There is traditional therapy the kind that often involves years of exploring the sinewy terrain of ones psyche and there is life coaching, an alternative approach to therapy. According to Martin Seligman, the founder and pioneer of positive psychology, life coaching revolves around the essential question: Do you want to be pulled by your future or driven by your past?
Carol Kauffman, founder and director of the Institute of Coaching and an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, put it differently in aninterviewin the trade publication Coaching at Work: The difference is that in therapy you follow the trail of tears with a goal of healing, Kauffman said. As a side-effect, peoples levels of function and job satisfaction go up. In coaching, you follow the trail of dreams with the goal of igniting the person to be their best. As a side-effect some kind of healing can happen.