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On this week’s episode of The Life Coach School Podcast, we’re taking a look at the key differences between conventional therapy and life coaching and the types of issues that are best suited for each approach. We look at the various types of therapy methods and types of professionals that help people treat mental health conditions, and go into whom life coaching is for and what it can do for your life.

So many people ask how is a life coach different from a therapist? If you’re not exactly sure whether you need a therapist, a life coach, or both, this episode is for you. Tune in to discover why you absolutely must invest in your mental health and what each one of the perspectives can offer.

What you will discover

  • The different types of therapy and how they stack up against coaching.
  • Looking at the past vs focusing on the future.
  • Which issues are better suited for therapy rather than coaching.
  • Who coaching is (and is not) for.
  • The differences between psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health care professionals.
  • Tips for helping you decide whether you need therapy and/or coaching.

Featured on the show

Episode Transcript

Welcome to The Life Coach School podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hello, my friends. So here's the thing. I just moved, and so all of my settings on my ... is it called the amplifier? No idea…are completely off, so I can't get the right sound on my podcast, so I hope I sound good to y'all because I'm trying to figure it out. Pavel, I hope you can tell me what I need to do if anything is not to your liking.

So, here's what's going on in my world. We're about halfway moved into our house. We have TVs on the ground. We have window blinds that have not yet been installed. We have post-it pads on the windows. Everything smells brand new. There is certain places that need paint touch up. You guys know what I'm talking about? It's a mayhem, is what it is. My kids are at our temporary office right now. They have gone down there to put together VIP boxes for my scholars.

So, if you are a Self Coaching Scholar and you have been in Scholars for six months, which means you joined when I first released it, you're going to be getting your VIP box in the next couple days. And those of you who joined later, you'll be getting it at your six-month birthday, you get a VIP box in the mail, and I wanted to make it something super awesome, and my son is hysterical. He says, "Oh, my gosh, those VIP boxes are so cool. I love that they get the gold key."

The gold key is super cool because the gold key has the entire podcast on it with all of the intros and outros taken out. Just content. All of the special editions that aren't applicable anymore taken out. It's all on USB. Super cool. I got this idea from someone who I love, their podcast, and just being able to re-listen to everything without all the intros, outros, and all the stuff I've heard before was so exciting. So Pavel did that work for me. Got that all together, and now we have that on a gold key for all of our VIP members. So please enjoy that.

The way that the kids work for me is they take those USB keys and they put them into a USB key duplicator and duplicate all of that stuff by hand, and then put together all of the packages. So, if you are in Scholars and you're a VIP, this is what you're going to get. You are going to get what we call the "Ask Brooke" book. So, in Scholars, we have an Ask Brooke page, and there are hundreds of questions asked to me during the month, and I answer all of them as we go through. Whatever question is presented it in a day, I answer those questions within usually the same day, couple days later.

What we did is we went through all of those questions and took the best ones with the best answers and categorized them by category and created a book for you all. That is in that VIP box. That is an amazing book, I have to say. The people that we had put that together, Milena, who is my right arm, literally, made that happen and we are so excited and so proud about that.

You also get what we call the "Model Pad" and one of our students and Scholars had said, "You should have the Model on a pad of paper, so you can just do a model, rip off a page, do another model." Brilliant idea. We had it designed. We went to 99designs and had someone design the Model Pad for us. We had a bunch of Model Pads created. Brilliant. Those are in your VIP box. Please don't email me and ask if you can buy those separately. We're not selling those separately. You have to be a VIP to get those in Scholars. But they are amazing, I will say that.

The other thing you're going to get is a copy of the Scholars' Manifesto, and I wanted to bring this up and tell everyone, even if you're not in Scholars. I know that there's a lot of you that have been following along but haven't joined and haven't been able to join. So, I'm trying to share a lot of the goodness from inside of there, even if you're not in there. Obviously, we want you to join as soon as you possibly can.

