Life coaching is a practice of assisting clients to determine and achieve personal goals. A coach will use a variety of methods, tailored to the client, to move through the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists (although therapists may be coaches).

With roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training, life coaching also draws from a wide variety of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, career counseling, mentoring, and numerous other types of counseling. The coach applies mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in assisting clients. Coaches are to be distinguished from counselors, whether counselors in psychotherapy or other careers.

Writing for the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, Patrick Williams states:

It is helpful to understand that both coaching and therapy have the same roots. Coaching evolved from three main streams that have flowed together:

• 1. The helping professions such as psychotherapy and counseling.
• 2. Business consulting and organizational development.
• 3. Personal development training, such as EST, Landmark Education, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey seminars, Eric Edmeades, and others.

Williams further states that the movement towards Client-centered therapy in the 1940s and 1950s by psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow helped shift the emphasis in therapy towards the client becoming an active agent in their progress and growth. He credits Maslow’s 1968 treatise “Toward a Psychology of Being” with providing the framework for modern life coaching as it is practiced today.

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