Life Coach

What’s the difference between a Life Coach and a Pastor?Maybe only this one thing: they’re blind to the opposite need.A Life Coach is a partnership between client and coach whereby the two design, plan, execute, and measure progress toward life goals. I don’t mean to take anything away from coaches, but a good Life Coach knows that the answers to the question "what are the goals in your life?" always reside in the individual. And a good Life Coach believes that each client has the inner resources to achieve his or her goals.Here’s the Life Coach’s blind spot: the deeper truths of self-actualization are not measurable goals but fuller awareness of our groundedness in The Source of being itself. This awareness is not achieved but practiced, not accomplished but attended to. Some call this spiritual awareness or contemplative prayer.A Pastor is a religious leader that knows full well that there is a Spiritual Truth, without which life is deficient in some way. A good Pastor is not a slick salesperson but an inspiration to others to find the Light that is accessible to all. A Pastor encourages, teaches, and leads others toward the truth beneath and before all things.Here’s the Pastor’s blind spot: practical goals are critical to self-actualization! Sometimes people simply need to know how to make a salad or steam broccoli if their health is out of balance. Too many pastors simply don’t have any of these skills.If they, that is a Life Coach and a Pastor, have learned necessary skills, and themselves have spent the time to grow into fuller awareness of the Divine, well, then, they are virtually the same thing.[If you are one of those professions and you bristle at that analogy, might you be in denial of your own blind spot? Worth considering]