Hot New Career: Wellness Coaching

As people age and continue to live active lives, their interest in living well becomes more important than living longer. After all, no one is too excited about longevity if all that it means is a couple of extra decades of decline. Meanwhile, as employers try to keep a lid on health care costs, they look to ways to support employees in remaining healthy and to help those who have chronic disease improve their well-being.

This is where wellness coaching fits in. Wellness coaching, which barely existed 10 years ago, has the promise of being an important new career path for those who want to help others develop and sustain robust mental and physical health. And according to Margaret Moore (aka "Coach Meg"), a leading figure in this emerging field, it's ideally suited to people seeking encore, or second, careers. "The ability to coach is one thing that gets better as you age," she likes to say.