Nowadays, many people regard knowledge as a mere commodity to be packaged, marketed, and sold. Their interest is not in benefit for others' souls but their own pocketbooks. For example, one contemporary master requires a thousand ounces of gold before he will teach a single technique. We live in a world where the selfless sharing of knowledge is no longer a virtue.Often, when surfing around the internet, I find blogs and websites by self-proclaimed Life Coaches. What in the heck is a Life Coach? Do they sit on the sidelines while you go about your life and do cheers? Do they call timeout when your life is going rough and send in a secret play?
~ from 365 Tao: Daily Meditations, Entry 168 ~
Look, as I've written many times before, there's nothing wrong with seeking guidance from others from time to time. If you only keep your own counsel and don't try to learn from other people's successes and failures, you're going to spend most of your life trying to reinvent the wheel.
But what qualifies a person to coach YOUR life? Such an individual has never spent one millisecond inside your head or heart and they've never seen the world through your eyes. The only consciousness they know is their own. So, about all they can really teach you is how to live a life like their life, not YOURS.
A good many of these self-proclaimed Life Coaches charge a pretty penny for their services. While others don't charge a fee, I suppose their chief motivations are that it provides them with a certain degree of status and it makes them feel powerful and/or influential.
Look at me, they proclaim. I'm the only guy or gal who can teach people how to be really happy or filthy rich or unabashedly successful or blah blah blah.
I am most certainly NOT a life coach. If you have a question you'd like to ask me or you're looking for some advice, I'll be happy to share with you what I think. Don't put much weight on what I have to say though because, like you, I'm just a simple man muddling my way through life as best I can.
Besides, what has worked for me may be an unmitigated disaster for you. Likewise, what doesn't work at all for me may be overwhelmingly successful for you.
At the end of the day, we each need people who love, support and respect us, but neither you nor I needs a coach...other than ourselves.
sometimes people do need help from others to get on track with their lives, and it's those people who often unfortunately get suckered into paying a lot of money for a big wad o' crap. that's why i've never seen a psychiatrist. they are enormously expensive and i feel there's nothing they could tell me that i don't already know! for some people though it's beneficial. but there's a huge danger that you find someone who is just feeding you BS or even making your problems worse! to find someone with an interest in your own soul and not just your pocketbook is rare indeed.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly with this post. Only the individual can truly help him/herself. That said, I am a qualified hypnotherapist and into life coaching...
ReplyDeleteThe perspective you have about this is an ideal place to be, and if more of us had such a level of self belief then this would be the case. However, such a belief is quite rare in the general public. The aim of any genuine therapist mental or otherwise is primarily to help the person heal themselves. In this sense there are parallels with mind and body alike. To enable this to happen requires education, which is typically lacking for those with mental problems. The job of a therapist is really no different from any other teacher, and as any good teacher knows - A teacher is only as good as his student.