I switched on the TV shortly after talking with my life coach, Kristin Brabant. A network sitcom I don’t watch was playing.
“My life coach said those are my ‘strongs,’” a woman was saying, the camera all up in her face as she smiled defiantly. She twitched like she was getting ready to enter the ring.
“Your strongs?” Her husband raised his eyebrows and ate a spoonful of cereal.
“Yeah, we don’t like to say ‘strengths.’” Why was unclear. “And instead of weaknesses, we say ‘stretches’.” (This was at least a little funny.)
“So what did she say your new career should be?”
“A…life coach!” There was a crazed look behind her glasses now.
“Your life coach said…you should become…a life coach?” Over the laugh track, her husband indulged her slowly, like he was speaking to a child. I will note that both life coach and life coach-ee were women in this scenario.
“Well, life coaches need a lot of empathy, and empathy is one of my strongs.” To her husband’s dismissive look, she said with finality, “And empathy seems to be one of your stretches.” End scene.
I couldn’t believe I’d just happened to flip on the TV to hear dumb jokes about a service I’m paying for and finding extremely useful. Except, I could believe it. I’ve been tempted to roll my eyes at the idea of a life coach, too. And now that I have one, I’ve met occasionally with judgment, and more often with my own anticipation of judgment. I try not to mention my life coach, and if it comes up, my explanations feel defensive or shy. That’s why I’m writing this post, to say once and for all what I truly feel about the matter, since I’m not great at thinking under pressure.
I found Kristin, the coach, by accident. It started with a silly video — sent via Facebook message by Kristin, the friend, about six months ago. I burst into laughter when I saw the two of us dancing like fools to “Single Ladies” in front of her Macbook’s webcam. She’d randomly come across it and been transported, as I now was, to our time as undergrads at Berkeley almost a decade ago.
Kristin and I shared an apartment for a semester, our beds almost touching because we both insisted on fulls in a room meant for twins. We sort of lost touch after she traveled to Costa Rica to study abroad and was replaced by a new roommate who was there less often. The last time we were good friends was when I went to her 21st birthday party, at a gay bar in the Castro — the most fun dancing. She was always a great dancer; in the video, it’s hilarious to watch me aping her moves. We both had long-term and long-distance boyfriends whom we cried over and eventually broke up with. We appreciated each other’s jokes. We both, I think, harbored a crush on our next-door neighbor. For some reason, I remember thinking that we were just too similar to live together — I know we butted heads over things, but now it’s hard for me to remember what they were. I’m sure Kristin cared more about the state of our bathroom than I did. My boyfriend probably visited too often. Mostly, I think we just didn’t get to spend enough time being friends instead of girls trying to figure out how to share a tiny room.
In any case, I was glad to hear from Kristin, as I always was — we’d found ourselves living in the same city after college, and occasionally caught up over a drink. I went to her beach bonfire birthday one year and had a great time with her crew, singing and laughing and drinking, blanket-wrapped in the warm glow. I once invited her to a party because I thought the crowd was weird and wanted company (come to think of it, this type of behavior might have had something to do with why we weren’t closer) — she actually came, and made such an impression that a few people fell in love with her. Kristin is beautiful and charming, with a sassy, smart energy. Every time we met, she’d make me laugh buckets; she’s a natural storyteller. And she’d always leave me high on the energy that comes from being well listened to.
That old video Kristin sent me — both of us wearing sunglasses indoors, mugging for the camera — spurred another one of our infrequent meetings. As usual, we had loads of updates for each other. I had gotten engaged only the weekend before, to the guy I’d just started dating the last time I saw Kristin. Now I was visiting her beautiful new apartment, she was a vegan (I thought this was new, but she and so many other people around me had always eaten so healthily that I couldn’t be sure), and she’d made a big move to start her own life coaching business. I was impressed. I didn’t know much about life coaches; about as much as the average sitcom viewer, I guess. And while I might have judged someone for having a coach at that time, I (perhaps irrationally) wouldn’t have judged someone for being a life coach — and definitely not Kristin. I remembered her work in college, supporting underprivileged high schoolers. She’d done a project (ahead of its time, I think!) where she gave away free hugs on our campus’s main thoroughfare. And her previous jobs were in teaching and mentorship.
I came back from that dinner and told my fiancé about Kristin’s new endeavor. In his typical wise and plain-spoken way, he remarked, “Well, it’s nice that you already know someone who’s a good life coach.” He never suggested I look into it — he’s much too polite to have even been thinking that, and anyway I’d adamantly refused the slightest suggestion of “seeing someone” when I was having anxiety issues at my former job. But his comment stuck with me.
