Why Coaching (aka, when "keeping your shit together" is not enough)
Let me be honest: years ago, when I first heard that there was something called a “life coach,” I was quick to judge it as nonsense. More specifically, I saw it as some kind of luxury service that had nothing to do with me or anyone I knew. Therapy made sense, but life coaching seemed like a nebulous line of work that wasn’t grounded in a formal body of knowledge.
What’s more, why would anyone need a life coach? Why can’t people just "keep their shit together"and not have to pay someone to tell them what they already know? I thought those questions, but deep down inside me I knew exactly why someone would seek out a coach: living in this world and being true to one’s self is very challenging—why struggle alone when there are people with tools and training who can help?
I came to a point in my life when I knew for sure that I was exhausted with just “keeping my shit together. ” It was time to try something new. So, I started doing research into different ways of thinking and being. I wanted to know more about what I came to identify as my “habits of mind”: the patterns of thought that I noticed I kept returning to every time I thought about moving forward and doing things that I wanted to do but scared me. Where did these habits come from? How did they help me? How did they hurt me? What would happen if I let some of those habits go and replaced them with new ones?
It was inevitable that I would be led to coaching, a profession entirely dedicated to asking and answering these questions.