The Connection Between Positive Psychology and Life Coaching
sccoachinggroup provide you Positive Psychology and Life Coaching Gratitude journals with floral themes and post-its adorned with positive affirmations may come to mind for many people. What’s really behind those daily practices? Can they really make a difference? Why do therapists and coaches recommend them?
When you hear the term “positive psychology,” what comes to mind?
At Sccoaching Group, we place a lot of emphasis on Positive Psychology and Life Coaching when it comes to our life coach training program. Our training is based on science and is backed by evidence. Coaching should be based on an understanding of how the human mind works when it comes to helping people achieve their goals and live in accordance with their values.
Positive Psychology: What Is It?
Human happiness is the subject of positive psychology. This movement dates back to the 1960s, when psychologist Martin Seligman pioneered it.
Positive psychology offers a different perspective on things in a field often dominated by suffering and pain. The purpose of this course is to study and teach the practices, mindsets, and beliefs that contribute to living a good life and achieving it.
The goal of positive psychology is to cultivate an inner toolkit centered on one’s strengths. This process is not meant to deny pain, suffering, or trauma.
It is important to pay attention to these very real experiences and provide healing-centered care to them. The client is assumed to be at baseline mental wellness, when implementing positive psychology tools and techniques.
Positive Psychology and Life Coaching
Negative thoughts and emotions are not swept away by positive psychology. As a result, it investigates them from that point of view. Learning how to work with criticism, diminishment, and self doubt involves recognizing their voices in the mind.
An initial step is to simply acknowledge what’s there, because we can’t shift what we can’t see. It’s not about pushing negativity away in positive psychology. As we dig up our negative thoughts and plant new seeds in their place, we can begin to feel our way into their roots.
Positive psychology covers a wide range of topics, but there is one fundamental theme: improving quality of life. A thriving organization is one that moves from surviving to thriving.
Positive psychology isn’t just about increasing emotional intelligence or cultivating gratitude. This is an experiential approach that encourages clients to try out specific techniques, trust themselves, lean into their strengths, and discover what works for them.
In coaching, how does this show up?
As coaches, we should first assess the readiness of clients when applying positive psychology principles.
Is their emotional state stable? Are they committed to improving their overall happiness and wellbeing by focusing on the thoughts and conditions that will help them? What are their attitudes toward homework and trying new things? Coaching frameworks rooted in positive psychology can be implemented from this point.
Coaches often use positive psychology techniques such as:
- Being aware of your strengths and appreciating them
- Setting priorities and identifying personal values
- Knowing your purpose in life
- The cultivation of positive emotions and gratitude
- The ability to cope and be resilient
- Understanding your agency, ability, and tools to make changes in a situation
- Compassion and acceptance of oneself
- A “best possible future self” is imagined and created through future visioning
- Strengthening personal accountability and developing healthy habits
A positive psychology approach can enable lasting change and improve overall life satisfaction by providing evidence-based tools. Positive psychology is useful to coaches who want to help their clients achieve consistent and measurable results.
Why Positive Psychology Matters in Life Coaching
Our clients’ outcomes determine the value of coaching. Clients sometimes don’t know how to articulate the outcome they want, however. A life coach is often hired by people who believe they need assistance in overcoming a weakness. Their goals may seem simple to achieve if only they were disciplined and accountable.
There is usually a more fundamental desire beneath the stated goal a client brings to coaching. Feeling content is a desire. It is important to be happy. A feeling of satisfaction with one’s life and one’s self.
It is important for a coach to understand both the surface and the underlying issues. A client seeking weight loss assistance would be an example of this. In addition to joining the gym, they’ve tried various diets as well. Not a thing sticks. Over and over again, they lose weight and gain it back. Coaches help clients lose 25 pounds and keep them off. The goal is to achieve that. Isn’t that easy?
Coaching clients like this often reveals underlying negative core beliefs lurking beneath the surface. It may be a matter of shame and pain rather than aspiration and joy that drives them to lose weight. Most of the time, this is the problem that is preventing the client from moving forward. After that, coaching involves exploring the client’s self-doubts and self-sabotaging behaviors.
To develop this skill, you must have both training and compassion for working with clients through such a level of self-inquiry.
As a field that is unregulated, coaching is available to anyone. It doesn’t require a psychology degree or any special background. As a result, there is naturally a lot of room for error, mixed results, and even unintended consequences.
Knowing what you’re doing is important Positive Psychology and Life Coaching when working with people’s thoughts, emotions, and subconscious beliefs. Coaching becomes more effective and credible when a coach is professionally trained. A credible program is always advisable if you’re an aspiring coach.