But here is the Self Coaching Scholars' Manifesto, and I'm going to read it to you because it's amazing. And I just want to share not just what we do in Scholars, but just kind of my philosophy and why I created Scholars and what I believe about my students and what I believe about being a teacher. Because I feel like that's truly why I show up every day to teach in Scholars is because of our mission, because of what we believe, because of what we stand for, is what I should say.
So, we had it designed, again with 99designs, which I'm totally obsessed with 99designs right now because they give you so many different options, and sometimes I don't know exactly how I want something designed until I see all these different perspectives. So what's really cool about 99designs is you put a project out there, and then tons of people submit designs for you. Then you pick the one that you want, and that's the one you pay for. I love, love, love it. So, the first time I wrote the Manifesto, it was too long, so I had to shorten it, but here's what it is.

"A Scholar is someone who studies themselves, who knows themselves. A Scholar pursues a new level of mental health. We know that self-development is the best investment. We study ourselves because we matter. Our brains, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are worth the attention. We are committed to taking responsibility for being adults. We don't blame, whine, complain, or hide. We allow other people, and ourselves, to be human.

"A Self Coaching Scholar never gives up on a model that has a dream result. We take massive action until we arrive and blow our own minds. We take care of our own needs. We plan our time. We honor our commitments. And if you ask us where we are going, we will have an answer. We don't buffer with false pleasure, but being with the true pleasure of a life well done. A hard-worked life with plenty of rest, care, and love.

"Self Coaching Scholars. We think deliberately. We feel thoroughly. We act massively. We reap purposefully. We love unconditionally. We are models for how to do it. A Self Coaching Scholar does not wait to see what is going to happen. We make it happen. You coming?"

Isn't it so great? I love it so much. I love it so, so, so much, and I love the design of it. I have it in my office. I look at it all the time. It reminds me of who I am, and who I most want to be, and who I strive to be, and the whole purpose of why I teach what I teach.

And I will say, halfway through the year of Self Coaching Scholars, it is by far my proudest achievement. It is everything I've wanted to offer the world in a way that's affordable, and in a way that is purposeful, and where I can give the type of attention that people need and want from me, and share my experience and all of the knowledge that I have. The accomplishments that people have made within six months in that program are ... I couldn't be more proud. I couldn't be more excited about the collective advancement that has happened as a group. So, if you're in Scholars, I really, especially if you're a VIP and you've been in for six months, I genuinely want you to know how much I love you, and I take my hat off to you today.

So, the other thing that you're going to get inside of that VIP box is you are going to get a Scholars Magazine invitation. If you go to my website, TheLifeCoachSchool.com, and you scroll down, you will see a magazine that we created last year that features some of my certified coaches and the work that they do. It is a beautiful magazine. You can flip through it online. The articles that were written are spectacular. It's just such a celebration of life coaching and the coaches that have gone though my school, and the work that they're doing in the world. I'm so proud of them.

And I want to do a magazine for Scholars that's similar to the magazine that I did for The Life Coach School. And in that magazine, I'm going to feature my Scholars and those who have really made progress in their life, really committed to doing this work and making it happen. I'm going to fly them out to me whether they're international or national, whatever, and we're going to do a photo shoot. We're going to do interviews. We're going to write articles, and we're going to create a magazine. So, I will let you all know when that magazine is out, so you guys can check it out. I'm excited to invite all of you guys as you become VIPs to submit to be in the magazine.

You're going to get that USB gold key of all of the entire podcasts. You're also going to get a VIP video from me that will include a video of the Manifesto. I also wrote you a letter in there, just from me. In addition, you get a VIP call with me once a month, just us, just me and the VIPs. Then you also get what I'm calling a "model-thon", which is a one-day event for free with me, if you're a VIP member. We're going to spend the entire day coaching and doing models. We're doing the first one in Dallas at the Ritz-Carlton, and I can't wait to see you guys live. That's going to be so, so, so fun.
So, that's it. That's what you guys are getting, and I'm telling you this because my kids and my husband are down at the offices right now putting those together for you, putting those in boxes by hand with so much love, and I'm really excited for you to receive them. And for those of you who are coming up on your six-month birthday, you will, for sure, get those as soon as you turn into a VIP by being there six months.

