I’ve hired a life coach. As I also happen to be a life coach, this might seem redundant. Like the old maxim “Doctor, heal thyself” suggests, you’d think I’d just work out my own stuff, instead of hiring someone outside my own brain to help me do the work.
And to some extent, I do work out a lot of my own stuff. Thanks to my training, I can quickly reboot when a bad mood strikes and I spend a lot less time fretting about imagined slights or missteps. Life-coach training taught me how not to believe everything I think and how to get unstuck and move forward, skills I struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to pick up from all my decades of therapy. There’s an article online at Better Humans called “How Life Coaching Fixed What Therapy Left Broken” that makes a pretty good case for how coaching can be superior to therapy in some cases. I know about it because I wrote it.
Having a life coach while being one makes the work of setting goals and moving forward go a whole lot faster, in the same way that, say, hiring an electrician when you yourself are an electrician makes the work of rewiring your house go faster. I imagine that electricians, like long-married spouses, are able to complete each other’s sentences.
“Don’t let that ” ” electrocute anyone? OK, I won’t” and “Please connect this wire ” ” to the wall thing with slits in it? OK, I will,” are just two examples of how electricians might complete each other’s sentences. In the same way, my life coach can start to ask a question, and even before she’s finished, I know what she’s scratching at. I’ve only had two sessions since the end of last year, and already I’m hurtling toward a writing project with renewed purpose and energy.
Of course, while two coaching heads may be faster than one, there’s nothing that guarantees two coaching heads are better than one. It’s possible that where I think I’m heading is not where I will actually end up. Like simpatico electricians trying to not electrocute anyone but then electrocuting someone, it’s possible my coach and I are sending me down an unintended path. At which time I’ll have to make like one of the characters in my new favorite Netflix series, “Imposters,” who say, “Always forward, never back,” and figure out what comes next. (They also like to say, “See you in the game,” but that’s usually reserved for chilling exits.)