The Origins of Life Coaching
Before we get into why Mindset Coaching is different from generic Life Coaching, it is worth looking at the origins of both first to understand the similarities as well as differences.
Life coaching originated in America back in the 1980s. There were three key areas where it started to originate: one in sports psychology, two in business consulting, and three in the human potential movement. The core of all three was designed to help high-functioning individuals achieve personal and professional goals, stretching them beyond where they were.
Thomas Leonard was a key figure in the life coaching movement. He was a financial planner in the 1980s and noticed his clients needed more than just investment advice — they were struggling in their day-to-day lives and didn’t necessarily have specific goals to achieve. He started to develop formal life planning methods and founded Coach University in 1992.
So if we strip it back, life coaching at its roots is there to help people achieve personal and professional goals.
Where Mindset Coaching Actually Came From
Mindset coaching started in psychology. In the 1950s, Aaron Beck’s work on how our thoughts shape our emotions and behaviour gave us the foundations of cognitive therapy — the idea that changing your thinking changes your results.
Coaching as an industry was forming around the same time. But mindset coaching as its own niche came later, as coaches started pulling together psychology, NLP, and personal development into something distinct, rather than general life coaching.
Why Mindset Coaching Is Different from Generic Life Coaching
So if we take what we know from the above and simplify it, life coaching helps people achieve goals. Mindset coaching works on changing the mindset that’s blocking an individual from achieving those goals.
Deciding Which One You Need
If you want to help people achieve personal and professional goals and work in a more strategic way, go with life coaching. If you want to go deeper with a client and help them understand themselves and why they might block or sabotage their goals — whilst also achieving personal and professional goals — become a mindset coach.
Why I Changed from Life Coach to Mindset Coach
When I first started out, I knew I wanted to work on the mindset of my ideal client — somebody who struggled with anxiety and depression. I’d had coaching in the past, which completely changed my life and got me questioning the way I thought and the way I looked at the world. So I went off and got a life coaching diploma, thinking they were all the same, and I’d be able to get what I needed to produce the results I wanted to create.
I realised quite quickly that I didn’t have the tools I needed to do the deeper work I wanted to do. I absolutely could help people achieve goals, but not help them understand why they were struggling in the first place.
Over the years, I worked on various case studies to develop what is now the Unbreakable Mindset Methodology. I wanted to help people understand themselves on a deeper level so they could not only go on to achieve so much more than they ever believed possible (traditional life coaching), but also understand where they might be blocking themselves, what anxiety triggers they have, what limiting beliefs they’ve been conditioned with, and what tools they need to get out of their head and live a life they love.
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