Thinking back to our dinner, I realized it had given me a taste of what it would be like to have Kristin as my life coach. I’d told her about my recent departure from my job as a product manager in tech, and the options I was looking into: law school, finding another product management job, and trying to…“become a writer.”
“Your body language completely changed,” she told me after I was done talking about how maybe I could make another PM job work. She pointed out that my shoulders were hunched, my body turned inward. With writing, though, she instantly perceived and returned my own excitement. How amazing that I’d wanted to be a writer since I was a little kid! She encouraged me to reach out to acquaintances who are writers (something that we ended up having to work on for six months, since I was terrified). She recommended a few books — You Are a Badass and The War of Art.
I bought Jen Sincero’s book the next day — I’d noticed it on my fiancé’s audiobook queue, so I figured it had two stamps of approval — and I devoured it before the week was over. It was exhilarating, and a balm for the feeling of ennui that had surrounded me in the past few months of playing video games and wondering what could possibly come next. As I read Jen’s writing, I kept hearing Kristin’s voice — they’re both funny, sharp, and spiritual young women. Jen explains at the end of the book that the best thing you can do to continue to invest in your growth is to get a coach. I remembered Kristin told me she had one herself, who was helping her as she struck out on her own and built her new business.
I thought about my fiancé’s comment. What did I have to lose? I had some savings in the bank, and in the worst case of it not working, Kristin and I would go back to rarely seeing each other. As I guessed, and as it turned out, I had so much more to gain.
I could tell you very specifically about the things Kristin has worked on with me. She’s helped me realize what I want, and set goals to get it, goals which have become, through her gentle help, more realistic over time (“writing a novel” became “submitting a short story to a few contests for unpublished writers”). She’s taught me about the different energy levels (basically, states of mind) that we can access when dealing with stressful situations. “Energy leadership” set off my skepticism at first, but it quickly made a lot of sense to me, in theory and in practice. We haven’t really talked about strengths and weaknesses — and even to my untrained eye that doesn’t seem like the best thing to focus on. Instead we’ve talked about my core values, and how I am or am not living in integrity.
I could also tell you what she’s helped me achieve: the time that I wrote 10,000 words in a week because the consequence was having to donate $200 to a political cause I don’t believe in. (It feels like ages ago that we had to resort to such medieval methods.) The short story that I did submit to several contests (Kristin’s idea — the deadline being extremely helpful). The blog I started, which I hesitated on for weeks because I couldn’t think of a good name — Kristin convinced me that paigedunnrankin.com was good enough, and it was. When I shared my writing with my family, for me a necessary first step to sharing it more broadly, it was because Kristin helped me let go of any fears, however irrational those fears turned out to be. I’m now starting to look at what it could be like to have a career where I write (just about every way you can interpret that), and it’s incredibly reassuring to know that Kristin will be there.
Maybe I could have learned and done these things myself. Just like how someone who hires a personal trainer at the gym could have read up on exercises, motivated themselves (!), occasionally asked a friend to spot them, and gotten into shape. If you’ve tried to do this without help, you know how hard it is. And if you’ve ever worked out with a great personal trainer, you know the difference — even expecting to check in regularly with that person, or being able to call them when you have a question or a success to report, goes a long way. Not to mention all the things they see in your tendencies and your technique that you’ve missed. Someone professional has my back as I face the struggles and fears that come along with figuring out my life, and just because that’s more nebulous than physical fitness doesn’t mean it’s silly or indulgent. If anything, it’s that much more important.
And I think it’s important to change the message I picked up, that I saw echoed in that sitcom, which is: by all means, get a personal trainer, get a coach for your golf game or grades, but a life coach? Getting help living in alignment with your values, choosing work that you care about, and achieving balance and happiness? You’d better keep that one to yourself, for now.
Now, a life coach isn’t cheap. Over six months, I’ve paid Kristin what it would cost my fiancé and I to go on a nice vacation. And there may be a time when I decide — Kristin and I were open about this at the beginning — that I could get more value out of putting that money elsewhere. But I couldn’t be happier with my decision. And I want to keep speaking up over the laugh track that maybe exists mostly in my head, but exists all the same.
Kristin and I are closer now, a happy consequence of sharing our gifts with each other (mostly, hers with me). My respect and love for her keeps growing. If anything I’ve written has made you wonder if you could use a life coach, do check her out at www.kristinbrabant.com.