The truth is – the whole “life coach” thing gets me on my soap box. I think the word ‘coach’ doesn’t exactly tell you what they are doing for you – until they tell you what they are doing for you.
So listen up.
There’s a few different reasons I cringe at the coach title and it isn’t because of their highlight reels of #mylife posts on social media and it’s not about the assumption they make out in their advertising that your life is crap either.
It’s a bit about the saturation of coaches – there’s so many of them. They all have a key or 2 to share – but what is their unique point of difference? What makes this life coach different from that one?
Can’t judge by the highlight reel so don’t start there – no one has a better life than you – though some may have really gained some incredible experience in specialized areas – this is what to keep your eye out for.
What’s in it for you.
I cringe at the word ‘coach’ because I feel for the unsuspecting people who are about to invest in someone who doesn’t have the credentials to call themselves one.
Anyone who knows me knows knows that I‘m not one for the ego file. Period.
Even though I have a swag of certificates for all different kinds of things: the clients I attract don’t need to see my certificates – they connect to my message and what’s important to them. They connect with me because they are my soul mate clients. They are (or aspire to be) at the energetic level I position myself at – they see the strength I show up with and they resonate with that.
They resonate with me.
Those are my people.
The flipside of all this is because I have a diploma in ‘life coaching’ it would seem obvious to call myself one – I feel privileged to know the content and how to apply it with clients – and I truly feel that for a clients investment – it is worth to know if the coach of interest, is trained to be one – or not.
Great coaches ask great questions.
None of that surface shit – Effective questioning comes from knowing what to ask to get deeper to a core issue – how to ask and when.
This can take a lot practice.
There’s a question to ask when there is no answer given or the client says ‘I don’t know’ – There’s even a question to ask to a statement. Anyway – some people are born with it – I believe that wholeheartedly (I know this for a fact because my super highlighted facet of myself my energetic work – I didn’t need a course to learn that – I was lucky enough to born with it – as we all are – though I was blessed to recognize it and understand it from age 4 onward) so I chose to fine tune my skills with a life coaching diploma based on my own experience with a ‘coach’ when I needed one (which ended up being a really shitty coach – certified yes, but just danced on the surface rather than get to the real nitty gritty.
I hired my first ‘life coach’ in my early 20’s – back in the early 2000’s. As mentioned – that left me a bit high and dry didn’t it.
I already knew I wanted to reprogram my brain and she said she could do that – (hahaha, if only)
Anyway, after a few sessions we were still on the surface and I realized she didn’t have what I was looking for – I wanted the deep unraveling session where I could adjust all my thought processes and come out a new woman – I just didn’t know how to find a specialist for what I wanted – so I googled ‘retrain my brain’ and the answer was Neuro Lingustic Programming. So I went and got certified in life coaching and NLP to help myself – at first – to be my own specialist – seemed fair – then shared the skills with others for the purpose of rapid transformation and exponential growth (so important to clear through our own gunk first – and keep on clearing it)
I know I know NLP has got itself a bit of a bad rap over the years. Just like ‘coach’ the NLP thing has been a bit overdone – ok well a bit more than a bit. Not only are there plenty of people out there using different ‘versions’ of NLP – but there are plenty of people out there using NLP in a completely unethical way.
I know this because it was used on me in an offensively unethical way. (My inner circle clients get to hear all about this – it’s a fascinating and interesting engaging story – well, the way I tell it anyway – I was sucked dry of close to $30,000 and sucked into a cult because of it…unethical NLP – no one is immune)
So using the word coach as a job description gets me thinking of sweat bands, leotards and hard work –
Did we come to LIFE for that?
Either way – a person calling themselves a life coach doesn’t tell me what they do exactly – how to do life? Do they teach to you breathe, make shelter, how to get up in the morning – when to eat lunch? All important topics here – and there are masters of the breath work but they aren’t coaches.
So call it what it is people! Decide what it is you do and specialize in it.
You’re probably wondering if I have ever hired someone who called themselves a “coach” besides ‘that first time’ The truth is – I have – that time we touched on in my early 20’s that sent me down the coaching road – where the experience itself caused me to go out and learn to be a ‘coach’ – and one other. We’ll get to that (I know right, how can one make the same mistake twice)
These days I definitely don’t hire someone that calls themselves a coach. I avoid them completely – in fact – most of the ones who call themselves a coach on their business card, website, social media profiles – any of it – they’re not my kind of coach. They might be my friend – because I won’t tell them what to do or what to call themselves – but they definitely aren’t my coach.
Too much generic’ness. Not enough specific’ness.
So interestingly I won’t hire a coach but I will call them one if I feel it fits for what I am doing with them. I get to decide if they are my ‘coach’ – in fact – people who I have called my coach may actually be quite horrified that I called them that! Recently I hired a business coach – she actually doesn’t call herself a business coach at all (lol) but I decided she was one because that’s the way it worked for me because that’s where I was applying her unique style of training. Of course she doesn’t coach people – she isn’t a coach at all – but to me she was for the purpose of what I was working on with her that I decided that she was my business coach. I could call her that because I knew what she was doing for me – which isn’t what she said she was going to do for me… Capiche?
