Counselling and coaching: unless you are in the academic, public health or human resource industry, you may think that they are much the same.

At Guidelight, our focus is on nurturing the human spirit of every person we engage with, typically embedded within the tools of positive psychology and healthy nutrition and lifestyle approaches.

For nearly twenty-five years now, since opening our initial office on the Gold Coast and expanding into other areas, we have had the privilege of working with many thousands of clients – some as counselling clients, others as coaching clients, and sometimes both.

As such, this is how we see the difference between counselling and coaching.

The Counselling Client

Usually a counselling client is seeking tools or strategies to gain better peace of mind, reduce stress/anxiety, or perhaps improve personal health and relationships; thus eventually returning to consistently feeling happy, normal and good about themselves again.

The Coaching Client

A coaching client on the other hand, is already feeling happy and good about themselves.

However they seek to learn advanced tools of positive psychology, coupled with expanded leadership strategies and techniques, to increase the depth of their personal power. 

Coaching clients want to increase their ability to touch, move and inspire both themselves and others.

They are motivated to do more good in this world, step deeper into their capacity for loving kindness and compassion, and to humbly keep growing and learning to be the best they can be.

The Wisdom of Deepak Chopra

Dr. Deepak Chopra is world renowned for his ability to positively transform the human spirit, by raising people’s level of conscious awareness. 

In his pending (new) book, Dr. Chopra identifies powerful fundamental themes that support the deeper nurturing of a person’s unique power and potential.  His themes are deeply insightful and resonate with how Guidelight approaches our coaching work with our own clients. 

By way of sharing with people a taste of where our coaching approach may lead them, paraphrased here below are some examples of what may be covered over the course of an individual's coaching sessions.

1. Finding a new story for ourselves and the planet, realising the necessity of cooperation, compassion, non-violence and care for the environment.

2. Relying on creativity over destructiveness.

3. Giving consciousness a primary place in our collective education.

4. Developing a worldview that turns away from materialism and technology as the prime movers of society. Certainly technology is part of the solution, but it is not the be-alla nd end-all; it is a means to an end of better, more sustainable world.

5. Measuring progress by internal markers (eg self-awareness, inner fulfilment, spirituality), instead of external (money, weapons, domination).

6. Higher consciousness must be accepted as real and desirable.

7. Accepting that we live in a human universe entirely created by constructs and stories we project onto pure consciousness, and our role in it.

Counselling and Coaching Gold Coast and Brisbane

Regardless of whether a client is presenting for either coaching, counselling, or some combination of these, our view has always been that the client is automatically the expert in their own life.

Our role, is to respectfully offer a range of professional tools and strategies for their consideration, depending on their unique needs and preferences.

To enquire about counselling and coaching services at Guidelight Psychology Gold Coast, call 5527 0123 or complete the contact form on this website.