I don’t know what it’s like to be coached by me but I can tell you what it’s like for me to be a client.

I’ve been working with my coach for almost a year and a half. I hired him more than a year after I’d met him, and several months after a discussion we had where he said things to me no one else would dare to say to me that compelled me into motion.  For a year, his words hung around in my head: “If you ever need someone to kick your butt, give me a call.” (By the way, he said kind and lovely things, too.)

I imagine situations as metaphors when I hear what’s happening with my clients at the start of a call; for some, it feels heavy, plodding and cumbersome, as though their feet are deeply immersed in thick mud, or it’s like they are tentatively discovering a new path through a light misty fog – unsure of which way to turn. Perhaps they are finding difficulty listening to themselves and tuning into the clear station of their inner wisdom with all the other noise, static and competing signals they are getting.

In my sessions, I feel like I’m tangled up in a big jumbled word search. I grasp for adequate language. I notice myself unconsciously holding onto my breath — as though the hesitation of speaking some thoughts out loud will somehow diffuse them.

A visual interpretation

If I were being self-critical, I’d tell you that I overthink things, but I don’t judge myself as harshly as I used to. (In my house, we are divided into two factions, the Talk-A-Lots and the Think-A-Lots. I am one of the latter.) It’s fair to say, though, that my mind is a fertile place of wonder and analysis, and in my service, my coach works with me to pull apart the ideas and concepts that propel and detain me, to get clear, to bring what’s unconscious present.

I heard Dave Logan speak a few months ago on The Three Laws of Performance; loosely paraphrasing some of his key points, when we change the words we use, we change how things occur to us (and to others). In coaching, words are our tools, our playground, our board room. When our words change, our worlds change.

I often cry in sessions (my coach says, “humans leak” – without judgement or attachment to the tears). Just as often, we laugh. Some of the stuff we come up with … well, outside of a session it would just sound absurd. You hire a coach to get a different perspective, some objectivity where you have none. It’s like having someone else hear you think, who then asks questions to discover how you feel, what makes sense, and what will move you forward.

When it comes to moving, we do move through stuff at a rapid pace, except when we don’t. I noticed after a period of time that my notes from our sessions reflected the same things in different words.

I asked, “am I circling the drain?”  His response: your stuff is your stuff and it’s going to keep showing up until it doesn’t.

I believe this to be true, and even though I have a hard time trusting in my growth, I do it anyway. I’ve never felt more myself.

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