What Is Life Coaching…? (At Least, The Way I Do It!)
If you’ve ever Googled “What is life coaching?” there’s a fair chance you’ve come away slightly confused. One website talks about “unlocking your highest potential.” Another promises “peak performance.” Someone on LinkedIn is standing barefoot on a mountain talking about mindset.
So let me make this simpler.
For me, life coaching is really about helping people step back, think clearly, reconnect to themselves and move forward with greater clarity and confidence. That’s it. No guru stuff, or pretending life is easy… & definitely no influencer promise to “10x your life before breakfast.”
Most of the people I work with are already intelligent, capable and successful. Many are founders, senior professionals or people working in financial services and leadership roles. From the outside, life often looks objectively fine - good career, decent income, responsible role, busy family life.
But underneath, something feels off. Sometimes they’re exhausted or burnt out. Or trapped.
Maybe just disconnected from who they are now One of the phrases I hear most often is: “Everything looks good on paper… but I’m not happy.” And honestly, I understand that world.
Before becoming a coach, I spent almost 30 years in financial services leadership roles, including at Fidelity and Vanguard.
I’ve worked in demanding environments. I understand pressure, targets, difficult cultures, responsibility and the strange experience of building a successful career that no longer feels quite right. That experience shapes how I coach. I’m not trying to “fix” people. I’m not interested in motivational slogans. Most of the time, people don’t need more pressure.
They do need more space o pause, reflect and to hear themselves again.
A coaching session with me is essentially a structured conversation, but one with intention behind it.
· Exploring burnout.
· Mulling over career direction.
· Or discussing confidence, stress, identity or difficult transitions.
Usually it’s somehow all connected. One client recently described coaching as: “The first place in years where I’ve properly stopped and thought” which I especially liked. Clarity rarely appears when we’re rushing around reacting to life. It tends to emerge more quietly and evolves through testing ideas and small changes.
“We’re not trying to make perfect decisions.
We’re trying to make better decisions.”
Over the last couple of years, I’ve also become increasingly interested in coaching neurodiverse professionals and founders, particularly people with ADHD traits - diagnosed or otherwise. Traditional productivity advice often doesn’t help because it assumes everybody’s brain works in the same way. Part of good coaching is adapting to the person in front of you:
- understanding how they think,
- how they process,
- what drains them,
- what energises them
- helping them build systems that work with their brain rather than against it.
That’s also where self-compassion becomes important. A surprising number of high-performing people spend years being incredibly hard on themselves. Sometimes unnecessarily.
One book that really stayed with me is Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat. There’s a humanity and honesty in it that I love. Particularly the idea that happiness isn’t something we finally earn once everything is perfect … because life rarely works like that. I think coaching can help people reconnect with that. Not by magically removing stress or uncertainty, but by helping them live and work more intentionally. And perhaps become a little kinder to themselves along the way.
Is coaching right for everyone?
Probably not. But if you feel stuck, burnt out, uncertain about your future or disconnected from what matters, it can be incredibly valuable to have space to properly think things through with someone independent. You don’t need to have everything figured out. In fact, most people don’t. You just need enough willingness to pause and start the conversation.
And if any of this resonates, I’m always happy to grab a coffee and chat!
Rob F.
Life & Career Coach