Photo: Casey David

A question I’ve been asked a lot lately is “why would I choose a life coach when I can do what they do for the price of a good self-help book, or cheaper still using a bit of common sense and self questioning?”

My answer is:

•    “When will you buy and read the self-help book?” How often have you bought a self-help book with great intentions of improving your situation by putting the good advice given into effect, and 2 months later you still have every intention of putting the advice into effect. A coach will start working with immediately. Imagine where you could be in 2 months if you start right now.

•    “How are you going to distinguish which parts of it are best for you, and will those pages call you with a few words of encouragement and helpful suggestions specific to your needs?”  There’s a lot of information in any book and it’s always hard to pull out what you need and how to apply it to your situation. Having a guide that can compress the information and tailor it to you, can save you time doing the boring bits and give you time for the fun bits.

•    Yes, a book is cheap by comparison to a coach’s time, or is it. What if your car gets a sudden clanking sound coming from the engine, do you nip into a bookstore and buy a manual, poke around in the engine, maybe rearrange a few wires and hope for the best, or do you take it to a garage and get a mechanic (who’s already read the manual) take a look and figure out the best way to proceed after checking with you? Life coaching is not a lot different, of course we don’t see you as a metal object, and we’re not covered in grease.

•    I know you have a lot of common sense, and you’re really good at self-questioning, but sometimes things just defy one person working alone. Maybe you missed something, or maybe you just can’t see the answer until someone causes you to see it another way.  We all have moments like these, my Mum used to say “a trouble shared is a trouble halved”.

I’m not saying self-help books are a waste of money, they can be a wonderful source of suggestions and helpful advice, but you have to remember that they were written for a wide audience of people with many different needs and circumstances.  A life coach tailors their help to each individual client whether dealing with one person, group or business, and their arsenal of tools comes from working with a number of different clients in hundreds of different situations. They’ve also already read most of the self-help books on the market and can quickly and easily point you towards the right one for you, if that’s what you want, thus saving you valuable time and effort which you can now put into making your life what you want it to be.

So next time you find yourself in a bookstore wondering which self-help book you should buy, consider what value (time, money) you want out of those pages. It maybe a far better option to use a life coach.