27/02/2025
Could life-coaching help you?
Feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or in need of a change? You may get the help you need from a life coach.
Mental wellness has become a growing topic of conversation in recent years. That’s good news for people struggling with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression, as it’s no longer considered taboo to seek help from a therapist. But what about those of us who simply need assistance getting through a situation that seems a little too large to handle on our own? In these cases, a life coach might be the answer.
What exactly is life-coaching?
It’s not surprising that there’s still considerable confusion around life-coaching, given that it’s fairly new in South Africa. It also doesn’t help that people often aren’t exactly clear on what a life coach does.
Martin Brits, who specialises in transformational coaching at Meta-Life Coaching, sheds some light on the matter: “The International Coaching Federation defines life‑coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential. This helps them unlock previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership. But if you put that in plainer terms, a life coach empowers their clients to address some of their most urgent, challenging, or important life situations and guides them to obtain a more empowered stance, perspective, and attitude.”
Say, for example, you’re struggling with work-life balance, you feel like your relationships are foundering, or you’re trying to get to grips with a career transition. Your coach will help you gain clarity on your goals and then work together to identify the steps you need to take to achieve them. They will also co-create an accountability framework and keep you motivated as you work through the actions they suggest.
According to Martin, a life coach will support their clients to better understand their deepest desires and identify how they want to be or feel in the future. The coach supports their journey to implement a better lifestyle routine that eliminates unhealthy distractions and replaces them with good habits. As an added benefit, you’re likely to experience better physical and mental well-being as you enrich yourself by honing new skills.
What it’s not
Martin says it’s important to clarify what life-coaching can achieve. People often confuse life coaching with counselling, but they are very different. Counselling is a conversational form of therapy that involves a trained therapist listening to you and helping you, for example, find ways to deal with emotional issues that can stem from your upbringing and past events.
Even cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is different from life-coaching, despite the fact that both emphasise the development of beneficial habits. The key distinguisher is the emphasis. CBT helps clients experiencing issues like anxiety and depression by dealing with deep-seated perceptual distortions and thought patterns that affect their normal functions psychologically, emotionally, and behaviourally.
Life-coaching, on the other hand, is focused on creating a fulfilling future rather than trying to fix the past. Your life coach does this in a way that is not prescriptive by guiding and suggesting possible options rather than instructing.
Coaching is very different from mentoring, too, where the relationship is based on providing insight based on one’s own experience.
What you stand to gain
A coach can be described as a guide, motivator, and facilitator. “The life-coaching journey will likely help you acquire techniques that will enable you to tackle negative thoughts and emotions. You will learn how to turn challenges into stepping stones for growth and cultivate a mindset that helps improve mental and emotional wellness. While friends and family can provide compassion and advice and listen to your frustration with life’s challenges, improving your life and achieving success takes work, dedication, and time. A life coach not only helps you set goals, formulate action plans, and implement the steps needed to move forward, they also provide consistent support and motivation as you make progress,” Martin concludes.
