The only certainty in life is change. So goes a familiar adage. But what happens to those of us who feel stuck and long for transformation and growth, but are unable to define or direct our goals? A life coach may be able to help. Life coaches provide assistance in one's search to identify and pursue ever-evolving interpersonal, career, or inner-development objectives. Coaches vary in their training, technique, and credentials but typically counsel people in one or more of seven life areas: relationships, money, work, emotions, body, sexuality, and spirituality. Unlike a psychotherapist, who focuses on diagnosing pathology—what went wrong—and how to process it, a life coach is a "transition specialist," a forward-looking ally who is part motivation counselor, part spiritual adviser. A life coach teaches people to cultivate and focus personal power in order to create an authentic design for life.

Patterned after partnership models of cooperation, coaching usually takes place in a one-to-one format, either during in-person meetings or over the phone. Practitioners typically recommend that clients sign on for 10 to 12 one-hour sessions over the course of several months. Fees vary, with prices ranging from $50 to $250 per session. Life coaching is currently an unregulated specialty (as compared to medical professions and social work), but its practitioners often receive specialized training. In the Hudson Valley, many have attended the Empowerment Institute, headed by husband-and-wife team David Gershon and Gail Straub of West Hurley. The institute's curriculum offers five professional tracks, including a life coach certification program.

In name, life coaching is a relatively new phenomenon, an outgrowth both of corporate downsizing during the 1980s and of the more recent aftershock of 9/11. "Life coaching didn't really exist in the early 1990s," says David Basch of Accord, a PhD with a background in corporate advertising and college teaching. Basch took a leap of faith and became a coach, first through Coach U, the leading global provider of training, then with the Coaches Training Institute to become a certified professional co-active coach (PCC).

In actuality, both the practical and spiritual aspects of life coaching derive from social science movements and wisdom traditions popularized in the past half-century. Those influences resonate in the profession's current buzzwords and catchphrases: empowerment, actualization, limiting beliefs, holding vision, growing edges, and transformational design. Basch draws on theories of systems management and organizational behavior, and combines coaching and consulting, whether to rattle a client's "habitual mode," to give clients "deadlines," or to encourage "accountability" about making desired changes. 

Characterizing himself as a "facilitator who helps others define who they are authentically and at the deepest level," Basch stresses that clients must completely commit to the process and its outcomes. He offers an objective yet caring perspective that people need when they're stuck. "We can't hear ourselves. What we say is what we've always said—and I'm going to challenge that," he explains. And the change he helps instill isn't just a practical matter. "To get people to see themselves clearly enough to get in touch with their power is a spiritual endeavor," he tells me. 

Like Basch, Red Hook life coach Nancy Austin has worked in the corporate world. Holding a BA in Human Services with a concentration in Counseling Theories, she once considered becoming a psychotherapist. "But I don't want to work with clients who need a 'diagnosis.' The majority of people don't have something wrong with them; they are going through life changes and transitions." According to Austin, "People want to achieve their happiness. Unhappiness comes from conditioned thinking—habits that keep people from what they want to achieve. Examining old thinking is an act of spiritual growth." After encouraging clients to develop a "series of commitments" aimed at evaluating a course of action, her task is then "to hold the big picture as they take steps towards achievement."