We want to live an enriching and fulfilling life. Over entire lifetimes, that can't always just be done alone and seeing aspects of ourselves from an outside objective point of view can be very helpful for becoming conscious of things we couldn't otherwise see within ourselves and our behaviors subjectively. In comes others who are more knowledgeable about specific areas into our existence, ideally composed of teachers and wise elders.
Yet if we do choose to hire others for help, there are various degrees of head doctors out there. We may need counseling or therapy during rougher patches in life. Also, if we’re really downward spiraling and or crashing and burning, even psychiatry or psychotherapy. If we aim for a watered down mix of a modern-day "psychiatrist" mixed with a "shrink" mixed with a "psychoanalyst" mixed with a "therapist" then in come the life coaches, and there’s no shortage of them in the world today. We’ll start with the bad, of which there is also no shortage of, and then get to the good.
Many coaches say they are for “mentally healthy people” only. Well, newsflash, there aren’t too many perfectly mentally healthy people out there. Everyone has their baggage and issues, but many people don’t receive or get the help they need earlier in life and therefore, even grown up working professionals on the outside may be “stuck” in aspects of life on the inside, because they have an untreated mental health issue that is hindering their work performance or personal relationships.
There are certainly different types of coaches. For the baby pool we have business coaches who aim to help one succeed in commerce. As it’s said that over two thirds of folks are dis-engaged with their jobs - so there is also no shortage of a client base there. If we want the more shallow end of the standard public or back yard swimming pool there are coaches who deal with helping and guiding people towards a healthy diet and lifestyle. A lot of people certainly need that because modern diet and lifestyle is so perverted and disconnected from the natural. If we go slightly deeper, there are overarching life coaches. Who helps with a myriad of issues in life, such as not only career path but assistance with family and social dynamics and how that relates to profession. As work is one aspect, and an important one, but yet only one of multiple legs of the table of life. Coaching focused on “life” is a profession that advertises itself on focusing on personal and professional improvement and effectiveness. It’s big business too - A $2 billion + per year industry. It's historically not been regulated either, so it's hard to track the amount of money exchanging hands. So if someone has a problem with a coach, there’s historically been nowhere to go to report a complaint but that is now changing.
Podcasting and life coaching share an aspect. Which is that there is little to no barrier for initial entry. This is both a good and bad thing. As many claim to be life coaches. Anyone can become a life coach online and perform consultations via email or video conferencing software. Because of this, it can really end up being the blind leading the blind.
As like with neoshamanism or douche bag yoga studio shamanism vs real indiginious shamanism. One is someone who had an experience then self claimed something, the other is someone who has been properly trained in it. Just like with a doctor, who has gone to medical school, have you trained with one who has significantly more experience than yourself? Did you go to Rockefeller medical school or some sort of alternate holistic health school? If you claim to be a doctor or any other form of physical or mental health professional, have you been taught by those with more experience than you with a lineage of practice? Same with coaching? Have you been trained by others who have a long track record of success?
Some coaches are alright and a small handful are quite good. However in the vast ocean of them out there, the majority are not - Being unqualified and ridiculously inexperienced, misleading, or harmful and flat out controlling using methods that can cause codependency. If a coach is running online program funnels, marketing campaigns, and posting pictures of themselves on socials, with inspirational top of the mountain with arms stretch out photos and corresponding quotes, new-age jargon, and other pho-personal development they are likely simply selling a storefront lifestyle rather than providing an authentic service for helping oneself improve with some 1-on-1 help.
We’ve both supported and also railed against profe$$ionals in the past speaking for like with most things, this is a binary. Meaning there are two sides, each with a secondary binary. Thus there is some good to this and some bad. Bad because it locks out those who don't have the contacts or aren't in the club, but good in the sense that there does need to be some credentials for industries where anyone can start in a field and instantly claim title. So because of the sea of self proclaimers, this is one area where finding someone who is credentialed may not be a bad thing. Showing they actually have certifications and experience that support their methods and to differentiate the self starters it may be important to find out what kind of training the coach has had for their level of seriousness and professionalism.
At the time of this writing, there are organizations such as the Animas Centre for Coaching (ACC) and International Coach Federation also known as ICF. There are also various levels a certified coach can attain similar to degrees. To become the most advanced tier you need over 700 hours of client coaching experience. It's not just a small course that you take and you are qualified. It can take you years before you reach the MCC level. This indicates that professional life coaching is serious and not taken lightly which is good. Even though centralized systems have their cons, the ICF also has a set of standards to which the coaches should adhere to, which has some good things when it comes to maintaining base professional standards from coaches.
If one is really serious about coaching, they will go through a training program or series of accomplishments to show their commitment and professionalism. Many professional and thus good coaches have huge hearts and really want to make a valuable difference in their clients lives. A good coach will also act as somewhat a fiduciary - A legal term meaning 'in a position of trust' meaning they, as a fiduciary, are legally obligated to care for their clients well being. Not a bad thing.
