I used to think coaching was just a layer of crap on top of a heap of bullshit.
I used to look condescendingly at coaching aficionados hooked on their favourite "superstar coaches" on YouTube and TED and improvised coaches who would start mentoring people with no training whatsoever after a 2-day €3000 retreat to a castle in the Belgian countryside as a bunch of morons or con artists desperate to make money by sucking on people's desperation to find success, wealth and happiness.
Actually, I still do think so.
But one of my former colleagues and friends started training as a coach, then another one, then another one. All very intelligent, able, skilled and competent people. All of them very atuned to the human mind in all its sensitivities.
I thought what the hell, we only live once. You can only criticise what you actually know.
So I've started training as a coach last September.
And I absolutely love it.
I actually want to become a practicioner as soon as I'll deem myself worthy of being able to really help people.
It's been almost a year since I started this journey. My life hasn't changed that much. I haven't found a new hidden meaning in my worthless existence. I haven't become one of those insufferable "illuminatis" who talk to you about this or that half-ass guru who changed their life for the better.
I'm not going to be able to solve everybody's problems overnight with a 10-step plan. You won't have sex 15 times a week with your wife again. You won't lose 25 kilos in 3 months while eating according to the moon cycles. I won't hypnotise you into stopping your husband from screwing around. Your children won't enter Harvard after having failed all their math tests since they were 6 years old.
But maybe, MAYBE, I'll be able to accompany you on your life journey for a little while, by asking you goddamn relevant questions, making some clever points and helping you find within yourselves the means, tools and resources to live a life that's a little bit truer to what you had envisioned when you were a child.
Maybe, MAYBE, I'll help you make your inner child proud of you.
And THAT is a purpose in life worth training for.
Isn't it?
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