Does Life Coaching Really Give You Clarity?

Clarity is something many people strive for. It helps us make good decisions, create achievable life goals and contributes to our sense of overall wellbeing and confidence. However, the road to achieving clarity is not always easy.

Many people have trouble getting out of a rut and breaking free from things like insecurity, a lack of confidence, or a fear of the unknown, and this keeps them from living a fulfilling life.

Life coaching is often touted as a good way of helping people find the clarity needed to break free. Is this an effective and viable option for everyone?

Clarifying Clarity

Sometimes we know exactly what we want to do with our lives, but other times, we feel a sense of unhappiness or dissatisfaction and we can’t quite place the cause of it. Clarity involves being clear about who you are and living a balanced life that is full of meaning. It means being clear about what you want, why you want it, and how you can go about getting it. These are all things that life coaches can help people achieve.

How Can Life Coaching Bring Clarity?

Life coaching is a process that can help unearth your gifts and talents, identify your goals and dreams, and create a specific plan to help move you toward a fulfilling life. The goal of life coaching is to help people discover what gives their life meaning and to maximise their personal and professional potential. A life coach has many tools and techniques at his or her disposal that can help set you on the right path to clarity.

Working with a life coach is a convenient option for many people because it can be done over the phone or online if in-person meetings are not feasible. The relationship between a life coach and client is meant to be friendly and open. There will typically be periodic sessions of forty-five minutes to an hour. At first, the meetings might be more frequent or longer as your coach gets to know you and asks challenging questions meant to draw out your inner strengths and desires. Once your goals are clearly laid out and your coach works with you to set a structured plan, you might shift to less frequent sessions where your coach will make sure you are staying on the right path and give you an extra push when you need it.

The Benefits of Life Coaching for Clarity

There are many ways in which life coaching can be beneficial in achieving clarity. Here are just a few of the ways in which it can help:

• You can gain a fresh perspective on personal challenges.
• It can help you improve your decision-making skills.
• You can figure out what is truly important to you.
• It can help you to overcome the insecurities and obstacles that are holding you back from going after your goal.
• It can help you to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.
• You can get support, encouragement, and motivation from your coach every step of the way.

Does it Really Work?

Many people report that life coaching has helped them to achieve clarity. However, because this is something that cannot be measured scientifically, it is difficult to provide concrete proof beyond anecdotal evidence. Sometimes gaining clarity from life coaching can lead people to achieve external indicators of success, such as a promotion, salary increase, or a positive academic or work performance report. However, the most important changes for many people – the internal measures – can be hard to quantify. Sometimes a coach will provide a self-assessment scale so that clients can score their level of feelings such as self-awareness and confidence, and a coach’s goal is to help people’s scores in these aspects improve over time.

The Limitations of Life Coaching

Generally speaking, life coaches work with healthy clients who are looking to improve their circumstances, but it does have some limitations. Coaching can be very effective for people in a variety of situations, but there are always cases that involve deeper, more serious issues that might be better served by psychotherapy. Life coaching tends to focus on the present and future and is driven by goals and taking actions. Whereas therapy helps people understand and overcome issues or learnt behaviours from the past which impede or block the ability to feel happy, confident and in control of your life.

While life coaching tends to focus on the present and future and is driven by goals and taking actions, therapy often helps people deal with the past and is driven by feelings and unresolved issues.

Here are a few of the more deep-rooted blocks to clarity that are better addressed by psychotherapy:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Self-Esteem / Self-Confidence
• Trauma / Abuse
• OCD / Phobias
• Substance abuse
• Personality disorders

Individuals who suffer from these problems should seek psychotherapy first, and then they might opt to consult with a life coach after a psychotherapist has helped them achieve emotional stability.