The mere definition of motivation is to give someone a motive to do something. That does not mean they’ll actually implement. Most any coach can give great strategies. The difference in going from good to great in coaching is getting clients to actually take action. It’s not about being a great motivator. Good coaches offer curious questions, new perspectives, and challenges that honor their clients goals and what they need to live their best life. Sure, a good coach will give clients valuable resources and tools to add to a client’s own tool belt. Affirmed previously shameful habits. Helping clients celebrate the life that they have and cheer them on to an even better life. A good coach is trained to see their clients strengths and ask them the right questions to transform the way they see life and show up in the world. Offering valuable ideas and insights.
On the deeper end of the pool in a grey area of what we might still call coaching or perhaps even better teaching or mentorships there is the dynamic of helping others with their development spiritually. For spirituality doesn't just mean the extra physical, but more the deepest conceptualization of the inner and higher aspects of ourselves, and how those factors drive our lives. Authentic spiritual self development requires constant improvement, growth, change, and thus work. We should look back at our lives from two years ago and realize we were an idiot. A true and authentic spiritual teacher should be an “idiot realization accelerator” allowing us to realize we were an idiot just three months ago while now working with them.
Yet, there are many people in very early spiritual development who because they see changes in themselves that are not being reflected in the outer world culturally, they see coaching as a target to hierarchically place themselves superior to those a little messier or less “woke” than themselves. They also see it as a way to get out of having to work for a large hierarchy. This is one of the main reasons for the large quantity of coaches that lean towards the spiritual, either pop, wooy, commercial, new agy, or other forms of inauthentic, into the more authentic. The separation barrier being those less authentic spiritual coaches will still have more work to do on themselves before they can help others. As the spiritual path means everything in your life changes, going through the tower card in tarot where there is a great revealing that many aspects of their lives were untrue, not having actually fixed those things or coming to terms with them, or having accepted responsibility for them, while much of their existence (the real life, not their fake storefront life) is actually a hot mess where the puzzle pieces are all spilled out and not put back together in a better way, rather than dealing with it people tend to try and remedy it by either outsourcing aspects of themselves to massive large scale social issues or via through other individual people’s lives, rather than their own, and life coaching can be a way to do that and also get paid. Some quotes from others regarding the dark side of life coaches, who still have much of their own coaching to still do on themselves, read:
“I had a friend who totally destroyed her marriage and did unspeakable damage to her adopted children and now has become a life coach. It's downright frightening to think of her advising anyone about anything. Her oldest child was prosecuted and is on felony probation for the next 25 years. I know 2 people who are life coaches and both of them are lazy opportunists. I know someone who had a teenage pregnancy, was thus, shocker, a rubbish parent and their child then became a prostitute who contracted AIDS. They have never taken full responsibility for this and are now a life coach.” The person who was perhaps the largest drama queen we’ve ever worked with is also now a life coach.
In shamanism there is the archetype of the wounded healer, where one is called to the practice because they themselves have gone through the darkness and then emerged back into the light. Through the furnace to be reborn as the phenix per se. But that’s if they're on the other side of having accomplished real hard mental and psychological work for betterment. These quoted examples, have not. It is possible that only a former alcoholic can coach someone on how to give up alcohol for example. But that is only if they have truly wanted the deepest change within themselves and embodied it. Again hard work.
There is a podcast out there with a goofy name, which won’t be directly mentioned because it could be here today, gone tomorrow. It’s host once worked at tech support at Squarespace - an American website software building and hosting company which is based in New York City. Over the course of his employment he said he noticed a very high percentage of those who would email him, chat to him, or call him to bitch and moan about problems with their website we’re, you guessed it, life coaches. He said it was so common that it became a running joke. Hey, “it’s another life coach bitching about their website.”
We know one good spiritual teacher who’s website branding is that of a coach who focuses on helping cancer patients because they themselves have had and recovered from cancer. Real teaching is not really something that you can study for because if you do not walk the talk, then your talk is worthless. Yet we can count over a dozen other folks we’ve known on the spiritual path, who because they haven’t fixed their life dynamics, and are nuts, who then seem to eventually go on to become life coaches. An acquaintance of ours, who has some very good things about them and some not so good things that toe the line on the precipice of being a bit crazy, such as having about half a dozen email addresses, each in which they has a different name, we recently tracked down and saw they have a new website where, they are now, you guessed it, a life coach.
Just like business growth is outer growth, inner growth is something different and more advanced because those with more soul maturity come to realize that our lives emerge not just from the lower functions but from our higher functions. A common one for those further on the spiritual path, especially women who are very interested in other people rather than gadgets like guys, is to become some sort of mentor to others with their development. Even we find ourselves on rare occasions in this position. But knowing we can only help those who are the younger versions of ourselves, who are going through past obstacles which we can, harn on heart, say we have had experience with.
Life presents us with problems as part of the reason we are here. In a system designed for the education, evolution, and maturation of souls. If our lives were perfect we would no longer need to incarnate here. Only we can change our own lives - If one is not willing to do the changes necessary, then not even the best life coach can help them. If one wants to change your life, they need to change their own habits to really help heal themselves. This is why it’s called coaching, like in sports, because the coach doesn't play the game, the one whose life is the focus of the conversation does. For each of us are playing the game of life on our own board. Good coaches and teachers know that if you tell a client or student the fix, they likely won't solve it themselves. Instead you allow clients of students to solve their own problems. For as C.S. Lewis once said, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
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