How Does Life Coaching and Spiritual Coaching Differ?
What is Life Coaching?
A Life Coach is someone who helps someone improve, change or enhance some area of their life. Someone comes to a coach for example to change jobs, improve a relationship, lose weight or have better life balance. Life Coaching can include coaching around spirituality although it doesn’t have to.
Key Differences Between Life Coaching and Spiritual Coaching
A Life Coach helps their client set goals, asks powerful questions, develops an action plan, and holds the client accountable to achieve those action steps week by week.
A Spiritual Coach is just like a Life Coach in that they also establish goals, ask questions, develop an action plan and hold the client accountable. A Spiritual Coach may also provide some Life Coaching and address all the areas of someone’s life.
Life Coach vs. Spiritual Coach
The difference between the Life Coach and Spiritual Coach is that the Spiritual Coach focuses on the client’s spiritual connection and applying their spirituality in their day-to-day life.
A Spiritual Coach may facilitate healing processes and tools and use certain strategies for coaching depending on the school they attended and the particular religious or spiritual approach they take. Some training programs are religiously based and may include prayers, scriptures, and reading religious texts or books. Some programs are universally based and focus on universal principles that apply to everyone regardless of religion or a particular spiritual path or tradition. Those training programs that are universally based tend to give tools for deepening one’s spiritual connection, developing a spiritual practice, using that spiritual connection or intuition for spiritual guidance and using spirituality for healing and creating greater peace of mind.
If you are deciding between becoming a Life Coach and Spiritual Coach, think about the nature of what you want your work to be about. Do you want to help someone with practical issues such as to clarify a new life or career direction, get organized, stay on track with goal etc. or do you want to help someone with more emotional, spiritual matters such as experiencing greater spiritual fulfillment, living their spiritual values, and helping them approach life from a spiritual perspective.
Can a Coach Offer Both Life and Spiritual Coaching?
Some people specialize in Life Coaching but add on Spiritual Coaching later. Start with the focus that resonates with you the most and helps you move in the direction you’d like to go. Either way you go you will be helping people improve their lives and feel greatly satisfied with the results you get.
Fern Gorin, P.C.C., L.M.F.T. is the founder and Director of Life Purpose Institute. Life Purpose Institute teaches Life Coach Certification Programs and Spiritual Coach Certification Programs to students worldwide.
Want to learn more about the programs at Life Purpose Institute? Schedule a Free Consultation to speak one-on-one with a Program Specialist and get all your questions answered.
