What life coaches do (and don’t do)

Life coaching is growing fast.

According to the International Coaching Federation’s most recent global survey, in 2022 the estimated number of coaches exceeded 100,000 for the first time—reaching 109,200, a 54% increase from 2019.

Even if you’ve never worked with a life coach yourself, chances are you know someone who has or have at least heard of life coaching through podcasts, books, or social media. Or hey, this article!

Despite its increasing popularity, life coaching remains largely misunderstood. The closest comparison, therapy, is similar in format—client talks, practitioner listens—yet different in focus.

Whereas therapy typically examines the past to help you manage the present, life coaching focuses on where you are now and where you want to go next. Life coaching helps you bridge that gap.

Okaaaaaay. But what do life coaches actually do?

Here are some specific things life coaches do—and don’t do—to help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to go.

5 things life coaches do

Life coaches help you improve your mindset

So many of the things we struggle with come down to mindset. We instinctively react instead of intentionally responding. We self-criticize instead of showing self-compassion.

Life coaches use a variety of tools to help you release limiting beliefs and stuck emotions. This allows you to view circumstances more accurately so you can act with more clarity.

In other words, life coaching helps you get out of your own way.

Life coaches help you make sense of your experiences

In addition to helping people see situations more clearly, life coaches help their clients make meaning out of experiences.

This doesn’t mean inventing stories, or assigning judgement or false optimism to the things that happen to you. It means getting curious about your experiences—the good and the bad—and extracting lessons that you can apply to your life going forward.

Life coaches help you identify your true desires

Life coaching is perfectly poised to help you answer an age-old question: What should I do with my life? Regardless of age, profession, or financial status, a lot of people wrestle with this question.

Many of us spend a lot of time feeling like something isn’t quite right about our lives—with our work, our relationships, our homes, insert your area of least satisfaction—yet comparatively little time taking steps to figure out what we actually want to be different.

Our culture is quick to fill in the blanks with status quo options that often prove unfulfilling. Unraveling that and determining what you truly want for yourself is a process that a life coach can help you work through.

Life coaches help you take action toward the things you want

Figuring out what you desire is just one piece of the puzzle. Next, if you want to change your life, you need to take action. This is where traditional therapy often falls short—and where life coaching excels.

Life coaches have many tools at their disposal to help you identify the actions required to achieve your goals. Next, they help you chunk down these actions into manageable pieces so you can make tangible progress.

Life coaches help you make faster, more confident decisions

Overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges for people navigating life transitions. Choices pile up: Should I choose this or that? Follow this path or that one? Do that first or start there?

This creates a paradoxical situation where, rather than creating freedom, too many options leads to paralysis and decision fatigue.

Decision making is a critical skill that life coaches help clients develop. Through posing powerful questions and offering decision-making frameworks, life coaches help clients move in the direction they want to go.

5 things life coaches don’t do

Life coaches don’t give advice

This is probably the biggest misconception about life coaching.

In medicine and some forms of therapy, there’s an assumption that the practitioner is an authority who holds answers. In coaching, the assumption is that you hold the answers. We don’t tell you what to do.

Life coaches may share their expertise on certain topics if it’s relevant to your struggle, but mostly we use deep listening, powerful questions, and actionable tools to help you uncover your inner wisdom and arrive at your own answers.

Life coaches don’t make diagnoses

Life coaches are not qualified to diagnose mental health or any other conditions. That’s not our role.

Sometimes life coaches use assessments to gain more insight into your thought or behavior patterns, however, those are never intended to typecast or label you. They’re frameworks for helping you understand yourself better so you can get where you want to go with greater ease and efficiency.

Life coaches don’t treat mental health conditions

Just as coaches are not qualified to diagnose mental health conditions, nor are we qualified to treat already diagnosed conditions.

Mental health is the realm of therapy. Coaching is more about mental fitness, helping you cultivate awareness and make changes around how you think, feel, and act.

Life coaches don’t dig into your past

This doesn’t mean life coaching never gets into your past experiences—some of that is necessary to provide context for your present-day circumstances.

However, most of your time with a life coach is spent clarifying where you are now, defining where you want to go, and strategizing about how to move the obstacles that are getting in your way.

Life coaches don’t babysit

Meeting regularly with a life coach is a powerful form of accountability, however, don’t expect your life coach to hound you for the exercises or action steps you identify in your sessions.

Like all areas of self-improvement, the effectiveness of life coaching is relative to your effort—the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.

Sometimes life coaches specialize

One last thing to keep in mind: Life is a very broad topic!

For this reason, many life coaches specialize in certain areas—there’s career coaching, relationship coaching, health coaching. I personally coach on reinvention.

Within these specialties, coaches may incorporate some additional tactics to the ones I mentioned above, or they may do some of the things most life coaches don’t. For example, a health coach might be prescriptive in their nutrition recommendations and tell you exactly what to eat.

So, all life coaches are different! But hopefully these general rules of thumb help bring some clarity to what most life coaches do and don’t do.