The only way you can get those is by being in Scholars for six months, so if you haven't joined, make sure you get on the wait list. Enrollment is closed right now, if you're listening to this in the week that it is produced. But if you're listening to this later, you might want to go check out the site and see ... go to TheLifeCoachSchool.com and see if we're actively enrolling. You might be in an enrollment window. You can join us. Best program I've ever done. Best coaching program for the price on the planet as far as I'm concerned. I'm totally biased and I still think that it's the best. So I'm going to stay with that.

Okay, so I keep thinking about this person who googled "life coaching versus therapy" and found this podcast and just wanted to find out the difference between life coaching and therapy and just listened to me talk about Scholars. It was like, seriously, get to the point for the last 12 minutes, and so if that is you, I apologize for taking the time. But it's really important to me, and I want you to know about the work that I'm doing in the world and the work that my family is doing in the world to create content for everyone that is a student of mine.

My priority right now, in my business and in my life, are my students. My students that are actively doing this work are the people that rock my world, are the people that make my life so worth living. The people that are active and working it and struggling and volunteering to be coached and asking for help, you are my heroes. You are the people I live for. So again, my hat is off to all of you Scholars who are doing this work in the world. I'm so, so, so honored to be a part of your journey.

So now, let's talk about the difference between therapy and coaching. I have a lot of experience in therapy myself as a client, as a patient, I guess. I think that she used to call me a patient. She was a doctor, so I think I was her patient. And I have a lot of experience with studying psychology and therapy in college. I also have quite a few therapists who have come through the school and become life coaches, so we have a lot of banter and conversations about coaching and about therapy, and about the differences and the mindsets that go into both of them.

And because in Scholars this month, we are talking about how to change your past, and the next four podcasts will be covering some of those topics, I want to first start with the difference between therapy and coaching because most of therapy is, and the therapy that I have been exposed to, is focused on the past. And if you look at the founders of psychology and psychiatry and therapy, those founders were very focused on childhood and the past and using the past to explain current problems and current issues.

There are many issues and traumas and things that happen in our past that require, in my opinion, therapy to be healed in order for us to move on in our life. There are many things that do not require us to go into the past and relive the past and talk about the past incessantly to solve. So, I think it's important to understand which of those things that I recommend therapy for and which of those things I do not recommend therapy for.

I have received hundreds, I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of emails from people who have told me that coaching changed their life in months, weeks, that years of therapy hadn't been able to do. I believe that one of the reasons for that is that a lot of therapy spends a lot of time reiterating and retelling the story of the past over and over and over again instead of moving forward into the future, and letting that past go. And I think the future focus that we work on really helps the brain to reprogram for a different reality. If you keep reiterating all of those thoughts of the past, and telling the stories of the past, you just really are training your brain to keep thinking those thoughts.

So, I want to start with a few different types of therapy. One of the most popular is CBT, and this therapy is the most similar to coaching because it focuses on thinking and behavior and problem-solving. A lot of people think that cognitive behavioral therapy is the same as coaching. But I just want to address that it's different than coaching in the sense that these techniques are used to address psychological disorders usually, and taking people from nonfunctioning to functioning. And that is one of the biggest distinctions that I want to offer here.

Most of therapy is usually diagnostic-based, so they're diagnosing a problem to be solved, a nonfunctioning problem that needs to be solved. Coaching is typically taking someone that is already highly functioning to the next level. And I think that's the most simplistic way of describing it. So, people will come to therapy that are nonfunctioning in certain ways, and it's appropriate for them to come and get to the point where they can function in a regular context of life. Right?

So if I get a client that comes to me who is really deep into compulsion, really deep into addiction, really nonfunctioning, really obsessive-compulsive, depressed, those types of issues are very appropriate for therapy, and getting to a place of regular functioning. Coaching is more appropriate for someone who is already functioning, and wants to take it to the next level.

