Coaching for the present and future

In our present reality, we all look for ways to realize our goals, experience more positive emotions, discover meaning in our lives and eventually become happier. And here we find coaching, a method which helps us learn to motivate ourselves, plan our future, take action and face challenges towards the achievement of our goals.

We should stress at this point that coaching differs from other types of counseling services, such as psychotherapy and mentoring. Psychotherapy deals mainly with the past, and more specifically with trauma, phobias or repressed emotions with deeper roots in the subconscious or the unconscious of the client and aims at alleviating them. In mentoring, the mentor is an expert in a professional field and can advise or guide a person in a work path, since s/he has the experience and the knowledge regarding the difficulties or the opportunities that the person might be presented with. In other words, s/he knows well the subject of guidance.

In coaching, though, we focus mainly on the present and the future, but this does not mean we do not touch the past. We look into the future and how we want it to be, strengthening the current experience of our lives. On the other hand, the coach does not necessarily have to know or have experience in a specific professional field in order to guide the person. Since coaching can even aim at the personal or social aspects, an effective coach should have been trained in the process and the coaching techniques, while simultaneously maintaining a genuine interest in the person and the achievement of his/her goals.

 

And one more thing: Coaching presupposes and aims at the discovery of your authentic self and your own truth, therefore the answers to your questions lie within you. How do you really feel about it?

 

Piyi Koutsi, Life Coach