The Parent Who Empowered, The Friend Who Found Ways To Better You

The Empowering Parent

• Fortune flies everywhere.
  
• Some people in life are fortunate enough to have parents who have skills to pass onto their children.
  
• The parents themselves are people who have developed real, solid concrete abilities during their life and teach those abilities to their children inspiring in their children confidence.
  
• The parent who can empower their children because they themselves are empowered is a great boon to the child.

The Furnishing Friend

• Some people in life are fortunate enough to make friendships with people who help them do things they would otherwise not have considered doing, to help encourage and believe in them when they couldn't have done something, or believed in themselves.
• Friends who help make a person see possibilities they didn't believe in themselves.

The Humanist Life Coach : A Surrogate Parent. That Incredible Friend.

• Life Coaches are there to help the vast quantity of people in society who were not fortunate enough to have the empowering parent or the incredible friend who opened up opportunities and possibilities.
• Just as Psychologists cater to the mental well-being of people not reached by family and friends, so to do Life Coaches address the confidence/empowerment needs of people when those needs aren't reached by family and friends.
  

Humanist Life Coach : FAQ

Won't Life Coaches Take Away Jobs From Careers Whose Services Are Already Covered By Services Offered By Life Coaches (e.g. Professional Organizers having their job taken away by Life Coaches doing the same thing)?

• First, such things have always happened throughout the course of human history. Jobs and services which were once exclusive become amalgamated with other jobs and services.
  
• Second, in a healthy, Humanist society, people would not be concerned about losing their job and the resulting loss of life-sustaining income. People's motivations would be free to operate on a higher level, because just by the simple virtue of being a fellow human being, they were guaranteed a good standard of living.
• Specialists can choose to become Life Coaches, using their existing skills to contribute to their new role as a Life Coach.

Why Have A Single Life Coach? Why Not Just Have People See Different Specialists As The Need Arises?

• In other words, keep things the way they are.
• Life Coaches spend a lot of time with their clients. It's that significant amount of time spent together that makes the difference.

Doesn't It Seem, At The Best, "Odd", At The Worst, "Unnatural", To Have Life Coaches Acting In Lieu Of Parents And Friends?

Wouldn't This Result In Clients Becoming Dependent On Artificial "Life Coaches" And Unable To Survive In "The Wild" Of Real Life With Real Parents And Real Friends?

• Are Psychologists, Counsellors, Social Workers, and other mental health professionals unnatural? By that logic, people should keep their problems within the family and friends, even when those areas of their life are not up to the task.
• The term "profession" for a Life Coach is used only within the framework of our stratified, assembly line, separationist world. Really, a Life Coach is a person who has the training and desire to really get people back on track in life. What they do isn't a "job", it's a calling.
  
• Life Coaches are just another "service" in a society which has moved past the "hunter-gatherer" stage of evolution. Past the "h-g" stage, people begin specializing in the roles which they follow in society. Life Coaches are no different. They fill in the role, DESPERATELY NEEDED, of people who really get involved in the lives of people who are struggling, and make them strong, so strong that they get back on the road of life and start running in earnest.
  
• Clients become empowered, not imprinted. They prove to themselves, time and time again, that someone believes in them, guides them, laughs with them, cries with them, and does with them, challenge after challenge, activity after activity, and they can do it all.
  
• What Clients learn from the time spent with their Life Coach is that when someone believes in them, guides them, becomes their friend, and shows them everyday that they can accomplish things, there is nothing they cannot do. Clients become empowered people who know their own worth and the timeless human truth that when human beings love and nurture each other, they tap into the infinite wellspring of potential which lies hidden inside.

Life Coaches sound like "surrogate parents", assuming the job of raising people. Should society be doing parent's job for them?

• Western culture is screwed up out of its gourd. Seriously.
  
• In traditional cultures, children weren't just raised by the parents. The extended family helped to "raise" children. Heck. The whole tribe / village / community helped to "raise" children.
  
• The idea that children are raised exclusively by their parents is just a byproduct of the separatist / pioneer mentality produced by American / Anglo Saxon individualistic mentality. A product of a cold environment. A cold environment will produce cold people.
  
• Ultimately, all people have influence in their society. It is better for those people to have healthy influence. If that means they need further nurturing, guidance, love from their society, so be it.
  
• We have doctors to heal bodies. Psychologists to heal minds. Now we should have Life Coaches to heal people's self-confidence.
  

Why Call Humanist Life Coaches "Professional Best Friends"?

Humanist Life Coaches Are Unique

Humanist Life Coaches become intimately involved in the life of their "clients" (really more akin to friend, but client sounds more "professional").

They are not psychologists, sitting down deconstructing the past, analyzing behavior, strategizing on ideas to address problems.

Life Coaches do some of the things social workers do, but take it to another level : past the client / worker relationship, into real friendship. Formalized, structured, strategized friendship, but friendship nonetheless.

Humanist Life Coaches are, in effect, best friends with their clients.

They go shopping together.
They go out clubbing together.
They cook together.
They eat out at restaurants together.
They play sports together.

In quite nearly every way, Client and Coach are best friends.
But not every way.
This is where the distinction of being a "professional" best friend comes into play.

When the Life Coach goes home to their own life, maybe their own family, Client and Coach are separate and distinct entities.

