Your Questions Answered: What Is A Life Skills Coach?
Life Coaching VS. Life Skills Coaching
What is a Life Coach?
A life coach is someone that looks to empower others by helping them make, meet and exceed goals in both their personal and professional lives. While a friend or family member can offer invaluable support, a life coach is there to motivate and guide you.
Life coaching uses many talk-therapy techniques to help you overcome mental blocks and reinstall your confidence. Your coach will let you set your own goals and provide individualized support.
How is a Life Skills Coach different?
As a Life Skills Coach, I take personal development a step further by adding technical skills.
Organizational Skills
Goal setting
Effectively breaking down goals into tasks
The Art of Anti-Overwhelm To Do Lists
Time Management Skills
Creating achievable timelines for goals
Scheduling for your academic, professional, and personal life
Money Management
Expense Tracking
Budgeting
Savings Plans
It's a holistic approach that helps you build the fundamental technical skills you need for success in early adulthood as well as the emotional skills and communication skills you need to (finally) follow through on those goals.
I've never heard of a Life Skills Coach. Is it really necessary?
True, Life Skills Coaching isn't mainstream, but it should be! Organizational, time management, and money management skills are the foundation for our success in our personal and professional lives. We can hope to learn and develop them at home or at school, but it's not guaranteed.
Schools offer limited course work that specifically addresses independent life and the skills you need to take on that new chapter successfully and confidently. When it is addressed in class, the conversations are not in-depth and there is little to no opportunity for 1:1 learning and feedback.
Think of Driving School. Taking driving lessons isn't mandatory, but it has become a norm. You've reached a new stage in your life where you have the opportunity to start driving and taking on the responsibilities that go with it. You could learn from a parent/guardian, but sometimes it's better for the family dynamic to have a third party instructor. So, you opt for a Driving School where you will not only learn the theory in class, but also get 1:1 time with an instructor. This will make you a better driver, decreases the likelihood of you getting into an accident, and will ultimately save you money in the long-term.
Life Skills Coaching is similar. We learn and develop essential skills that help us better manage our personal and professional lives. This minimizes stress and maximizes confidence when you are tackling the new responsibilities of adulthood. It also helps you perform at a higher level professionally, better avoid pitfalls like credit card debt and overspending, and will ultimately save you money in the long-term.
How Does a Life Skills Coaching Program Work?
What is a Life Skills Coaching program?
A life skills coaching program is a program that is designed to help participants harness and hone their innate talents and skills while developing new ones.
The Bright Future Blueprint program is specifically designed to help you develop fundamental skills like time management and budgeting so that you can step into independent life with confidence.
How does a Life Skills Coach work with me?
Working closely with you, I will:
Help you establish value-based goals
Identify what is holding you back from achieving those goals
Develop a plan for working around or through those obstacles
These steps sound deceptively easy, but sometimes it can be impossible to see a way out of a personal rut.
What is a typical Life Skills Coaching session?
All of the sessions are done over Zoom video calls.
In Bright Future Blueprint, modules are bi-weekly and each have 2 calls: a Coaching Call (45-minutes) and a Feedback & Strategy Session (60-minutes). This means you’ll alternate between the two types of calls during the 90-day program.
Coaching Calls
During these calls I will:
Introduce the new module
Lay the foundation for the skills we'll be exploring
Take you through any exercises or templates we'll be using
Answer any initial questions you may have
Feedback & Strategy Sessions
This is a flexible session that will be adapted to meet your specific needs for that module.
A few examples are:
Answering your questions
One-on-one support completing the module exercises or templates
One-on-one support modifying templates to meet your individual needs
Identifying obstacles and building action plans to address them
Mindfulness exercises and meditations
What are the exercises?
Bright Future Blueprint gives you access to 12+ templates worksheets and checklists. These include:
The Identifying Your Values Worksheet
Templates for Anti-Overwhelm To Do Lists
The Expense Tracker
The 12-Month Zero-Sum Budget
The Savings Planner
During Feedback & Strategy Sessions, I may also invite you join me in mindfulness exercises, meditations, anchoring exercises, or similar activities.
These help to break harmful ways of thinking and start carving out a new identity for yourself. Some of these exercises may be challenging, but that's what I'm there for – to guide you through these changes, to provide a safety net when you falter, and to be your cheerleader when you succeed.
How Do I Know If This Is Right For Me?
Why do people seek the services of a Life Coach?
These vary from a lack of motivation to exercise, help taking up a new hobby, a desire to improve at an existing hobby, or having someone to consult before taking a gap year or year abroad.
In my signature program Bright Future Blueprint, folks are often looking for help as they tackle a big life transition:
Graduating high school and moving on to post-secondary
Entering the workforce for the first time
Moving away from home for the first time
This isn't always the case. Sometimes, you've been on your own for a while and you need some "adulting boot camp" to get you back on track to living the independent lifestyle of your dreams.
What are the benefits?
Life coaching can help with virtually any aspect of someone's quality of life, whether it's personal or professional.
The result is an individual who carries a powerful skillset that can help them navigate through life successfully at every turn.
In Bright Future Blueprint, we'll focus on personal growth via fundamental organizational, time management, and money management skills that will last a lifetime.
How do I find the right Life Coach?
A life coach will establish a relationship with you before they start giving advice or providing a service. The coach also has to know what you want to get from the sessions, where you want your life to be, and what's stopping you from getting there.
Ask a coach questions about their coaching style, look at testimonials and reviews, and trust your gut. You need to find someone who's energy and values are aligned with yours.
Personally, I offer free 30-minute Clarity Calls so that you can meet me, experience my coaching style firsthand, and discover whether life skills coaching is right for you.
Who do you work with?
I'm passionate about helping young folks through the big life changes we face when navigating early adulthood. So, whether you're...
A recent high school grad facing the realities of post-secondary education who wants to get organized and start the school year feeling confident, but doesn't know where to start.
A graduate entering the workforce for the first time with a part-time job that leaves you wanting more and an internet browser full of bookmarked career listings.
A go-getter who wants to move out of their parents house but, no matter how excited you are, every time you make a plan you miss your deadlines, dip into your savings, and fail to follow-through.
A 20-something who has been on their own for a while, but has realized that the quick-fixes just aren't cutting it anymore. You've had too many close calls with credit card debt and you're eager to try something new and find long-term solutions.
A person who's trying their best but feeling totally overwhelmed by the responsibilities of independent life. You want to hit refresh, but you know you'll need to dig a lot deeper than free templates on Pinterest for any real change.
What do I need to do before starting with a Life Coach?
The Bright Future Blueprint program is absolutely beginner friendly. It's designed to help you build core skills for independence from the ground-up, so there are zero prerequisites!
Not a beginner? If you've been on your own for a while but have realized that the quick-fixes just aren't cutting it anymore or you want to do a deep-dive into the fundamentals to give yourself a refresh, you can benefit from this program.
When you book your Clarity Call, we can discuss where you're at right now, what has and hasn't worked for you so far, and what your next steps will be.