From Wikipedia, "Cognitive behavioral therapy is a psychosocial intervention that is the most widely used evidence-based practice for treating mental disorders. It's guided by empirical research. CBT focuses on the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems and changing unhelpful patterns in cognitions, thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, behaviors, and emotional regulation. It was originally designed to treat depression, and is now used for a number of mental health conditions.

"The CBT model is based on a combination of the basic principles from behavioral and cognitive psychology. It is different from historical approaches to psychotherapy, such as psychoanalytical approach where the therapist looks for the unconscious meaning behind behaviors and then formulates a diagnosis. Instead, CBT is 'problem-focused' and 'action-oriented', meaning it is used to treat specific problems related to a diagnosed mental disorder and the therapist's role is to assist the client in finding and practicing effective strategies to address the identified goals and decrease symptoms of the disorder.
"CBT is based on the belief that thought distortions and maladaptive behaviors play a role in the development and maintenance of psychological disorders, and that symptoms and associated distress can be reduced by teaching new information-processing skills and coping mechanisms." Okay? So that is CBT. The main difference from coaching is the diagnosis and where you're coming from at the beginning of it. There are many similarities to my work and to the work that a lot of coaching does. It's similar to coaching in the fact that it works with the thinking in the mind and how that thinking affects our actions. The cognitive related to the thinking, and behavioral relating to the action, or the A-line in the Model.

The next type of therapy is psychotherapy, and this was the type of therapy that I spent many, many hours doing. This type of therapy is usually long-term therapy. It's focused on the past and also on the unconscious thinking that drives present behavior. It has its roots with Freud, who has many theories about unconscious behavior and unconscious motivations. Freud believed many problems could be solved by making conscious repressed emotions and childhood experiences.

So basically, there was all these things that happened in our childhood that were unconscious, and if we could make them conscious, we would be free of them. The therapist has the client talk extensively about childhood memories, dreams, and symbols, et cetera. There's that whole ink blot. You guys remember seeing that? Those little ink blots, and if you looked at it and talked about what you thought it looked like, it would reveal these unconscious things that are going on in your brain that you may not be conscious about.

In this type of therapy, the therapist reveals very little about themselves in order to focus on the patient's interpretations and meaning. The goal is to find the unconscious thoughts and influences. So, my doctor, who I spent literally four days a week with for several years, I knew nothing about her. I remember I saw her in the store one time, and I was so freaked out. I was like, "Oh, my God, she's human. She eats." I knew nothing about her. She never really spoke to me. She just let me talk. She felt like revealing anything about herself would distort her way of being able to access my unconscious thoughts.
Freud believed that slips of the tongue provided an insight into the unconscious mind and that there were no accidents. Every behavior, including slips of the tongue, was significant. This type of talk therapy can last for years. It includes two to five sessions per week of the patient simply talking and the therapist looking for unconscious and underlying meaning. For patients with genuine repressed memories, this can be an effective form of therapy.

But it is mostly too past focused for any high-functioning person to be able to move forward, and that was really me. We spent so much time in therapy talking about what things might mean. What was unconscious in my mind. Coming up with theories about things that I had said and what had I meant about it. It was all very kind of abstract, and I didn't feel like I really made progress towards the goals that I wanted to. And I was pretty nonfunctioning when I was going to therapy. I was going through a lot of anxiety, so I feel like going and spending time just talking was kind of like a thought download for me. But the unconscious theories I do not feel were effective in helping me move forward in my life.

I know that many people who have had severe trauma that they have blocked from their life and their consciousness have found this type of therapy life altering. Absolutely a place for it. There is definitely so many reasons to check it out if you feel like there's something repressed or something unconscious that you need help healing through. I would highly recommend that. In any other case, I would not recommend that type of therapy, just based on my own person experience.

