Life coaching is a relatively new career in the sense that even as little as 10 years ago, if you wouldn't have told someone at a dinner party that you were life coach, you would have gotten a lot of confused looks and inquiries asking you to define what exactly that meant? Fast forward to 2022 and you are more likely to hear at least one person, if not a few, admit that they have had a coach whether it be for life in general, business or wellness. At last, the vocation of coach has entered into the mainstream of our societal lexicon outside of sports, even though it is not a new concept or career.
I will fully admit, that the first time I heard the term life coach, I gently scoffed and thought, why would I ever hire someone to help me do life? After all, I know me best. Turns out I did hire a life coach, but about five years after being introduced to the term, due to my own stubbornness. Imagine my surprise when I realized, not only was life coaching life changing and completely worth the investment I had trepidatiously made in myself, but that I was super shocked to realize I had been acting as a life coach for the better part of my career as an acupuncturist. WTF was happening?
I think my confusion was right there with everyone elses. I, like many people, had the misconception that life coaches tell you how to run your life so you can be a better version of you, or get those things in life you desire in exchange for large sums of money. That’s not what they do though, at least the good ones anyways.
The job of a good life coach is to simply show you your brain. It’s to be a loving, non judgmental reflection of the stories your brain is reporting to you as if it was the God’s honest truth and generating your reality from, so you can decide if those thoughts are serving you, or if it’s time to evict them and rent space to new thoughts and possibilities. They hold the space so to speak, so that you can start to look at your mind without the normal judgement and contempt most of us have for ourselves. They point out when we have reverted to black or white thinking and left the land of possibility for the safety of probability. And the great ones, often risk the relationship by pointing out when we are in our own damn way of making our dreams come true, usually due to some habituated emotional reaction that we have complete power to recognize and change if we so decide. In essence, they listen to us tell them what our dreams are, and they fight for us to hold the belief that we can get there, until we do. Very often speeding up the process had we just decided to go it alone.
This is what I had been doing for the majority of my career, while putting needles into someone. Why had no one told me?!
When someone comes to me for help, I typically ask, what is it you want to get out of our time together? What are you missing in life or what has you so worked up that it has driven you here to this point of being willing to let a stranger put many tiny needles into your body so you can relax? And then I listen deeply with every part of my being. I listen to their words, their tone, and watch for what they aren’t saying, but their bodies seem to be silently screaming. I ask a ton of questions about the person’s wellness- not just their health. I ask about what they think their relationship to spirit is? When the last time they felt really really well was and why they think that is? I ask what emotions they revert to under stress? I ask what they think will get better in their life if they achieved all of those goals that drove them to me in the first place? And of course I do a health history, sometimes starting from their time in the womb until now so I can see what could use rebalancing, but also so I can observe how attached or detached they are from their story, their symptoms, and their circumstances. And these questions are part of the process because every great practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine knows what wellness isn’t simply the absence of disease. Wellness arrives when the mind is clear and the body is unburdened so that the spirit has a safe space to reside and animate our paths from.
All of these questions and observations sets the stage for how we will enter into a unique relationship to uncover that person’s innate wellness together. And yes, for many of my clients, a positive side effect of finding their own recipe back to wellness yields a child. Because life wants to happen. Life wants to create itself, but it never wants to be created for someone else.
I have spent the last five years excavating my own wellness and relearning myself with life coaching. I can honestly say, it’s the best investment I have ever made in myself. I am more confident and way less harsh with my habituated thoughts. Making better choices for myself has become easier now that I know why I used to continually make poor food and alcohol choices despite “knowing better.” I became a better parent, friend and wife because I learned how to handle and allow any emotion not just the good ones (husband agrees despite initially raised eyebrows when mentioning I might hire a life coach!). I stopped living from a place of scarcity. I used coaching to heal the last stubborn piece of an autoimmune illness. I used it to recommit to being a fertility coach even while going though nine long months of what looked like ovarian cancer and ultimately ended in a hysterectomy. I no longer feel the need to achieve as an avenue to self worth. I achieve because I can and it is an avenue to serve others which for me, fills my cup in the best possible way with way less burnout. Some of this I did one on one with a coach, but much of it I did on my own after learning how to self coach. And I want to teach you how to do the same. I went through not only my own arduous and rewarding journey, but I also finished a year long life coach certification in April of 2021 with the Life Coach School so that I could touch as many lives as possible with the power of life coaching. And because I believe in learning from the best if you want to provide the best service possible. So come relearn yourself with me by your side. Come take a journey to uncover your own innate wellness and see what unfolds. And if you are trying to conceive, while it won’t guarantee you a baby, I do guarantee that it will make your fertility journey worth it regardless of the outcome. That I pinky swear.