What is the difference between a psychology life coach and a psychologist? The main difference is the university degree and credentials that a psychologist has to earn before using the title. Unless you have the credentials, you don’t want people to think you are a psychologist unless you want to get in major trouble with the law. There is a place for psychology life coaches, and without understanding human psychology.

3 Keys to Success as a Psychology Life Coach

1. Understanding What People Want: Understanding that people are motivated to fulfill their needs is key to motivating people to take action. People need certainty, variety, significance and love or connection to survive. Without getting enough certainty in their lives, a good psychology life coach understand the primary emotion clients will experience is fear. Psychology life coaching can be a good vehicle to getting more certainty. When people are getting these needs met at a high level they start looking to fulfill their needs for growth and contribution.
2. Recognizing What Is Holding People Back: Unless someone is just moving effortlessly toward their goals, something is probably holding them back from achieving it or at least slowing their progress. With good a psychology life coach, people can overcome obstacles a lot more quickly. What really holds people back is not usually what they think it is, otherwise they would deal with it. Most of the time what holds people back is the perception that they might get one or more of their basic needs met at a lower level if they take action. For example, someone might not take action because of lack of certainty; which takes the form of fear. This fear might be about lack financial funds or loss of funds, not knowing what to do, or any other fear of risking what they already have. Someone else might not take action because he fears a loss of getting his need for significance met and looking “bad” if he fails. If this person believes he has to be significant to deserve love and connection, he may even lose love or connection because he goes into the cave and hides from others.
3. Finding Empowering Alternatives: The main difference between a psychologist and a psychology life coach is getting people to move powerfully ahead toward their goals. Even if someone believes that she is stuck, taking a single step forward means that she is now taking action and no longer stuck. Seeing things from a different perspective or understanding what believes are holding someone back is not enough to transform someone’s life. For a true breakthrough to happen, there has to be more than talk.

Do Psychologists Have The Upper Hand Psychology Life Coaching?

Psychologists make have more education, but don’t let that stop from making a difference in someone’s life. You don’t need to be able to be an expert in abnormal psychology to help people move forward toward living the life of their dreams.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach