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FAQs

Introduction to Coaching Video

Find out more about Elizabeth’s Life Coaching from the FAQs below. Click the link to jump to the text or just scroll down.

How Life Coaching is done

Life Coaching Commitments

How Life Coaching makes a difference

About the Life Coaching industry


FAQs on how Life Coaching is done

What is Life Coaching?
The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. It is also sometimes referred to as personal coaching.

How do I meet with my Life Coach?
One-on-one Life Coaching takes place through scheduled sessions of 45-60 minutes. These occur either virtually or in person. Sessions in a group would be extended depending on the number of attendees.

How often are Life Coaching sessions?
Clients schedule weekly sessions for a set or open-ended period of time. The minimum timeframe for long-term impact is usually 3-6 months. However, clients frequently experience a radical sustained shift in a single session.

What type of contact do you have with your Life Coach between sessions?
You can check-in any time to share breakthroughs, successes, insights, or challenges by email, text, or phone as agreed.
Prior to each session, you’ll take a few minutes to complete and forward a brief Pre-session assessment to identify challenges, opportunities, and the focus for that session.
Following a session, you’ll take a few minutes to complete and forward a brief Post-session assessment to review the commitments, intentions, and outcomes of the session. These assessments are a self-coaching tool and allow you to track the progress you are making.

What happens during the Life Coaching session?
During our Life Coaching session, I will be fully attentive to what you say and how you say it as well as what you omit. I will reflect back on what I hear, so you can identify the truth in what you say. You are the expert in what you are hoping to achieve and striving for in your life. As a coach, I am an expert in techniques to aid you in reaching the ideal you have set out for yourself. I will not tell you what to do but will listen, advocate, and ask powerful questions. This collaboration provides a safe and confidential environment of support and accountability that increases your alignment with the action steps needed for success.

You, the client, provide: 
  • knowledge of yourself and your dreams
  • curiosity and openness to the possibility
  • desire to learn and grow
  • courage to experiment and implement
  • willingness to collaborate
  • readiness for change to happen
  • eagerness to act
I, the coach, provide: 
  • coaching proficiency
  • non-judgment and advocacy of your goals
  • proven methods for increasing self-awareness
  • tools to devise a plan of action
  • human potential knowledge and experience
  • strategies to clarify and reflect
  • alternative frameworks for action
Connect with Elizabeth to experience a Mini-Life Coaching session

FAQs on Life Coaching Commitments

How do I prepare for Life Coaching?
The best way to prepare for stepping out in pursuit of your dreams is to be kind to yourself. Making changes to habits that no longer serve you and shifting to patterns and activities that provide you with greater fulfillment takes energy. Provide yourself with a foundation from which to act by adopting a healthy regime incorporating nutrition, exercise, and down-time.

What will we talk about?
Topics for discussion are those that are your priority. Conversations are structured around clarifying, aligning with, and constructing a route to fully envision and reach your goals. Topics that you may choose to focus on include:

  • Work/Career: The direction it is taking, its purpose, and meaning for you, your overall performance.
  • Physical Environment: The appearance and feel of your home, locality, space, and transportation.
  • Money and Finances: Budgeting, saving, income, investment, and your overall relationship to finance.
  • Health and Well-being: Your eating habits, diet, fitness, sleep, relaxation, self-care, and emotional health.
  • Personal Growth and Development: Education, learning, reading, awareness, connecting, and spirituality.
  • Intimate Relationships: Creation, romance, partnership, communication, and space.
  • Family and Friends: Your community relationships in general and their incorporation, quality, and support.
  • Fun and Recreation: Leisure, hobbies, passion, and laughter.

How can I fit Life Coaching into my busy schedule?
The time commitment is about 90 minutes for the coaching and assessments each week. If this seems too overwhelming a different meeting frequency may be arranged. I will work with you to identify how action items identified during coaching sessions can be adopted into your routine. You have the final say on how this is to be done. Over time coaching results in greater efficiency in getting things done due to increased alignment with your goals. You gain greater motivation focus and self-management.

How can I get Life Coaching on a budget?
You have many options to implement Life Coaching tools and techniques. You can coach one-on-one, in a group, through a self-coaching regimen, or by finding a peer to coach with. Choose the options or combination of options that best accommodates your financial needs and still allows you to experience accelerated growth and development.

How much does Life Coaching cost?
Professionally trained, certified coaches charge fees in line with other highly trained professionals. Fees vary from coach to coach and are based on a variety of factors such as coaching niche, experience, and the level of transformation provided.

