What the personal trainer will not, and cannot do is the actual work. It is the client’s body, only the client’s sweat will achieve the results.  

So it is with personal, or life coaching. Personal coaching is a professional relationship in which I help people to discover their life's potential and to achieve it. My work involves the whole of a person's life, therefore the client’s whole life is enhanced. Part of the joy of achievement is the knowledge that you have done the work yourself. Coaching honours that principle.  

In a personal coaching relationship the client is honoured as the person with the right and responsibility to learn and develop in their own life. A client put it well when she said that the power of coaching was that she at last “discovered what I already knew”. Without coaching, she believed that this self -knowledge would have remained hidden.

 Personal coaching is not about me prescribing “magic bullet” cures for problems, but helping people to create the conditions and make choices for positive changes to occur, and to implement those changes. 

Personal coaching is applicable in all facets of life, and is transformative of our whole lives. I refer to a range of disciplines from the study of adult behaviour, learning and development in order to help people gain a clear picture of who they are and what it is that they really want in life. 

You know how it feels when you take your car to the mechanic for repairs and have to wait out of sight while somebody performs some hidden magic under the bonnet! Not so with coaching. I show the client the tools and explain how they work, and we work together. The synergy of coach working with client is a force far greater than two people working alone. 

Just as each person is unique, each coaching relationship is unique. Because there is no "one size fits all" in personal coaching I gain a sense of freshness in my work that I find invigorating, which motivates me to keep developing in my craft. 

Where personal coaching may depart from the personal trainer analogy is that I do not assume that I possess the course of action that will benefit a client. I do not tell people what to do! It is also important that I do not simply adopt the stated goals of he client as destination of our relationship. I believe that there would be nothing worse than achieving everything you have wanted, only to discover that it is not enough!