Coaching for Your Life Direction

What is the difference between Life Coaching
and Coaching for Your Life Direction?

Why is Your Life Direction Important?

To a large extent, traditional life coaching focuses on improving your skills or supporting your transition towards a more successful application of your abilities towards your goals, career or relationship. Depending on the background of the life coach, there may be an assessment of these skills using established psychological tests such as the Myerss-Briggs, and various other career assessments that are based on a series of questionnaires.

Although these tests can be helpful, they have one inherent flaw:

They have a lot to say about your potential career choices, what you may be good at or what may interest you, but, they do not tell you what directions to take to become more successful not only in your career choices, but in the quality of your life.

You might ask: “But am I not going to become more successful if I choose a career where my talents lie, where I have the most skills to offer?” The answer is yes and no and it depends. In fact, if you do not know what your life direction is, than simply pursuing your talents can work against you and may in fact get you stuck.

Each of us has a set of tendencies; patterns of behavior, likes and dislikes, what we enjoy or dislike, what pulls us and what we tend to avoid. Beyond these tendencies we are greater than the sum of our parts.
One aspect of our greatness lies in what we resonate with.

Let’s look at a simple example

Imagine a singer that has signed a contract with a record company. The producer insists that the singer dramatically change their style and performance in order to fill a gap in the record company’s portfolio.

The singer has skill and talent, and most batteries of personality and career tests will indicate that this is a good career choice. All the usual indicators say that they should be happy and successful, and that the next stage is to coach them towards improving their skill and performance. They simply need to adapt to the real world and hone their skills, right?

The problem occurs if their heart does not support this change – if what the record company wants does not resonate with what works most naturally and effectively for the artist. When that is the case, then they are likely to sing from a contracted and superficial place, and that will not bring success or happiness. It may in fact ruin their career and reputation. People usually buy recordings because they are pulled by the heart of the performance.

What would have made a difference for this performer, was to know what supported their life direction and what worked against their success. This is an intrinsic part of knowing yourself: what works for you and what to avoid. If you are armed with this knowledge, then you are much less likely to be pulled into adapting to the needs of others, and more likely to act for your own success.

It is most important to find out what resonates the most for you, not only in your career choices and relationships, but in your life. It is most important that you align yourself with were your greatness lies, not just with your talents and abilities, but with what supports and reveals that greatness.

At Life Coaching Miami, we can help you discover your life direction, what choices are optimal for you and what choices tend to work against you. We can help you achieve the success that really matters.