FROM career to the kitchen, never has it been easier for the "fairer" sex to have it all. The glass ceiling shattered, modern mums now have the joy of juggling children with high-flying jobs, they can gaze over bulging waistlines at dozens of celebrity magazines full of size-six beauties; live in homes with not one but two, maybe three, bathrooms to clean and when it comes to the bedroom, well everyone's doing it, aren't they?
Is it any wonder the Capital's burgeoning list of specialists offering to sort out our miserable lives has never been longer?
Once considered California dreaming New Age claptrap, life coaching has emerged as the new boom industry.
Next week a brand new style of life coaching service will enter the fray. Consciously Female is being launched by Edinburgh-based celebrity TV coach Dawn Breslin.
Based around Weightwatchers-style weekly meetings, participants devise goals to work towards over an eight-week period. Gathering in a social club setting they will receive a motivational talk from their high-flying coach, then split into groups to carry out workshops, discuss fashion and swap style tips and share their relationship woes.
The first of its kind in the country, former GMTV coach Dawn was among Scotland's first life coaches when she launched her business almost 15 years ago. She says she is simply responding to demand.
"Women are involved in a constant juggling act," she says. "It often takes something big – like losing a job or, worse, losing someone close or being diagnosed with an illness, before we step back and say 'hold on, what am I doing with my life?'. They are trying to be the best mum, the best employee, the best wife – something has to give. They end up running through life – where's the quality in that?
"From past experience I know that people's lives can be transformed in just eight weeks. I know they will leave with more self respect, higher self esteem and physically they will be transformed."
With one-to-one coaching sessions costing up to £150 an hour, sharing your problems certainly works out cheaper – the eight-week lifestyle club costs from £140, making life coaching suddenly more accessible.
For an increasing number of clients, meanwhile, life coaching is free.
Gillian Brown, of city-based Nu-U Coaching, says a modern life coach is just as likely to be paid by some of the city's biggest employers to help their staff reach goals – or cope with the nightmare of redundancy.
"We're doing a lot of what's called 'outplacing'," she explains. "It's where we are working with companies to support their staff."
And as businesses shed jobs throughout the city, outplacing is now definitely "in".
"Redundancy is difficult for the person involved but it also has
'It did have a stigma but in Scotland life coaches are very focused on achievement'
an impact on the people that are left behind," she says. "Responsible companies want to give people extra support through it by offering life coaching.
"People are at a crossroads, if not threatened by redundancy then their colleagues have been made redundant or friends or family are going through it.
"It's made people think about how they are living their lives.
"People often come to us saying: I'm not losing my job but all this has made me think about whether it is the right job for me."
Where life coaching was once seen as mostly a female-centred activity, she believes there is now an equal balance between men and women seeking support to work through their personal goals.
"There's a huge amount of male pride, they see themselves as the provider and having to be strong. They might go down the pub and have a chat with their mates,
but you want someone to be objective and to tell it, warts and all. Not someone who will say what they think you want to hear."
She agrees coaching has shed it's "New Age Californian" mantle and evolved into a mainstream service.
"It did have a stigma, people thought it was all gurus spouting mumbo jumbo, but in Scotland life coaches are generally very focused on achievement.
"And we are actually finding a lot of people coming to us wanting to be life coaches. There has been a 260 per cent rise on last year for people training with us, some will go on to start businesses, others will be managers or HR professionals who understand its benefits."
Business is booming too for Eilidh Macdonald-Harte. She launched her unusual combo of lifestyle coaching-meets-fitness workouts last year.
Known as "Weightshed" boot camps, they aim to tackle clients' lifestyle worries through life coaching sessions and weight issues through a series of physical exercises.
"Our clients are largely women running their own businesses and getting through all the stresses and strains that involves, but some can't control the negative patterns surrounding their diet," she explains. "They forget to eat or they eat the wrong things.
"They come to the camp looking for a new perspective so they can be physically and emotionally fit to cope with the demands of being in business."
And, she reveals, an increasing number of her clients are men.
"There has been a real growth in male one-to-one clients. They are in senior, high-pressure jobs and they want to re-evaluate what is important in their life.
"There's been a huge shift from soft style coaching of the past to one that's much more focussed on knowing who you are and using that self knowledge to get what you want out of life."
Dawn, meanwhile, believes we have entered a new era where the coach is no longer regarded as a wacky guru for people who can't sort out their own lives.
"The life coaching market had become jaded. But times have changed and there's a shift happening.
"Women in particular are starting to realise they can't have it all, that something has to give.
"And men are looking at how they can change their lives too.
"Life coaching might have had a stigma at one time, but not any more."
• Dawn Breslin's Consciously Female Club will begin next Wednesday with its first two-hour meeting at the David Lloyd gym in Newhaven from 7pm. Further information: 0131-669 7889.
• New-U Coaching runs sessions for individuals and corporations, go to www.newucoach ing.co.uk.
• Eilidh Macdonald-Harte runs Harte Life Coaching and operates Weightshed boot camps For information go to
www.hartelife coaching.com.