employed status, though, you may miss that guidance more than you expected. In these cases, a life coach can fill that void. While they don’t govern your actions, they help you set your own guidance.
Getting Started Toward Your Success With a Life Coach
Hiring a life coach won’t automatically make you successful. They’re not magic pills toward a seven-figure income and the perfect family. They will, however, give you a powerful tool to help you climb up the ladder toward your vision of success.
For more great tips on how to be your own boss and shatter the glass ceiling, check out our lifestyle blog.