What's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist? I don't know why I said "psy-CHOLO-gist", but psychologist. Because psychiatrists are trained medical doctors. They can prescribe medications, and they spend much of their time with patients on medication management as a course of treatment.

And by the way, I think psychiatrists are life-giving, amazing doctors. I have had many of my clients who have needed medication, who are nonfunctioning who I sent to psychiatrists, and they had their life changed. They came back to life. It was like this flower was wilting in front of me, and they went to a psychiatrist, and were able to get medication that really helped them get to the point there they could then really work on their brains. They were at the point where they just couldn't ... they were completely nonfunctioning.

And a lot of times, people who are severely depressed don't even recognize how depressed they are, and when they go to a psychiatrist and they can get some medication to kind of come back to life a little bit, then they can start really working on the issues that they need to be working on to move forward in their life. So, I personally believe in all sorts of medication to help us evolve and I do not believe that we should have to figure this out all on our own. There is absolutely a place for a psychiatrist in many people's lives.

Psychologists focus extensively on psychotherapy and treating emotional and mental suffering in patients with behavioral intervention versus medication. Now there's also a therapist called an MFT, you may have heard. It's marriage and family therapists. They're a similar type of therapist to a counselor in that they offer a variety of dynamics to psychotherapy, including talk, analysis, and solutions. MFTs focus on the dynamics of marriage between both parties and the larger dynamic of family relationships.

Oftentimes, sessions with a marriage and family therapist will consist of a gathering inclusive to all parties involved, both married partners or the entire family. I went to an MFT with my mom when I was a teenager. It was a very different experience. We talked a lot more about the therapist's personal life. We talked a lot more about back and forth and problem solving, communication skills, and that sort of thing. I felt like she taught me a lot more than my psychotherapist, who only analyzed what I was saying.

During other sessions, the therapist may choose to have one-on-one session time with each individual, working towards better communication skills or an open environment with the family dynamic. I also went to an MFT when my brother was younger, and we kept going in and out of rehab with him. We would sometimes meet as a family with an MFT. A really good experience, again, dealing with nonfunctioning relationships, nonfunctioning ...

I mean, my brother was a complete addict, and we did not know how to relate and communicate with him, and he didn't know how to relate and communicate with us. So that was a really good experience for me, personally, in working towards that. And I've had a lot of clients that have worked with MFTs that have had really positive conflict-resolving experiences.

Another type of therapy is called exposure therapy, and it's a kind of behavioral therapy where the patient is exposed to stimuli that she or he has identified as upsetting or disturbing. Exposure therapy may be used with mental health disorders, such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress. Therapists in general work in a regulated industry, and that's a huge difference between life coaches and therapists. Therapists are regulated.

One of the reasons why a lot of therapists want to come to me and get certified in coaching is because they want to be able to work from home and coach across the country. Many therapists are unable to coach outside of their own state, and it depends on where you are and what your regulations are. But therapists are much more highly regulated than coaches.

This is a good thing in some sense in that when you go to see a therapist, you know that they are regulated by a third-party industry that is monitoring them. And I think for a lot of people, that gives them a sense of security when they're dealing with something that, where that maybe they're nonfunctioning, or, of course, if they're taking any kind of medication. Therapists can also take insurance. They are licensed and they typically work with people who are nonfunctioning with mild or severe mental disorders.

Life coaches are in an unregulated industry. There have been some organizations that have tried to regulate us as an industry, but there have typically, in most of those federations, been a conflict of interest because they're trying to regulate the industry and also make money on the industry. Regulating industries need to be independent and not be capitalizing on the industry while they're trying to regulate it because that creates an issue, obviously, with doing motivation.

So, as of today, there is no regulation. I think this is a beautiful thing for life coaches because we have the freedom to be able to coach in the way that we want. But we also have a huge responsibility to monitor ourselves in terms of our own ethics, and make our own regulations in terms of what we are willing to provide to our clients, and appropriate professionalism and boundaries. And all of those things are something that really fall on our shoulders to be able to manage. That's something we spend a lot of time talking about as coaches as to how we hold up our own professionalism as coaches in our industry.

