Becoming a life coach is not like becoming a psychologist or doctor, which by law requires years of intense training before you can practice. But according to the ICF study, 89% of practicing coaches receive training accredited or approved by a professional training organization. The average training of a life coach lasts from six months to a year. Part of becoming a life coach is learning coaching skills and practicing coaching with others.
If you're considering a career in life coaching, you've probably wondered how long it takes to become a certified life coach. Being a life coach is a much quicker career choice than being a therapist, psychologist, counselor, or social worker. Most life coaching programs require 50-150 hours of work to earn ICF certification, which usually takes a year to complete. But how many years do you need to be a life coach? We're going to find out.
It can take anywhere from a few days to a full year to get certified. The longer the program, the more equipped and secure you will be when it comes time to work with customers. The best-known certification agency is The International Coach Federation (ICF), which offers different levels of life coach certification. Life coaching is heavily criticized because many people call themselves experts without proper training. A life coach is someone who wants to make a difference in the lives of others by helping them overcome their challenges that trap them.
Just as physicians must continue their education to maintain competence and learn about new practices, life coaches should look for skills development opportunities to ensure they remain at the peak of their powers and provide the best possible service to their clients. You'll also learn the business of becoming a life coach and the ethical concerns you may need to resolve during your practice. Throughout the process, starting with your life coach training program, you'll learn to live a certain way. By empathizing, you can visualize a customer's life and reflect it so they can see what it's like, similar to looking in the mirror. But the business worked for many years because I learned to focus on NLP and life coaching techniques that I could use to help people get the results they needed. Based on more than 25 years of personal experience running a life coaching business and training others to do the same, I have put together a list of business and administrative tasks that you will need to complete while setting up your own life coaching business. While you don't need to learn how to become a certified life coach to launch your business, it can certainly be useful and something that much of your competition will have done.
In addition, some life coaches just want your certification to implement strategies in their current job or business. That's why it's crucial to have a comprehensive marketing plan right from the start of your efforts to become a life coach and, if you're squeamish about self-promotion, becoming a life coach may not be right for you. However, many life coach candidates miss the opportunity to follow their passion because of bad advice, often published by life coaching training centers and marketing gurus whose sole interest is to sell their own product. Life coach programs vary in duration, because they depend on the level of certification you're looking for. The cost of life coach certifications varies, but you can expect to spend anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. You can use the ICF training program search service to find a legitimate course that aligns with your life coaching goals.
