Low Stress Jobs: Life Coach

Life coaches help people who want to improve their lives in specific ways, such as changing careers, finding a good relationship, losing weight or deepening their self-understanding. They develop strategies together with the client to help manage stress, time, goals and other key areas of lifestyle change. The overall goal is to help clients lead lives that better reflect their priorities and personal values.

Life coaching differs from therapy because it is goal oriented and focused on the present and future, rather than the past. There is also a more equal balance of power between a life coach and a client and less time is needed to achieve goals and create practical strategies.

All of these characteristics make life coaching a far less stressful and perhaps more satisfying career (at least in the short term) than traditional therapy, and rewarding in its own right.

Life Coach Training

While there are no formal qualifications necessary to call yourself a life coach, if you are serious about coaching as a career, you must take a training program and get accreditation before hanging out your shingle.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) is an organization that dedicates itself to advancing the coaching profession and providing support and information for beginners, as well as advanced coaches. As such, it has a database of ICF accredited coaching courses and also provides its own independent certification. The organization is recognized worldwide and is the accrediting body for professional coaches.

Different Types of Coaching

There are a number of different types of coaching but most ICF accredited coach training programs include instruction in the following 4 key areas:

Personal/Life Coaching: This spans all aspects of clients’ lives and determines what is important to the individual client and what can be done to improve their overall sense of well being and life purpose. Life coaching helps clients improve their work/life balance, make personal changes in perspective and increase their level of satisfaction with life.

Executive Coaching: Developed to help those in the upper echelons of the business world, executive coaching provides strategies to develop a corporate vision and implement important leadership skills. It is well established as a profession and can be quite lucrative if you manage to find an ‘in’.

Spiritual Coaching: Some Life Coaches approach coaching from a specific spiritual viewpoint or belief system. These coaches use their spiritual beliefs to inform and construct the coaching process. This is very similar to personal or life coaching, but strategies and solutions are developed from the the perspective of specific spiritual belief systems.

Career Coaching: As the name suggests, career coaching is about helping clients to achieve their personal and financial career objectives. Career Coaching is often used when people are thinking about switching professions but is also used more generally to evaluate career goals and chart progress.

Costs

Credible coach training programs often have coaching and mentoring regarding both life coaching skills and private practice development/marketing skills. Many such programs involve a commitment of 1-3 years, and up to $15,000, and will require that you obtain between one and two hundred client hours to become certified.

However, there are also many programs that take about one year to complete and cost significantly less, usually somewhere between $3,000-$5,000. These shorter programs allow you to become certified as an ACC (Associate Certified Coach) with the International Coach Federation. You can then make some money seeing clients and continue your education in your spare time. For more on ICF credentialing requirements take a look at their website.

Prospects

While it is possible to charge upwards of $300 an hour for coaching services, the reality is that most coaches who charge such high dollar figures have years of experience and/or work as executive coaches. The amount that you feel comfortable charging at first will depend largely on your training and geographical area, but most new coaches are able to charge hourly rates comparable to other professional counselors such as LCSWs and LMHCs. Since the training required is much shorter, and there aren’t (at the time of writing) any state licensing requirements, it can be much cheaper and faster to create a life coaching practice when compared with other counseling professions.

One caveat: in order to have a successful career as a life coach you must be comfortable with networking, and should also have considerable marketing skills, especially in the beginning. This may increase the stress quotient of becoming a life coach at first, but once you are established the marketing aspects of the job will become easier and take a back seat to enjoying helping people.

Low Stress Jobs: Life Coach

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