A Life Coach is not a beer buddy, or a poker chum.
A Life Coach is not someone to be called at 2am to talk about the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries.
A Life Coach is not someone to ask for a $20 loan.

A Life Coach is a professional best friend.
Their job is to help empower people,
help people gain confidence in themselves.

Certainly their approach is 100% hands on.
Certainly there are genuine feelings of warmth and affection between Coach and Client, which may become 2am phone call / Vampire Diary discussion friendship after the professional relationship has finished.
Until the professional relationship is over though, the Coach is there to empower the Client first, and the friendship remains in the limits of the time spent Coaching together (although, personally, I believe if Client and Coach want to have a more casual relationship, that is just fine).

The Professional Life Coach Empowers People

until they are ready to forge powerful friendships of their own.

Why Have Life Coaches?

Why Does Our Society Need Life Coaches (Professional Best Friends)?

That Special Friend : some people have one...but most people don't

Some people have all the luck.
Some people have the good fortune in life of meeting someone who is a catalyzer : a person who helps reactions happen, who helps to make things happen for other people.
People who have a special friend like that come to do things they never would have done otherwise.
The energy and enthusiasm of that special friend makes it possible for a person to realize possibilities they wouldn't have considered.
Sadly, most people do not have the benefit of having a special friend like that.

Why not change that?

Spreading The Wealth

In the past inequality was more the norm than it is today

• Some people could read, most could not
• Some people had plenty of food, most did not
• Some people had clean drinking water, many did not
• Some people could vote, most could not
• and so on...

Humanity continues to evolve.
Our society continues to improve.
Let's not stop.

Formalizing Friendship

A Life Coach is NOT a replacement for friendship.
A Life Coach is a PROFESSIONAL best friend : they empower their "client", helping them to become a confident individual.

A Life Coach is like a pair of "training wheels".
Once the client is ready to race forward on their own, the Life Coach's help is no longer needed.
Client and Coach part ways as friends who have learned from each other.

Why Have Psychologists?

If all people need is someone to talk to, why not just talk to a friend or parent?

Because :

• A Psychologist is a stranger. Someone who can listen and advise without preformed ideas and opinions about a person.
• A Psychologist is trained in many different forms of analysis and ways of thinking.
• A Psychologist is a professional. A Psychologist is a careered person. They will not shun you from the group because you're not "cool". They will not threaten you with no supper if you disobey. A Psychologist is a formal, standardized, recognized, societal role, deemed to be accessible by all.

The same principle can be applied to all careers.
Why have professional anything?
Because professionals can do things better.
NOT because they "are" better people, but because they have the training and are focused on enacting their role in society well.

So it is with : The Humanist Life Coach, A Professional Best Friend.

Tool : Who Am I?, The Facebook Individual's Personality and Belief System Aggregator

Besides the core focuses of Life Coaching, a Life Coach also helps a person to find their direction in life.

The first step is for someone to go through the Who Am I? Facebook test [as of October 1st, 2011, still in development in my head].

After having taken the test, the Life Coach acts as an advisor to what the test has shown.

The Role Of Experience

This is a situation where life experience is invaluable to a Life Coach.

This is the reason why Life Coaches are encouraged to seek out new experiences for themselves,
to try many new and interesting thing,
to meet many new and interesting people,
the more experiences a Life Coach has the more they have grown,
the better they can advise their mathetes [Gk. Learner,pupil] on how to direct their life.

The Core Skills Of Life Coaching

1. Domestic Duties : Organization, Interior Decorating

"When a person's home, their living space, is messy, a person's whole life feels messy."

"An organized home helps one to lead an organized life."

2. Domestic Duties : Cooking

• Humanist Life Coaches teach their clients how to cook healthy meals.
• Cooking is something that Coach and Client do together, a bond as old as humanity itself.

3. Nutrition

• Humanist Life Coaches are well versed in Nutrition.
  
• Naturally this is beneficial for their clients.
  

4. Looking Good (beauty regimen, grooming routines, etc.)

• Humanist Life Coaches know how to take care of skin, hair, and teeth.
• Life Coaches are familiar with the best brands of beauty care products.

5. Fashion

• Life Coaches know how to dress well.
  
• Life Coaches go out with their clients clothes shopping.
  

6. Exercise

• Life Coaches are workout buddies for their clients, providing encouragement and advice.

7. Social Skills

• Life Coaches are wingmen/wingwomen for their clients , along with being social skills experts.
• When it comes to Social Skills, there are only 2 requirements :

1. Be Yourself
2. Be Confident In Yourself

• Life Coaching gives clients the tools to have confidence in themselves, and the back up and encouragement to be themselves.
  

8. Psychological Model / Approach : Development of Self-Confidence, Rooted In Knowing Oneself

• Otherwise known as : The Psychology of Knowing Yourself
• A Life Coaches approach to thinking about their clients is as people filled with unrealized potential.
• The Life Coaching counseling stance is to act as a foil for the client to dig deep into themselves for greater and greater understanding of who they are.
• The stance is accomplished in a manner akin to Socrates' dialectic method, but with an emphasis on simpatico (the Coach actually caring for, eventually perhaps loving, their clients) and clients finding questions which help to better understand themselves, not just asking questions for knowledge and intriguing mental exercise (Socrates thought emotions were a barrier to understanding).