Career paths, personal challenges, and all that is about life – life coaches have been in various countries to help individuals aspire and be positive about where life takes them and become better persons for themselves. Life coaches provide you with advice to be action-oriented and find the truth behind every matter in your experience.
When this is a growing industry that creates billions of dollars and probably trillions in the next decade, one cannot help but wonder what is the truth behind it, how they even shift the minds of people and do they actually do so; while a lot of queries has come to your mind, you might be finding yourself in crossroads.
But the truth about life coaches is… it is ugly.
How does it work?
A life coach is a type of mental wellness professional that seeks to give you resolutions on the decisions you make and how you handle unavoidable circumstances. With this, they help you make progress to be able to attain self-satisfaction and greater fulfillment in your day-to-day endeavors. Moreover, life coaches also target your skills and gifts, and help you realise how to use them advantageously; these strengths are then believed to have a greater impact in addressing life-long and positive changes.
Nevertheless, life coaches are just mere people who provide advisory services and not in any way your therapists. Yes, they track your progress and how you can make your life better, but they are not there to help you actualize handling day-to-day challenges. Because of just seasonal checking, it might not be best for you, or worse, it might just be another individual who creates an illusion that makes you believe it can be done in reality.
It’s a Delusion
One cannot be a life coach when he hasn’t been in situations on the brink of the ledge. When they are trained, they seek to resolve issues on their own and can look for ways to deal with them. Hence, the extensive training makes them address inner issues, and by that, they can reflect on their own experiences with the people who seek their services and ultimately provide them with advice that works for the coach where it “might” work for the other person as well.
The point here is that they create a stereotype of becoming a “successful coach” and they try to superficially fit into that stereotype to achieve a branding that somehow goes beyond reality. They deem themselves to be an exceptional type of being, where they can be in control of what’s happening and are the most enlightened ones to help you resolve the issues that you have. However, this may come delusional, as not all circumstances that they have experienced can be applied to the life of the person they want to help.
It’s emotionally draining
Let’s take the side of a life coach. These professionals are always positive, lively, and inviting where they let you open up and be free about expressing your thoughts and feelings. However, most people they encounter have a lot of emotional baggage, and those sessions might turn out to be mental therapy sessions instead of just advising on what to do with specific experiences.
In situations like this, life coaches can’t pick who will be their clients. Hence, they end up talking to someone who they do not want to talk to anymore because of how it mentally and emotionally affects them, but still go with sessions because of desperation —- money always comes as a greater driving force. This leads to life coaches owning their client’s negativities, and it will be hard to deal with them until the very end. Therefore, a profession that can divert and affect the life coaches’ mental well-being, and worse make them quit eventually.
They don’t know everything
Even though life coaches brand themselves as enlightened beings, they don’t know everything and can’t find every solution to your problems. What they do is to dig into your mental weakness and strengths, pooling those into analyzing why and how you can deal with them at ease.
Nevertheless, they don’t care about your past —- it’s not a therapy session. Thus, they focus on what is now and how you can go to be a better version of yourself with the decisions you make and you will still make in the future. Consequently, they may not be able to address your concerns, as they can be under-equipped and limited to dig into your past experiences and how it affects you in the present.
Life coaches are presumably there to help you realise that “you can” behind a mindset that “you can’t”. They ease your feelings, in a way that they can shift a negative mindset into a positive one, going into your psyche via “open questions” that you have not tried answering before. Yet, these coaches are not in any way involved with you and are just merely giving you advice. Therefore, only you can manage what you do and what you are about to do, and you just might be falling for something that’s worth a hefty amount, but does not necessarily help you go through life.