With the growing emphasis in society regarding adopting sustainable lifestyle changes for achieving holistic wellness, there has been an expansion in the opportunities pertaining to the health and wellness industry as a career for people within and outside the healthcare space. A health and wellness coach offers a road map flanked with constant support, guidance for shifts in behavioural patterns to individuals wishing to bring some significant transformations in their life through an approach that combines integrative health principles and psychology. Besides the necessary knowledge and skills, certain characteristics act as the contributing factor determining the success of the health and wellness coach-client interactions and outcome. Following are the features that a health and wellness coach must possess to put their best foot forward for their clients:
Passion and Resilience
One’s drive for health and wellness, the passion for facilitating changes in someone’s life, the unbeatable satisfaction and joy of witnessing someone’s transformation will allow you to thrive as a health and wellness coach. Your passion will be the initial spark, whereas resilience will be the fuel for your journey to establish yourself as a health and wellness coach. Passion and resilience will equip one to help others transform their lives by facilitating them to achieve their goals and aspirations.
A holistic view of wellness
At the core of one’s practice as a health and wellness coach, they would be required to be endowed with analytical abilities to assess the impact of the various components of an individuals’ life to achieve their recovery and transformation goals. The requirement to analyse the client’s behavioural patterns succeeded by charting customized action plans necessitates the health and wellness coaches to have a holistic view of wellness rather than treating mental, physical, emotional, occupational health as completely separate entities. For example, the role of a health and wellness coach for guiding their client through a weight loss journey would entail considering the influence of the client’s mental health, lifestyle, habits, etc., on achieving the desired outcome.
Ability to practise what they preach
To strengthen trust between the client and the health and wellness coach and to add more weight to your words, it is essential for the health and wellness coach to be a good role model and a practitioner of what they preach. This doesn’t mean that one must lose their sense of self by being too engrossed in reaching the epitome of health and fitness but rather striking the right balance while striving for an elevated sense of wellbeing and staying in touch with their self-introspection and personal transformations throughout their journey.
Empathy
The health and wellness coaching space is synonymous with empathy, passion, and drive to empower others. Some health and wellness coaches might even draw inferences and instances from their journey to relate on a deeper level with their clients to create a non-judgmental environment for them. They can facilitate inspired actions in their clients because of an approach that utilizes empathy as the fundamental part of the process instead of a method that just touches the surface and thus fails to bring any sustainable changes in individuals’ lives.
Ability to listen actively
Health and wellness coaches might find themselves preoccupied with various events at most moments in their lives ranging from speeches at events, attending conferences, packed schedules and many more. But the ability to dispense your undivided attention to your client and muting the nuances of daily life that comes as part and parcel of being a health and wellness coach is crucial for clients’ comfort and faith in the process. One can connect deeply with their clients by actively listening to their challenges, successes, values, and beliefs. A successful health and wellness coach would use their body language to display active listening to their clients, including gestures like nodding and responses that affirm and validate the client’s emotions.
Communication Skills
The entire premise of a successful client-coach relationship in the health and wellness domain is based on the health and wellness coach’s ability to connect deeply with their clients through their communication skills. Powerful questions from the coaches will generate meaningful answers that will lead the client to self-discovery and the path of their transformation journey. During the coaching session, your communication skills should elicit responses that provide a view into the reasons, habits, and psychological factors that hold back the client in bringing sustainable lifestyle changes. Neither the health and wellness coach nor the client will be set for success due to lacklustre communication skills.
Learning desire
When you are involved and working in the field of health, there is no end to the learning that you can do, wherein continued education becomes a way of life. Staying abreast with the new research, evolving techniques, participating in professional advancement events and learning from peers and colleagues contribute to the evergreen learning cycle of health and wellness coaches that also enables their improvement rather than restricting them to remain gratified with their existing knowledge.
Professionalism
As a health and wellness coach, respecting the time and resources of the clients by displaying traits like punctuality and preparedness is essential to do justice to their expertise as well the client’s health and lifestyle objectives. Successful health and wellness coaches have a structured approach that doesn’t waste their clients’ time and provide the right tools and resources to enable the client to act upon the discussions made during the session.
Marketing Skills
As a health and wellness coach and your own boss, you would be required to sharpen marketing skills that will allow you to become a familiar and prominent face in the health and coaching domain and reach prospective clients who see value in what you can offer. This will entail utilising the right resources, including social media, to showcase and promote your brand as a health and wellness coach and the contributions you can make in someone’s transformation journey.
Become a certified health and wellness coach with Weljii
Weljii is recognized as India’s best health and wellness coaching institute. Weljii’s health and wellness coaching programs, while being 100% online and imparting the required knowledge and skills of the domain, also utilizes real-life case studies to provide tangible insights and strengthen understanding of health and wellness. The program enables one to embark on their journey as a health and wellness coach after being equipped with skills taught by coaches of international repute, the right resources and tools for enhanced capabilities and continuous learning.
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Career as a Certified Health Coach
