I’ve heard it said that going to see a coach means that you have failed. That you are weak and can’t make it.
I have a great British word for that.
Bollocks!
Any professional athlete knows that no matter how skilled and accomplished you are, a coach is essential to help you be focussed, to motivate, to challenge, and ultimately to help you see opportunities to succeed that you have missed.
You see being close to something means that you are emotionally associated with both the outcome and the process. Not a great recipe for objective thinking! Einstein once said “you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.” In this way he was recommending finding a way of thinking differently to accomplish more.
Therein lies the benefit of a coach. They aren’t there to be your subject matter expert. They aren’t there to tell you what to do. A coach, if they are good at what they do, is there to help you think through the situation that you find yourself in and challenge the assumptions and constraints that you place there. Whether for good or bad, we all assume things! Coaches help us work out whether those are valid or not.
Now is a great time to think about what you are trying to achieve, even question what decisions you are looking to make. It might be worth talking with a coach. Several of you are smart; before you make the choice. You need to find someone who you can trust and can respect their process. I was going to say “like” but that’s actually not the best option. If you like the coach you are dealing with, great. It’s not the best selection criteria to simply find someone you like. It is more helpful to you to respect them and the process that they work through with you than to look to find your next BFF!
Electing to seek out a coach is a sign of strength of purpose, of real personal insight, and a decision to take positive steps to achieve your goals. It is a choice to make your goals more than just something you wrote down somewhere on a post-it note!