Perhaps I should have called her my business cheerleader – but she didn’t quite fulfill that role either… The point is – most of the coaches that have a formal training who don’t call themselves coaches are the ones that interest me – niche roles, specialising in what they know they do best.
Anyway. The best way to pick someone to work with in your life and business is to know if they are in your alignment before you pay them.
I’ve made that mistake too. Edging on a decade ago I hired a ‘coach’ who called her self a coach I didn’t know much about her – it was my ‘coaching network’ who made the recommendation – so I booked and paid for a session then didn’t hear from her for over a week after I paid her. Needless to say after a whole bunch of unanswered emails wondering when our session would be (considering I had paid for it) and no response. So I ended up asking for my money back. Well she was light lightning on the response then wasn’t she!
Incredible action speed. I look back and I was so glad I didn’t go ahead with it.
If the connection isn’t there – it’s not on – and if it’s not on it’s not on.
Another funny story is how I booked a psychologist when I was embarking on divorce because I thought I needed one – I was pretty rattled and I didn’t know what else to do. Anyway – another recommendation without checking the vibe – and again, I went against my own grain of how I choose to work with someone…
She had a high rise office and a certificate on the wall – and throughout our extortionately priced session, she walked me though about 3 PDF worksheets from a folder of printouts. For .the .whole .session.
Like, WTAF I could have printed them off myself at home and read through that – besides that – it didn’t take me more than 5 minutes to realise things were a bit off. Her office was full of cats. I like cats and all that, but holy shit – this was next level.
Not only were they all stuffed – I could have counted more than 30 of them. The psychologist who needs her own psychologist perhaps?
Next level crazy cat lady.
So that was it. No more choosing people out of thin air or off a whim or recommendation.
I could have got a better session with an untrained self appointed life coach and a printer.
So the way I choose to work with someone is make sure I align with their message or their language – I watch / listen or vibe in with a ton of their free content before I pay let alone consider enlisting any one on the planet to learn skills or ‘life’ style with.
This is the way to go for me.
It’s the ones putting themselves out there raw with an abundant amount of free content – they get my vote – why?
Because I can get to know them beforehand – I get to see who they really are and what they stand for. I get to see them, watch them and know if we will gel or not.
I recommend the same for you, do you research – take the best and leave the rest. Though if you know me, you would already know that I won’t tell you what to do. Most of the time I just tell you what I would do, or have done – and let you go ahead and choose for yourself what you want to do based on my raw and unbiased experience. Unbiased cos I just say the truth – I don’t fluff about pretending something is good when it isn’t and if I put my name to something I will stand by it – until I don’t – and then I will tell you why I don’t.
So I will tell you what I do – but not what you should do.
Of course if you are making a really interesting life choice I will honor you for that – I might even say ‘wow that’s a really interesting life choice’ but I won’t tell you what to do, or what not to do, or expect you to make decisions off the back of something I have said –
I will let you come to your own decisions.
So for me – I think the word coach doesn’t tell you what they are doing for you – until they tell you what they are doing for you.
Instead of following the masses – they need to get a bit more creative with the lingo and get clearer on the message.
We’ve all heard about the Masses – some of them are missing the M.
When I did my training over a decade ago – I ran with the title ‘Life Strategist’ for a while until I gave away my one on one sessions about ‘life’ – to Business. Then I was a business strategist. It just happened I was waaaaaay more interested in business at the time and I felt I could offer far more help to the ones who needed it in their business (small to medium enterprise) and the same life support skills would transfer into their lifestyle. Kinda worked – but still wasn’t completely in alignment because the way I do business is by magic along with some traditional methods.
I still use all the strategies for myself however I will never box myself into one thing ever again. I will never just be one thing. I am so multi faceted in my life that my agreements with others are an accumulation of all of these things and that’s the way I work. With a multifaceted approach. This is who I am. When I look back – I know I helped a lot of people. I stepped out of the “coaching field” at least 5 years ago (lol – did you get my joke – coaching = field ! (hehhehehehe ohhhhhh those coaches and their sweatbands) and I didn’t look back.
Until now. 
Though – I’m still not looking back I’m looking forward and seeing where my skills are required and in this energetic life we live: I’m honing into my skills of the specialist I am in vibrational frequency – and as we raise that – we can see where else you want to focus and if that’s you business then we work with that too – this is something I offer to all my inner circle clients – or an online biz bang course that you can go at your own pace. Yes it is the mix I use of traditional methods and the magic.
We treat your system like the electronic body that it is and go straight to the code. Sometimes there are corruptions within the code – this can be remedied. We find where the corruption is and change it! So easy! Once we’ve done it together a few times you will find these for yourself with ease and create your own codes. So simple and so effective.
So I’m not a coach, I won’t call myself one – I probably won’t work with one because I’m all about honing into specific areas of where the work needs to be done. Because that’s how I roll. This is how I make my heart aligned choices – how about you? I’d love to hear about the way you choose your life advice. Do you do the inner work yourself or do you choose someone to share some strategy with you so you can approach those shadows head on?
Keep listening to your heart – whatever it tells you to do – make aligned action on the heart choice to be who you are destined to be – back to your original blue print.
When you live from your heart embodiment is inevitable
Karsha
LIFESTYLIST
