Happy & Healthy

AWAY WITH THE LIFE COACH

Grounding together, what do you buy for that?

Recently, I had the feeling that writing as a profession has no future anymore. Why I thought that is perhaps a topic for another time, but it seemed sensible to consider what else I could do in life to earn a living. I'm not a hero in this: I believe I'm a one trick pony and although I certainly have some other qualities than ‘being able to write well’, I don't see any value in that.

Fortunately, when expressing such considerations, you immediately receive advice. While one person thinks I should talk to life coach so-and-so to clarify my career steps, another believes I should look at what is, who I am, and what I mean in this world. ‘Meaning’ and ‘standing in my own power’, vague lifestyle lessons that I could clarify with the help of a spiritual coach.

Wow. I knew that coaching and spirituality are big business, but I really had no idea that (well-thinking) friends and acquaintances see such help as a serious option. I thought we collectively understood the joke. You know, I know a few coaches. One wrote a book about zen in everyday life, another has taken his personal training practice to a higher level, and yet another focuses specifically on work processes. I love chatting with people, so you learn a thing or two.

“Almost all their sentences start with ‘I’, after which their own trumpet is blown hard and to the point of exhaustion”

I never have to use hard questioning techniques with coaches – whether they coach in life, work, love, spirituality, or flirting. Coaches go on and on about themselves. How good they are at identifying processes. How fantastically clear they can see what someone else needs. How wonderfully simple they can integrate spirituality into everyday life. And how easily they can teach you all that (for not insignificant hourly rates, let that be clear). Almost all their sentences start with ‘I’, after which their own trumpet is blown hard and to the point of exhaustion. And with a bit of luck, you also get to breathe together with your eyes closed to ‘ground’ – the solution to almost everything. They are the pride of the monkey rock, the savior that humanity has been waiting for. Not only deadly exhausting but a rare example of unvarnished narcissism, if you ask me.

Is it strange that I have no trust in a coach who only talks about themselves? After all, the intention was for that person to help me and not to organize a tea party around their own fantastic abilities, right? And although I think it's really great for them that they ‘stand in their own power’ and have found their own niche in the job market with that chest-thumping, I politely but firmly decline such a help line.

Well, it's nice: that such figures have managed to awaken the flame of my own power within me. I sometimes (okay: often) say things that are not always considered correct, tactful, or nice. Tell it like it is; Kalinka is never too shy to blurt out that a temporary break with your boyfriend is the beginning of the end and a soft band-aid on an already very foul-smelling wound. Blunt and bold statements: could there be no value in that for me in the future?

Written by Kalinka Hählen