The smartest investment you can make; 5 reasons you should consider hiring a life coach in 2021

Since you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you’re already highly committed to personal growth and development. You are probably self-reliant and independent, and are always managing to get things done.

But I’m also assuming that there are times in life when you just feel stuck, where no amount of personal effort or will-power seems to get you out of the emotional rut you’ve found yourself in. Where you know that something in your life needs to change, but you’re not sure what it is, or where to get started.

These are the times where getting some external support is helpful.

In this article, I’m going to describe what I feel are some of the biggest benefits of hiring a life coach. There are undoubtedly many other great reasons to get a coach, but these are some of the reasons my clients tell me they value it so much, and are the reasons I personally resonate with.

5 Powerful Reasons to Consider Investing in Life Coaching

1. Coaching helps you (finally) take action and avoid procrastination

Most of us already know exactly which habits are holding us back, and which ones will help take us forward. The trouble is usually not in identifying what we need to do, but in taking action on it. We tend to procrastinate on what’s important. We overthink and overcomplicate. We do anything but get started.

As a coach, my job is to get you to take action, to move your life forward. At the end of each call, I ask my clients, “What will you do this week? And how will you know when you’ve done it?” This emphasis on action, specificity, and planning is essential for moving your life forward. Otherwise, it can lead to overthinking and stagnation. Which leads me to the next key benefit of coaching: accountability.

2. It gives you accountability for building consistent, healthy habits

let’s say you’ve decided that you’re finally going to drop those covid-pounds that you gained in lockdown. You develop a plan: exercise 4 days a week, cut out sugary drinks, and start eating healthy. You start off strong, perhaps even for a few weeks. But then life gets busy, and the excuses roll in. You skip one day. That turns into two. Which turns into three. Eventually, you’ve stopped exercising altogether and have gone back to bingeing on your favorite Netflix specials and eating ice-cream straight from the carton (guilty).

One aspect of coaching that is hard to get almost anywhere else is accountability (sure, you can try to get accountability from friends, but let’s be honest, that rarely works because you can’t rely on your friends to call you out on your bullshit excuses). In a coach, you’ve hired someone to explicitly hold you accountable, to be a little bit of a hard-ass, to check in with you each week to see how you are doing on what you’ve decided is important.

When you know that each week your coach is going to ask how you’re tracking on your habits and commitments, it’s much harder to make excuses and avoid them (at least, if you’re a people pleaser like me, or like 99% of people on the planet). Or, if you do fall off your routine, it’s much easier to get back on wagon and get started again. Time and time again, what I hear from my clients is that just having someone to be accountable to is reason enough to hire a coach. The ROI on weekly checkins is hard to overestimate.

3. It provides a safe space to talk about sensitive issues

Another powerful benefit of getting a coach is that it’s a safe space to talk about issues that you might not be able to talk about with anyone else. Some of my clients open up to me about things they can’t (or haven’t been able to) open up to with their family, friends, or significant others. Whether it’s issues related to addiction, insecurity, finances, fear, whatever, we all have things we hold back from others. What we resist, persists. If we can’t talk about something, there’s very little chance it will improve on it’s own.

Interestingly, simply being able to talk about something you feel ashamed of, or sensitive about, is incredibly healing. When we keep things secret, or hold onto struggles in isolation, the pain increases. I know from my own coaching and personal transformation journeys that when I’m able to be courageous and share what scares me, that’s when real healing can begin in my life.

4. It forces you to reflect on what’s really important

At the end of your life, what kind of impact do you want to leave on the world? How do you want to be remembered by your loved ones? What values are you honoring by spending your time the way you do? What values are being left behind? With coaching, you are constantly being asked to reflect on how you want to show up in the world, and why you’re spending time and energy on certain things.

In the fast paced world we live in, it can feel like we need to be going at 110% at all times just to keep our head above water. Even if we set the intention to reflect on what’s really important, we might not have the time and space to discover those things, let alone to get aligned with them. By investing in coaching, you are committing yourself to asking these deeper questions. You are making sure you don’t leave behind what’s most important because of what’s simply urgent. Coaching is about helping you connect with your why, your mission, and what’s really important in life.

5. It reminds you of your own innate resourcefulness and creativity

We all get down on ourselves from time to time. We doubt our capabilities, we question our decisions, and we beat ourselves up for past mistakes. In part, this is because we are hard-wired with what’s called the negativity bias–we tend to look for what’s wrong, for potential danger or fault, rather than looking for what’s working well.

One of the core foundations of coaching is trusting that each client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. As a coach, my job involves reminding you of this truth, even (or especially) when you can’t see it yourself. Having someone believe in you when you struggle believing in yourself is incredibly powerful and motivating. Rather than telling my clients what to do, I work with them to help them discover their own plan of action, to tap into their own innate wisdom. I’ve found that this is a much more sustainable path to lifestyle change. When someone tells you what to do, it doesn’t last as long as when you decide what to do for yourself.

Are you interested in coaching? Want that accountability to finally get your habits under control? Want to get unstuck, and move forward in your life? Send me a message and ask about getting a free coaching consultation. Together, we’ll look at what’s not working in your life, and help you map out a plan for moving forward.