Business or Life? Life or Business? Lessons from a Coaching Case Study

Would it be possible to business coach someone without performing simultaneous life coaching, or does the success in business root in life? The key question of my work is what correlations there might be between the success in business and life. The hypothesis of my research - "does business end in life" - is not an original idea of mine, I have heard this statement at a coaching training. I partly agreed with it, anyway, it has been in the back of my mind ever since. Then, in the course of two simultaneous and in many respects similar coaching processes, one was centered around business and the other was around life, I had a chance to look for some evidences for the statement I previously heard and obtain some experiences myself. I realized in the course of the coaching processes that behind manifest business goals there are latent life goals. The hindering issues may partly be caused by jamming in emotions or personality, which can turn the business coaching process into life coaching. What is to be done in such a case? Up to which point should we insist on what was written in the coaching contract? When should we renegotiate and redefine goals?