For many, self-care is about taking a minute or two for yourself. From a relaxing bath to catching up on your favorite TV show or settling in for a night of reading or being creative, self-care comes in many forms. Truthfully, however, self-care is no one thing. It’s more about taking time for yourself to recharge and relax so that the stressors of life don’t end up catching up with you. After all, no one can run at 100 percent for an extended period of time, and that’s where self-care comes in.

What Is Self-Care?

Before we can understand self-care coaching, let’s look at what self-care is and how it works. More generally, self-care is about how you care for and look after yourself. It’s a simple idea but it can be difficult to maintain on a day-to-day basis with all the things that one has to worry about. It’s also multifaceted, including more than just your physical well-being. Mental and emotional health is also involved, making it one of the more comprehensive disciplines in life coaching.

However, keep in mind that self-care coaching is not any one thing. It can’t be applied uniformly without tailoring the care to the individual, which is what makes a self-care coach valuable. After having helped others achieve self-care nirvana, they’re able to bring their expertise and knowledge to help establish clients’ self-awareness and a recognition of what’s needed to be a better, more well-adjusted person. Indeed, what works for one client may be wholly inadequate for another, but that’s where the right self-care coaching program comes into play.

Types of Self-Care

A self-care coach can help you in various aspects of your life from the physical to the mental and emotional. And while you can certainly try to achieve self-care zen on your own, it’s often much easier with a self-care coach because they can provide that useful outsider insight that can be difficult to determine on your own.

  • Physical self-care. This type of self-care is all about taking care of the body. From improving your diet to instituting an exercise regimen, a self-care coach will help you take care of your body so that you’ll be better able to make your way through the day without feeling like your body is letting you down. Some clients may need tools to help manage their hygiene or keep up with those doctor and dentist visits, while others may need help with their wardrobe or grooming.
  • Mental self-care. Beyond the physical realm, a large component of self-care is actually mental. Mindfulness, meditation and stress reduction are all important tenets of self-care, and a life coach can help align your efforts with your goals. Some clients may be given journals to write in to increase self-awareness and to help root out negative patterns in their mental health. Others may be given a prescription to discuss their mindset more with friends or family, or to take more time for themselves at the end of a long day.
  • Emotional self-care. As the third pillar of self-care, one’s emotional well-being is as important as the physical and mental. Some may need to connect more with others to help stave off feelings of isolation and loneliness. Others may need to set boundaries in different aspects of their lives, such as at work, at home or in relationships so that their needs can be better met. In fact, emotional self-care is as much about connecting with others as setting aside time to recharge and prioritize oneself, which can mean discarding toxic relationships, habits and beliefs.

How a Self-Care Coach Can Help Foster Development

One of the biggest benefits of self-care coaching is that it can bring about personal development and a reinvigorated approach to life. When you feel better, you’ll have more energy to get things done and get more out of your life, and that can help you grow and better manage those externalities such as your job, your relationships and the achievement of your goals in life. 

But that’s not to say that self-care coaching is easy. It takes a lot to turn a life and a mindset around, and it can be tough at times. But if both sides stick with it, there’s typically a path forward. They say a long journey starts with a simple step, and hiring a self-care coach is the first step in the work that will need to be done to bring about change. With the tools and techniques at your disposal, just about anyone can help pull themselves out of a funk and into a new approach and way of life. 

When times get tough, it can be hard to continue on. But with a self-care coach helping you find the time for yourself and your needs, you’ll be able to approach the rest of your life with more vigor. Not only that, but by helping you take time for yourself, a self-care coach can help you be happier and stay on top of all of your obligations so that you can build yourself up and start tackling your other goals in life. And once your confidence and self-worth grow, there will be nothing that you can’t do.

Become a Certified Health Coach with HCI

If you’re interested in becoming a self-care life coach, check out our self-care coach training program. Here at the Health Coach Institute, we help train health coaches that can make a real difference in the lives of their clients.

Join our Become a Health Coach program and begin coaching in 6 months! If you are already a coach and want to advance your skills, check out HCI’s Coach Mastery program. Feel free to get in touch with with one of our clarity coaches directly, by calling 1-800-303-2399.

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Health Coach Institute provides aspiring Health and Life Coaches with the tools, training, and support to make a great living transforming lives.