I pulled something from Tony Robbins's site. Toby Robbins is kind of like the very first life coach in the world, right? On his site, he says, "The fundamentals of life coaching are what distinguish it from therapy. Life coaches do not diagnose, while therapists determine illnesses and pathologies so they can be clinically treated. Therapists analyze their client’s past as a tool for understanding present behaviors, whereas life coaches simply identify and describe current problematic behaviors so the client can work to modify them.

"A life coach would be able to offer guidance by clarifying and achieving personal and professional goals; creating business plans; working to improve communication skills; achieving financial independence and security; achieving a work/life balance; starting a new business or growing a current business. A therapist, on the other hand, focuses their conversation on ways to recover from past traumas; explore why past relationships have been destructive; work through depression or anxiety that affect your ability to function at home or work; survive a divorce or loss of a loved one."

So, I think that understanding those differences are really important, although there is some crossover. I have worked and spent hundreds of hours with clients who have suffered emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. I personally have gone through a lot of that myself and I have found coaching has been the most effective way for me to move on beyond it.

That being said, there are many clients who I have started working with that it was very clear that they need therapy before we started doing coaching. So a lot of times what I've had are my students and clients be in therapy and be working with me at the same time. I have many wonderful relationships with therapists where we are both working with our clients.

One of the things that I think will help you decide whether you need therapy is, have you ever told someone the story of your abuse, of your trauma? And when you did, when you told the story, did it release you from some shame, and did it increase your awareness? If you have done that already, you may be ready to move on into some more coaching-type activities. If you find that something in your past, you feel as if something in your past is preventing you from functioning today, in your world today, you may need more therapy.

So, I think it's important and never a bad thing to have an experience with a therapist and to talk about stuff in your past that you feel like is holding you back. The people that I am most effective with are the people who have had years of therapy and don't have freedom yet. They've gone to therapist after therapist. They've tried to get over their past, but they're still bitter. They're still resentful. They're still victimized. They're still hating themselves. Those are the people that I'm able to help in the easiest amount of time, because they've already kind of opened up that wound. And now we can move on beyond it. The people that I send to therapy are the ones that have never really looked at that wound.

This is from Bill Cole. It says, "How Therapists and Coaches Differ. Keeping in mind that contrasting lists such as these can be overly sweeping and not entirely explanatory of the subtleties that exist, here are some of the differences between coaching and therapy. Coaching is an educational, discovery-based process of human potential. Therapy is based on the medical model that says people have psychiatric maladies that need to be repaired.

"Coaching focuses on self-exploration, self-knowledge, professional development, performance enhancement and better self-management. Therapy seeks to heal emotional wounds. Coaching takes clients to the highest levels of performance and life satisfaction. Therapy seeks to bring clients from a dysfunctional place to a healthy functioning level. Coaching rarely asks about your childhood or family life. Therapy continuously explores early-childhood, family and relationship issues. Coaching uses the terms 'blockages' and 'obstructions' to denote what needs to be removed. Therapy uses the term 'pathology' to describe the 'patient's' issues."

This goes on and on. This is from Bill Cole. I have it listed and repeated in the podcast guide. You can also check out his site if you want to read more about this. I think one of his best things that he says is, "Coaching assumes a co-equal partnership between coach and client," and, "Therapy assumes the therapist to be more of the expert, and in control," which I have found to be very interesting. That's a very interesting perspective.

"Coaching asks, 'What is next?'" And, "Therapy asks, 'Why?' Coaching helps clients design their life. Therapy resolves issues. You can see that coaching essentially assumes that the client is okay and is full of potential, whereas therapy assumes the client is 'sick' or 'dysfunctional' and needs to heal them so they can function 'normally'."

So in summary, if you feel like you're nonfunctioning, therapy is definitely a place where you can get to the place of functioning. But here's what I want to offer you. I was always, before I knew about life coaching, I was always trying to have something wrong with me so I could get help. I know that some of you can relate to this because we've talked about it. I wanted to be bulimic because then I feel like, there was like a path to resolving my dysfunction. I wanted to uncover some childhood sexual abuse that I didn't know about that I could then become conscious of and then I would be [inaudible 00:36:00], right?

It was like, I was always trying to be diagnosed with something. I wanted an eating disorder, literally. And I think there's a lot of us that feel this way that are functioning, but suffering. This is for sure how I felt with drinking, right? I felt like I wanted to be an alcoholic so I could have a solution to my problem. But I wasn't an alcoholic. I knew I wasn't an alcoholic, but I was still drinking too much, so I felt like because I wasn't in a ditch somewhere, because I wasn't drinking vodka at 8:00 a.m., that there was no solution for me.

And I think life coaching has come in and provided that solution for many of us who are highly functioning, and yet still suffering. And I think that's one of the biggest blessings that we have. There is a place for therapy. Absolutely. I was going to become a therapist. But I think there's also an amazing place for life coaching, and I think that they can coexist with each other beautifully.

And life coaching is for people, and weight coaching is the same way, is for people that aren't bulimic, who aren't obsessively compulsive, who aren't nonfunctioning, but still suffering and still need help and still need perspective. And that's where life coaching can come in, and I think because of our environment, because of the way that our brain has evolved and what we're up against, life coaching is needed more than ever.

And if you are someone that is out there that isn't investing in your mental health, if you're not in therapy, if you don't have a life coach, if you're not spending time investing in your health, you will be, in my belief system, you will be completely left behind in terms of your ability to cope. Because the options are just getting more and more and more. The opportunity is just getting more and more and more.

And if you're not paying attention to your brain and deliberately thinking it on purpose, you will get swept up into the messages that are constantly being put into your brain. And if you're haphazard about that, you may end up being somewhere you don't want to be. So, I'm thrilled to be able to offer this conversation about the difference between life coaching and therapy, and to honor both of them as amazing professions.

I just kind of want to end with ... I'm thinking about a couple of my students who are therapists and life coaches, and some of the issues that they have brought up to me and the challenges that they have brought up with me between the two, have been being able to switch in between that past focus versus future focus. But they've also told me that they love working with life coaching because there's so much momentum, and there's so much change, and that's what lights me up. What lights me up is massive action, is seeing someone completely change their life in the way that they want to, to up level their life, to take their life to that next version. To blow their mind in what they believe that they are capable of.

I had a client just send me an email that says, "You know, I'm 55 years old. Who would have thought that my biggest accomplishments, that the most that I would offer the world would be now?" She goes, "I never imagined that I would take myself up so much in income, and up so much in my health and my physical body." She goes, "I'm thinner, and I'm making more money than I ever have in my life. And it's all because I started to really focus on my mind and think deliberately." And I think that's the magic of life coaching. That is what we have to offer.

So, those are the differences. I hope those are helpful. We are going to move in, in the next sessions, to talk about how to change your past. How to deal with being past focused. How to deal with any problem that you think is caused from your past, and I'm going to talk to you about how to be future focused. Then I also have an episode coming up that is all of your questions and my answers. So, I haven't done a Q&A call in a long time, and every once in a while, one of you guys goes to the site and types me a question about one of the podcasts. And we're going to go in. I'm going to answer all of those questions.

If you're a Scholar, one of the things that I've asked you to do is to read through those questions ahead of time, and anticipate the answers that I will give based on the Model. So, if you're a student of the Model, which if you're in Scholars, you are, you should be able to identify the problem and put it in the Model and be able to solve it. So what I want you guys to do is go in and try and do that ahead of time, and then listen to my answers and see if we're on the same page.

Okay, everyone. Have an amazing, gorgeous, beautiful day, as I will. It's beautiful here in Dallas, Texas today. And I'll look forward to talking to y'all next week. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the "The", T-H-E, LifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self Coaching Scholars. See you there.

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