I’ve worked with a tremendous number of coaches over the last fifteen years.
Life coaches, business coaches, health coaches, creative coaches….you name it.
Each has decided to shift from their old career into something new and more meaningful, like my friend Annie.
Annie’s 48, works in an office for a company supplying environmental cleanup services, and is totally sick of what she’s been doing in her work for the last seven years.
Both her her kids are in college. It’s an empty nest. Did I mention she’s also divorced? And she just can’t fathom having to drive the hour back and forth to work each day doing something that leaves her bored out of her mind for the next ten years til she retires.
So she chose to become a coach.
Yet after spending thousands, even tens of thousands, on learning how to market, do summits, grow lists, and yes, even how to coach, she’s still sitting by her phone, checking her email and making social posts into what feels like a void.
No one is listening. No one is calling. No one is enrolling. What has gone wrong? Is she just not any good?
On the phone with me, she’s despondent. She tells me she really thinks nothing is working, and is totally bummed out about where to go next.
“Annie,” I say, “you wanted to become a coach to fix people. To help people. You wanted to show them how to become masterful in their lives because that’s what turns you on and lights you up, right?”
I hear her sniffle on the other end of the line. I assume she’s nodding yes.
“Well check it out, how’s YOUR life?”
You know, this is not what she wants to hear. I’m pretty sure it’s not the pep talk she was expecting.
I continue, “You spent all this time and cash went to all these rah-rah events to get psyched up and confident that you are a COACH now! But a coach has to live the life they teach. Live it first. Pass on wisdom after.
“Is your life exactly how you want it? Are you happy? Are you in Flow? Do you trust the universe? Do you trust yourself? Are you fearless and bold? Do you know how to make and keep money? Do you make good decisions? Are you an over-thinker and worrier? Or do you almost never wallow in worry and lack-thinking?!”
(Well, I didn’t say ALL that since Annie was already pretty knocked over.)
Finally she says, “Well if I only had some coaching clients, then everything would be so much better!”
Which, from a Flowdreaming perspective, is the same thing as saying, “If only something outside me would validate how good I am, then I’d feel good. But no one’s doing that. How can I believe in myself if no one else believes in me first? I’m waiting on the world and all my future clients to tell me I can do it.”
Not only that, but Annie’s house is empty. Her friends have scattered or are dangling through marriages they hate. Her day-job sucks. She’s not dating and frankly, gave up after ratty ex-husband Mick left the scene.
Her way of solving this was to get more training! To pack more knowledge in her head and hope it would solve it.
But here she is, wailing, “I KNOW all this stuff! What can’t I DO it? Why doesn’t it work for me?!”
And there, my friends, is the key: “Knowing more” is a false promise. Our minds tell is if we only learn more, get more training, surround ourselves with other entrepreneurs and copy their systems, etc, everything will be perfect and we’ll make six-figures this year.
But here’s the reality: What we ARE is what we make. How FEEL is what happens to us.
Annie’s #1 Job is to create happiness and joy in her life. To break out of fear. To make her contentment independent of what anyone else does or doesn’t do for her. Her joy comes from intimacy with others, connection with friends, partners, and friends and family who care.
Her strength comes from her own inner knowing that she is awesome inside and out, that she deserves the world served up to her on a silver platter. That she is beautiful and healed and worthy and smart.
Now, how about getting THAT? Well THAT is something you BECOME. Something you ARE. Not something you know.
Somewhere, you have to learn to shift that knowledge into experience. Shift the intellect into feeling. Shift “know how” into being.
And that is what we all are all actually afraid of: Being different, riskier, stronger, and bigger and more seen than we were before. Stuffing our heads with systems and “how to’s” is easy and non-threatening.
But then all that knowledge gathers dust. It’s waiting for you to make it real — to insert it in your life and LIVE IT.
Annie can sure coach. I know she can. But she isn’t yet living her own real self. She’s tumbling head-first into the rocks of failure, and this is exactly where her Flow wants her to be—which is seeing where she gives up and plays small.
Ironically, this is also what she wants to help other break through.
Ok Annie, what will you do now?
You can know everything under the sun about right-thinking, co-creating, abundance mindsets and more. But unless you are LIVING those mindsets every day, you are no further ahead. You’re an encyclopedia that your own life doesn’t read.
You can fix this.
Get in Flow. Grow inside your insides. Get so big and bright other people crane their necks to look at the sun — you. Be the person they want to be.
Really be them, not fake be them.
Go find your inner power. Go find your ease. Go find your faith. Go find your fearlessness. Go risk opening your heart. Spend time on this. Spend a year or years on this.
When you don’t care what others think/need from you, you are totally freed. And when you are freed, everyone wants a piece of that.
That, my friends, is the secret sauce. That is the coach who makes it vs. the one who struggles.
Do you relate? Share with me by leaving a comment below.
P.S. if you want to start or continue your path of healing and growth through understanding Flow and the role of the universe in your life, I invite you to join Flow On! right now.
