The Best Life Coach In India? Really?

When I started on my Life Coaching journey, life coaching was a concept that very few people knew about in India. NLP was the in thing then. I was attracted by how quickly we could bring about behavioral changes in people. I was hooked.

I then went on to learn other approaches and skills like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, hypnotherapy and counselling, which I thought can help me help more people lead a more fulfilled life.

Like I said, Life coaching was not a phrase you heard a lot in India in the 1990s and early 2000.

However, in a few years, things exploded.

With stress and anxiety becoming buzzwords of modern corporate life, life coaches became the new Gurus who could solve any problem you had — from social anxiety to low productivity.

In India, this boom was also helped by young people constantly migrating to cities and away from their families. The traditional Indian family support system was suddenly not working anymore — at least the way it did until a few years ago.

With the focus on personal development and mental health, people with little or no background in mental health or coaching started to jump on to the bandwagon and advertise themselves as life coaches.

In fact, some of my favorite phrases are — “The best life coach in India” or “the best life coach in Bangalore” or even better- “one of the top life and personal coaches in India.” In short, everybody and his (or her) dog was becoming a life coach.

But when you really check out their credentials, they turn out to be public speakers (or public speaking experts), or meditation trainers. These are great skills — but it is not life coaching.

But since no formal body has clearly defined what life coaching really is, they continue to make money (or at least claim to).

If you are not too thin-skinned, or if you have an online communication like tool ZOOM or Webex, you can even call yourself “the best life coach in India” or ” the best life coach in the world.” The world is yours to take, my friend!

The funny thing is, there are life coaches in India (and I’m sure, the rest of the world too) who do webinars, take a lot of money from people who are unfortunate enough to fall for the trick and teach them how to create similar webinars so that they too can call themselves life coaches and make money.

Well, that’s definitely not life coaching in my book.

Look, I am not knocking anybody down. But let’s be honest here. That’s just not life coaching, and worse, life coaching is getting a bad rap because of all these spammy marketing tricks.

Life coaching is a helping profession — a bit like therapy or counselling. A good life coach has to genuinely care about bringing about a change in his/ her client.

But what exactly is a life coach? And what do they do? Do you need any qualities (or qualifications) to call yourself a life coach?

Let’s now look at what a life coach is and what a life coach isn’t.

A life coach is someone who has the knowledge and the skills required to take you from where you are today to where you want to be. Using their extensive and in-depth knowledge and skills, they create actionable plans and build accountability.

They help you get clarity on what areas do you want to change. Clarity is important because if you are not sure about your outcomes, you are unlikely to take massive action that is required to get you to your goals.

They help you build an actionable plan that will take you towards your desired future. But the client holds the key here.

For a life coach to be able to help a client, the client should be ready to change. You cannot force a client to change.

People sometimes feel stuck in some area of their life. Also, sometimes they have a hard time sticking to their goals and making progress towards their goals. These are people who could really benefit from coaching services. But what happens often is that coaches literally try to force the potential clients to sign up — through webinars, free gifts etc. Well, as I said earlier, if the client isn’t ready to change, the coaching engagement can only have limited success.

We all have limiting beliefs that are unconscious. So, we’re not even aware of how we are sabotaging ourselves. What I mean by limiting beliefs are beliefs, ideas and thoughts that are literally getting in the way of our achieving what we really want.

By working with a skilled life coach, you can easily identify these limiting beliefs and eliminate them. This gives you the ability to actually go and get what you want from life.

So, life coaches can be really helpful — if they are genuine (and not busy selling webinars).

They can help you build your confidence and help you realize your dreams. They provide motivation and accountability. These are key to achieving your goals.

To be a good life coach, you need to be approachable, friendly and helpful. They should be empathic and have a sense of humour and patience.

If you are a life coach, the reason you must focus on these qualities is that in order to change your clients’ behavior, you need to first be able to change their state — both mental and physical. If they remain in their usual comfortable state, they are likely to revert to their existing limiting behaviors quickly.

Anyway, a good life skill must also develop a few key soft skills. As per Brian Tracy, a life coach must be:

• Passionate,
• Have great listening skills
• Be non-opinionated
• Without judgements
• Curious
• Ready to challenge
• Observant
• Very good at communication
• Honest

These are great skills to have and very helpful when you work with clients.

So my humble advice to new life coaches is to focus on developing these skills and keep learning. Life coaching is a noble profession. There is no feeling greater than the satisfaction you get when you are able to transform a client’s life.

If you are a client looking for a life coach, don’t get sucked into a marketing funnel. Do your homework first.

It’s your life! If you are ready for a change, you don’t need “the best life coach in India” to help you. You just need a good, life coach who has the right attitude, good skills and a genuine wish to help people grow.