It’s officially self-improvement time now that the New Year is well under way.  And it seems everyone is either slapping on a Nicoderm patch, traipsing off to the gym, or talking endlessly about job/home/family/relationship advancements. Needless to say, it’s a hard road.  Thus, the demand for support generates supply in various manners – including getting a Life Coach.  

An extremely familiar term in the world of corporate business, life coaching includes trained professionals who help clients achieve particular goals – be they professional or personal.  Curious for a true firsthand review, psychoPEDIA sent one of its writers to take a closer look. In her words: 

I had always thought of life coaching as pseudo therapy.  It brought to mind creepy TV self-help guru Tony Roberts and seemed like a quick empty fix.  But unlike therapy, which I had been doing since I was a teenager like so many neurotic New York City kids, coaching claims to be different. “Therapy doesn't forward your action. Coaching moves you from the point where you are now to where you want to be.  The why isn't important; it's the what and how that are important,” life coach Brian Dorsey told me in our first session together. 

I had just come back from vacation where a relationship was beginning to dissolve.  I wanted to tell my story, which I was already doing with friends, family, my therapist, taxi drivers and the guy who came to fix my heater.  Now, I wanted Dorsey's advice.  That's why I was there, right?  At the start of the session he told me this was an opportunity for new perspectives.  He didn't want the details of the relationship.  He focused instead on what I was getting out of talking to everyone and their mother about it.  “If you want to get unstuck, go get unstuck with that person,” he suggested.  As with most coaching sessions it lasted about 1/2 an hour.  If I were to have attended another session, there would be actions he would ask me to take before we met again.  “If you don't do these things by next week how would you like me to hold you accountable?”  I couldn't come up with any consequences.  No more TV? A spanking?  At the end of the session he noticed that my energy had changed and recommended the book, Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenburg.  I began to see, as Brian pointed out, that the need to go over the details was not giving me security but, instead, false control.

My next test run was with Carolyn Senzone of Starpower LTD.  She laid out the ground rules; I picked the topic and nobody gets to be wrong.  Many of Senzone's clients are in career transitions.  “Not the next job, but what do you want with your life?  And when you make decisions, what are you really making important?”  In addition to asking “very probing questions” she uses visualizations and metaphors.  I told her there were changes I wanted to make with my career.  Like Dorsey she wasn't interested in the details.  “ In coaching we talk about the inner critic.  We call them Gremlins.  You can name yours.  Notice the Gremlins.  They are your judgments.”  I wanted to talk about specifics and Carolyn starts to tell me about space vs. particles.  “It's not getting caught up in the details.  Imagine you are driving on the expressway.  When you dodge the particles, you find space.  What in the space of your life could be more fulfilling?” she probed.

She talked more about the inner critic, how it gets in the way of taking action, and taming Sadie (my gremlin), by putting her on a barge to float away.  When I hung up the phone with Senzone I already felt the New Year getting off to the right start.  I could make friends with my inner critic and give myself “permission to be on the journey.”   I thought more about one of Senzone’s probing questions, “When you look at the critic, where is the deepest learning for you?” I visualized Sadie on a wooden barge on the Hudson River, drifting past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  With a renewed sense of freedom and drive I sat down to write my list of New Years resolutions, with Sadie at my side.

~Sara Costello

Get Yours:

International Coach Federation, coachfederation.org

Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Roseberg at amazon.com