This is the 21st century - an age in which sprawling lifestyles and super-sized ambitions are carved by all and sundry. Everyone wants to live life king size with a perfect house, a gleaming car and a hefty bank balance. Contrast this with deeper and larger than life values such as happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction, and you get a rough idea about what today’s generation strives to achieve.

Consequently, one is left with very little time to give to oneself and ends up in a confusing spiral of emotions – often lost and out of focus. Life coaching is a vocation where people advise, counsel, mentor and guide stressed and confused individuals with their personal and business lives. In a broader sense, coaches help their clients improve emotional intelligence through smart thinking. Life coaching also helps people become more aware about themselves and the society they live in by assisting them in understanding their emotions. In addition to, this type of mental healing aims to provide essential life skills to troubled people, healing not only their mind, but body and soul.

These days, the integration of emotional intelligence in life coaching has led to excellent results in the profession and improved the scope too. Some of the benefits that participants of life coaching have achieved are:

1. A better understanding of oneself – this has improved self awareness, control and emotional stability.

2. Better creativity and innovation – Participants have shown tremendous potential in areas they thought were beyond their reach through a clear mind.

3. A passion for living – In other words, life coaches have helped their clients achieve a ‘drive’ to achieve more and conquer their fears by overcoming challenges.

Apart from personal benefits, improvement in emotional intelligence goes a long way in perking up one’s professional career. For example, if a man lost his job, or made a bad investment, it would lead to unnecessary worrying and tension. If this went unchecked, it would soon take a toll on the man’s mind and body, resulting in further mental frustration and eventually, destruction. However, mentoring and counseling this man as to how he should overcome such hurdles would help him cope with the issue in a positive manner. Not only would he work harder to rise above the problem, he would actually consider it a trivial issue, thus looking for alternatives to make his life better.

This is just a small example which illustrates how life coaching can help an individual at work. Research, on the other hand, has shown that success in life depends more on emotional intelligence rather than cognitive aptitude.

So how does life coaching achieve such powerful results? Experts feel that the private atmosphere and warm coach-client relationship relaxes the client’s mind and helps the person in uncovering brighter avenues of thinking, clearly and smartly. Considering the fact that life coaches usually counsel their clients an hour every week, over a period of two to six months, offering life and career changing results, this can be a really rewarding endeavor for those who are facing problems in life.