People with a Passion for People

COUNSELLING OR LIFE COACHING?

Counselling or Life Coaching?

Perhaps this question has crossed your mind?

If you are passionate about human motivation and working with people to improve their lives, it is likely that both Counselling and Life Coaching are careers that will appeal to you.

On the face of it, the disciplines may seem similar. But they are not. There are many big differences.

COUNSELLING OR LIFE COACHING? A COMPARISON

Here is a very brief summary of the key differences between counselling and life coaching:

COUNSELLING / COUNSELLOR

Commonly refers to the people they help as 'patients'.
Helps patients deal with issues affecting their mental health or mental well-being.
Helps patients resolve issues, problems or traumas related to their past.
Offers advice, support and therapy or therapeutic processes to resolve or lessen the trauma.
Encourages patients to vent, discuss, and hopefully release, deeply held emotions and feelings.
Ultimate goal is to help a patient bring closure to a past trauma, addiction, or issue that is affecting them and their ability to lead a 'normal' life.

LIFE COACHING / LIFE COACH

	Commonly refers to the people they help as 'clients'.
	Helps mentally well clients to accomplish more of what they want from life.
	Helps clients to build brighter, better futures by grounding them in the present.
	Helps clients to access their own inner power using various empowering tools and techniques.
	Encourages clients to share their dreams and construct meaningful goals and action plans to achieve them.
	Ultimate goal is to help a client find his or her life purpose and live in a way that is fully aligned with that purpose. This leads to a happier, more meaningful life.

IN SUMMARY ...

Whether you choose a career in counselling or life coaching you'll work closely with people, helping them to improve their lives.

But there are big differences in scope, approach and intended outcomes.

Hopefully you may be beginning to appreciate that:

Counselling is largely oriented towards dealing with issues from the past that are obstructing one from living a normal, constructive life.

Life coaching is oriented towards 'personal-transformation' and living life to the full in the present and future, by harnessing one's inner power, identifying one's purpose and removing self-imposed limitations.

Given the nature of the interactions, counselling can often be challenging, mentally fatiguing and even emotionally distressing for the practitioner.

On the other hand, life coaching is generally more inspiring, uplifting and fulfilling.

For an alternative explanatory piece by Tony Robbins, click here.

WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN EXPLORING LIFE COACHING FURTHER?

We hope you have found this brief comparison helpful in deciding whether counselling or life coaching would be the best for you.

If it has encouraged you to learn more about pursuing a career in life coaching then you're in exactly the right place.

We have devoted a page on this website o explaining what life coaching is and what life coaches do.

If you're curious about the comprehensive training we offer to help you become a professional life coach, please visit the page on our website where you can learn more about our acclaimed and internationally accredited Life Coach Certification Training Programme.

Alternatively, consider signing up for one of our exciting FREE Offers

OUR FREE OFFERS

New Insights has a choice of four FREE Offers for anyone serious about pursuing life coaching as a career. Choose where you're at in the cycle.

To Free Offers

HELPFUL BLOG POST

Our Blog (and associated Podcast) New Insights On Life, contains hundreds of articles that focus on aspects of personal development and human motivation within the context of life coaching.

If you are considering either Counselling or Life Coaching as a career and want to explore the world of life coaching a little further, we recommend the post titled Life Coaching and Misperceptions Explained.

You can read it in detail on the Blog (or listen to the Podcast).

Here's an extract to whet your appetite:

"Ask any life coach what they do and the chances are high that the word change will crop up in the description they choose to share.

At New Insights we like to think of life coaches as agents for change. Helping people bring about the changes that they desire in their lives goes to the heart of life coaching.

As a life coaching industry I feel we’ve done a pretty poor job of communicating what we’re really about. Compounding the problem is the very term that describes our business – ‘life coaching’. It’s so broad that laypeople end up interpreting the meaning in many – often inaccurate – ways.

Common misperceptions

The most common misperception is that the primary role of life coaches is to solve people’s problems, or at least provide wisdom, advice and guidance to help solve peoples’ problems.

On a similar theme, many believe that life coaching is just a newfangled term for mentoring.

Another common misunderstanding is that life coaching is a progressive (some would even say new age) form of counselling or therapy.

Yet another perception is that life coaches deal in success – that people with deep pockets hire life coaches to help them polish their personal brands, promote their images and deepen their pockets further."

Continued on the Blog ...

To Blog Post