Essentially it is about helping you to reach self-actualisation - a point at which you not only truly know yourself but within this knowledge possess a feeling of comfort with and understanding of the person you discover.

Your coach engages in a collaborative alliance with you to establish and clarify purpose and goals and to develop a plan of action to achieve those goals.  They will establish an understanding of what is really important to you in life and subsequently enable you to take charge of your life; to construct and act upon action plans that will help you to realise these priorities. Put simply, coaching is about helping you to create and work towards the grandest version of the greatest personal vision you have; to achieve success - success being the continuous realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.

You will be guided through a detailed process beginning with the need to re-evaluate your present position, who you really are, where your priorities lie and the need to make a definite and conscious decision about the future you would like to create. With the help of a personal life coach you really can re-shape your life, overcome all the obstacles and live the life that you love.

Coaching is essentially a conversation - that is, a dialogue between you and your coach. Within a productive, results-oriented context, coaching involves coaching you to access what you already know. The reality is that you have the answers to all your questions - asked and unasked. Your coach provides the essential assistance, support and encouragement to seek and find these answers; to guide you towards asking the right questions, and deal with the answers.

Coaching also incorporates learning and yet a coach is not a teacher and will not necessarily know how to do things better than you but this does not matter. Your coach will observe patterns - set the stage for new actions and then work with you to put these new, more successful actions into place. This involves learning through various coaching techniques such as listening, reflecting, asking questions and providing information. Finally, and most importantly, your coach will help you learn how to become self-correcting and self-generating. That is, you will learn how to correct your own behaviour, generate your own questions and find your own answers.

Gerard O' Donovan is the founder of Noble Manhattan coaching Ltd, one of Europe's longest established coach training companies.  He is also CEO of the European Coaching Institute, one of the world wide governing bodies from the profession of coaching.  Gerard is one of the most highly sought-after executive coaches in Europe.