Coaching is a type of therapy that has become increasingly familiar over the last 6 years. The term life coaching first became likeable in the USA where, together with NLP aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, it became part of a revived spectacular wave of extraordinarily proactive therapy modalities.

In many ways both Life Coaching and Neuro Linguistic Programming are a reaction against certain aspects of the Humanistic therapy movement, in particular Person-Centred Counselling. A criticism of the humanistic therapy approach is that it is remarkably reactive and not particularly proactive. Although this works marvellous with some customers, with other customers long periods of impasse or low return for time and effort occur. Coaching and NLP are both human-centred therapy in stance, focusing on improving a customers well-being rather than delving into the minefields of childhood, as in traditional psychology. Their emphasis is, however, deliberately proactive and resolve issues. Stop smoking easily with a lifestyle coach.

Coaching is not about telling the coaching customer what to do. This is a common misconception. Some coaches are pretty successful in their business careers and then make the change to lifestyle coaching, assuming that they will at most be required to divulge their pearls of tremendous business wisdom with the client. This is more like mentoring an apprentice in a specific environment. Personal coaching is instead about life as a whole.