How long will we coach together?
This is entirely up to you and depends on the nature of the goal(s) you are pursuing. We will partner together for as long as our relationship brings you value and meaningful progress. As your goals are reached we will reevaluate the options that work best for you. Working with me you will be introduced to tools that you can continue to use beyond our sessions. Further terms can be taken or occasional refreshers depending on your goals. Together, we can identify all the possibilities and you can select and enact the path that is right for you.

FAQs on how Life Coaching makes a difference

My life is fine: Why should I hire a Life Coach?
We all constantly strive for improvement. There is always the potential for greater skill and understanding. If reflection on any area of your life brings a sense of frustration or disappointment you can resolve this by working with me. Coaching contributes to your long term well-being. If you doubt whether this gift to yourself is an investment worth making, consider your commitments to vacation and social engagement. Coaching will provide at least as much value as these aspects of healthy living.

I do not know where I want to go or what my goal is in life. How can Life Coaching help me?
Working with me will help you to establish what it is that you really want for your future. Together we will identify your dreams and aspirations and what needs to be in your life for you to be happy and fulfilled.

What results can I expect with Coaching?
First, you can expect to attain the goals you have set out for yourself. Second, you can expect surprises in your journey. Third, you can expect to lay the foundation for the life for which you wish.

Doesn’t a Life Coach do what friends and family can do?
Discussions with close friends and family on your goals for the future are typically influenced by their own agendas and perceptions they have formed of you. This increase in emotional involvement and lack of accountability for the changes you want to make can seriously impact your objectives and vision and may prevent you from moving forward.
In contrast, sessions with a Life Coach are in total confidence, encourage your agenda alone, and are without judgment. I will provide tools that allow you to draw more fully on the supportive exchange with your loved ones and to further strengthen your relationship with them. If I perceive a pattern of behavior that is holding you back I will let you know.

How is life coaching different from therapy?
Therapists work with people in crisis suffering from diagnosable conditions such as depression, anxiety, mania, etc. The focus is on healing the past and gaining insight by understanding “Why”. The therapist is the expert on a specific treatment protocol designed to reduce dysfunction and pathology.
In contrast, Life coaches use proven formula and tools to reach the client’s goals by facilitating moving into the possibilities, stepping out of the box, and taking action. They focus on the present moment and future enhancement, only glancing back to draw on past experience. Coaches rarely ask “Why”, but focus on “What”, and “How” to promote self-discovery and support client generation of their own solution. The client is viewed as creative, resourceful, and whole, and an expert in their own life, and what they need.

How is life coaching different from consultation, training, or mentoring?
Consultants are generally approached according to their expertise in the system in question to advise, solve problems, and get results. They are frequently directive in what should or should not be done to meet goals.
With training or mentoring, the goals are defined by the expert, usually based on their own experience in the field with a path they have already taken. The focus is learning and performance rather than fulfillment and information is often general rather than specific to your unique situation.
In contrast, coaching is not directive, but collaborative and incorporates the client’s vision. The path is unique to you.

FAQs about the Life Coaching Industry

What does the lack of regulation in the industry mean when selecting services?
At this time, there is no legal requirement for coaching credentials. In other words, anyone can call themselves a coach irrespective of training or industry experience. Life coaching processes are beginning to become known, but are often confused with sports training. You should do your research as with any other purchase you make to find out what framework is being adopted for coaching. Those without life coach training may be adopting something more akin to consultation, training, or mentoring.

What are some types of coaching credentials?
Coaches have various options for credentialing. The most recognized coaching associations are the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the International Association of Coaching (IAC). Both offer credentialing options for successive levels of coaching mastery.
The ICF credentials are the Associate Certified Coach (ACC), the Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and the Master Certified Coach (MCC). The IAC credentials are the Certified Masteries Coach (CMC) and the Master Masteries Coach (MMC)
Another rapidly growing credential that may form the basis for future licensure is that of Board Certified Coach (BCC) overseen by the Center for Credentialing and Education (CCE). Coaches with any of these credentials must abide by the code of ethics of the administrative body.

In addition to these, many schools accredited by these institutions offer their own certification. For example, the Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT) administers the certified life coach (CLC) credential and the Coach Training Institute offers the Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) These credentials provide a guide as to the level of training your coach has received, but there are many fabulous coaches without any certification, so seek referrals and talk to your coach to find out more about their level of expertise.


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“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson