Being unaware, we unconsciously engage our default behavior. Only when we become aware of something, are we able to make choices as to the action we wish to take.
Sometimes, just being aware, allows the problem to solve us--rather than requiring us to solve the problem.
Martha Beck, a life coach and coach trainer, stands on stage, nearing the end of an effusive 90-minute keynote speech for the semiannual "Meet and Greet" of the women enrolled in her life coach training program. She has been telling the 80 or so trainees a story about her diagnosis many years ago of fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition.
For the uninitiated, Beck is the Matryoshka doll of life coaches: She coaches herself, she teaches other coaches, they in turn coach, and so on.
According to a survey done by the International Coach Federation (ICF), as of 2012, there were more than 15,000 life coaches operating in the U.S. and 41,300 coaches worldwide taking in a total of $2 billion. While numbers are hard to verify, the federation's report found that accredited life coaches charge from $85 to $214 per hour. During training, Beck requires each aspiring life coach to collect fees for their time, even if it's a small amount--say $20 or $40 per hour.
What's surprising is that the coach trainees aren't people who believe they're doing so well in life that they want to tell you how to live yours. Instead, they seem to be people who didn't know how to live and found a way to at least ascertain what they want out of life. This skill, this ascertainment, is what they want so badly to share. But with Beck and her acolytes, for all their peculiar ways of speaking, they were gaining an understanding of the human condition--and accepting it--to an extent that few do.
A life coach is really just a coal miner used for digging through the platitudes and finding out what's true for the individual. The truth of a person's life isn't only about the will toward integrity; it's about discovering what you want under the layers of what you've been told you should want all these years.
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, May 23, 2016
Books---Self-coaching guides for Career Women:
Pamela Stone: Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women. (ebook edition $0.99, Workbook Edition in paperback $13.41)
Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge. (ebook and paperback editions)
Women and Time (ebook and paperback editions)