Personal development coaching: How can it help?

Personal development coaching is an increasingly popular concept, helping individuals to focus on how to grow as a person. Here to explain more is leading consultant psychiatrist Dr Sunil Raheja.

What is the personal development coaching?

To put it very simply, psychiatry is about fixing what is broken. An individual may seek help with depression, anxiety, burnout, stress or relationship issues.

On the other hand, personal development aims to assess if someone is functioning reasonably well, what the specific challenges are that they're facing and how such challenges are affecting who they are as a person, as well as the changes that they need to make in their life in order to move forward.

Individuals often fall into recurring patterns of behaviour, meaning that they repeatedly face the same challenges in life. May that not make mated relationships or that may be in terms of, for example, imposter syndrome or finding that you're in situations and circumstances where you are hitting a glass ceiling and not able to achieve the things that you want to achieve or become.

Personal development coaching assesses the factors that are holding you back. These may be factors such as your background, and growing up which may be limiting beliefs that you have.

Coaching can work in a sense of helping you get out of your own way. Often the problems we face in life are not due to necessarily the circumstances around us, but the way that we're looking at life, the way we're looking at our problems and challenges.

Life challenges are not solely dictated by external circumstances; rather, our perspectives and approaches play a significant role. By changing our outlook on life, the things we look at begin to change.

What is the difference between personal development coach and a life coach?

The terms personal development coach and life coach are often used interchangeably, although they are different.  A life coach focuses on achieving specific goals, whereas personal development coaching is focused on who you are as a person, how you're showing up, very much about the being.

On the other hand a life coach, personal development coaching is more closely focused on your identity and how you present yourself. It's about "being" rather than "doing." The focus is on becoming the kind of person who can naturally attract positive things into your life. It involves personal growth, handling increased responsibility, and becoming the person that you want to be as opposed to achieving specific goals.

What are the benefits of personal development coaching?

The benefits of personal development coaching are very much about helping you transform as an individual. Often, we achieve things in life and, unfortunately, we're still not happy or content. We feel frustrated because we chase after specific things in life, and yet we haven't transformed ourselves.

A common example is with lottery winners. When you track their progress after a few years, you discover that many of them are in a worse place than before they won the lottery. A significant number end up facing financial difficulties because they haven't grown as individuals who can handle that amount of that amount of wealth.

Personal development coaching tries to integrate who you are on the inside with who you intend to be on the outside, so that you can manage a high-level responsibility or grow as a person.

What can I expect during a typical personal development coaching session?

Initially, the personal development coach will begin with a detailed analysis of who you are, delving into your aspirations and identifying any obstacles holding you back. These problems might stem from your childhood, background, or upbringing.

Personal development coaching helps to create a place for analysing these factors in a confidential and sensitive way, with freedom to think about where you want to go, who you want to become and how you could get there.

The process is driven by the client's particular agenda in terms of what are the particular challenges that they're facing, the things that they've come through and where they want to go.

What areas of my life can personal development coaching help me improve?

Personal coaching is applicable to every aspect of life. It has relevance in all areas without exception. Whether you're considering your body, mind, spirit, relationships, emotional well-being, health, vocational goals, or the pursuit of understanding, what truly matters to you and identifying your values, personal coaching plays a role in each of these areas.

If you would like to book a consultation with Dr Sunil Raheja, simply visit his Top Doctors profile today.