A professional life coach like Kayla listens beyond active listening, tuning into your agenda, vision, desires, and values. She listens to you with her whole heart and envisions herself in your shoes. You will feel heard, maybe even for the first time.

Occasionally you are so entrenched in a situation and you don’t see what’s really happening. A good coach will ask you powerful questions and hold a mirror up to you so you can finally become fully awake.

Sometimes this means being respectfully direct about what they’re observing, and other times, it’s demonstrating with metaphors or analogies. Either way, you’ll have the clarity to move forward with your new-found perspective and confidence.

Besides affirming with you that you’re capable of achieving your aspirations, Kayla knows that you’re worthy of living your life, your way. You’ll not only get some tools to visualize your goals and dreams, but you’ll work on setting boundaries.

Kayla believes in a strengths-based approach, that is, she works with you to unearth – often through personality instruments – your strengths, innate gifts and preferences, and find ways to bring these to the world.

So, if you’re running low on self-esteem and you’ve forgotten what it is that you’re good at, a coach can help you uncover your brilliance once again and open the door to empowerment.

Old habits can die hard. But if you work with a coach to get underneath your beliefs that are leading you to maintain them, you can free a path for a more positive lifestyle. That also means making progress against your goals, too, and success will breed even more success.

If you ask a coach for their take on a situation, they will offer it to you. More often then not, they can ask the right questions or offer techniques like reframing or perspective taking so that you find one all on your own. What’s more thrilling than having an ah-ha moment?

Often, we get in our own way. It’s a coach’s job to notice things that you might not and inquire about your beliefs, like your attitude towards money and self-worth.

A coach can surface fears that you have, give you tactics to flip them and bury them for good, so that you can be free to live your best life courageously.

If you’re going through a life transition like a job loss, having a baby, recovering from divorce, or facing the realities of mid-life, it can be a lot to take on, especially on top of regular day-to-day life pressures. You might even fall into what you think is depression or anxiety.

Yes, you very well could need to see a psychotherapist. Or, you might be in the doldrums, which is a normal stage of change and human development. With greater self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-care, you’ll move through it, ready to face your challenges.

Many coaches are trained in mindfulness and cognitive behavioral coaching techniques, and if you’re willing, you can learn how to incorporate these into your life. Even if you’ve lost hope or you’re immobilized, working with a coach can help you to put in place strategies to regain your footing and move forward with more self-assurance.

Whether it’s identifying ways to get unstuck or realize your life-long dreams, an experienced coach can work with you to identify opportunities and options. You might not have a clue how to get out of a blood-sucking situation at work or find your true love, but with a coach and dedicated time delving into the possibilities, you’ll be further ahead than working on your own.

With your permission, your coach will share with you their own ideas, too, many of which you’ve probably never thought of before. Your coach will promote self-discovery and challenge your assumptions. With all this, you’ll be opened up to a whole new level of thinking about yourself and your situation.

If you’re a quick-start personality, you tend to lose momentum, or you’re all ideas but no plan, coaching might be for you.

Apart from the coaching goal of creating awareness, a key objective of coaching is to forward your action. That means working with you to develop plans that you can get behind and that get you specific results. Even more important, a coach will help you uncover what it would mean to you to achieve them in the first place.

Should you choose, you can ask your coach to be your accountability partner. They will gently remind you of the commitments you’ve made to yourself and inquire about what got in the way if you haven’t met them.

They won’t nag or chastise you for not getting your action plans done; they will help you figure out how you can get your plans back on track. You’ll want to stay focused not because you have someone to report back to, but because with their help you’ve realized how much success matters to you.

A coach will hold your vision, purpose, goals and dreams in the highest esteem and they’ll be there to see them through, for as long as you continue the coaching relationship. You will not only feel listened to and supported, but you’ll also feel empowered to take on any challenge and reach higher heights.