Get a Life, not a Coach

When a Brooklyn couple was found to have committed suicide with plastic bags over their heads, it came as a surprise, as they were both ‘life coaches’ and hosted a ‘positive thinking’ radio show, called The Pursuit of Happiness. This caused some reflection on whether the whole life coach, pursuit of happiness was quite what it seems. Among all the hype around a culture that believes ‘life’ can be ‘coached’, there are skeptics – I’m one.

More recently the New York Time investigated an industry that is darker than we thought. Many women, and these are the the vast majority of the victims, have paid big bucks, to get Life Coach certification only to find they had no clients. The costs were $30,000 upwards, some way higher. They saw the certification as the equivalent of a University Degree. It turned our to be a pyramid scheme. There a great podcast on this here.

It is an unregulated industry, and damaged people flock to this easy solution to problems. The 'courses' (there's always a course) sucker people into believing that this will be transformative, personally and financially. One course leads to another and on its goes, with BS business mentoring (another area I'm deeply suspicious of). This industry is largely coaches coaching coaches to become coaches. It plays upon the fashionable interest in therapy as a solution for everything, when endless reflection and regurgitation of your problems may be the very problem itself.

There has been a massive increase in the number of life and other coaches but not a corresponding rise in demand, so may are left stranded with little or no income. Lighthouse, a UK example, has recently been shut down. It is part of the general 'self-improvement' industry, and it is an industry. But life coaching is its dark underbelly, especially those 'influencers' and 'scammers'.  These people start out trying to become coaches but end up scamming as they are desperate.

Narcissism

The drivers behind life coaching are a combination of positive thinking and the finding of your true self. But do life coaches satisfy any need beyond narcissism? Since Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, there have been people trying to stem the wave of narcissism that has infected the relentlessly reflective, always on culture. Using a professional life coach is to outsource yourself or at least some responsibility for your emotional welfare to another person. You want them to heal you, make you a better person, more positive, happier, more content, more successful.

I have no problem with providing help for the vulnerable but the irony is that life coaches are usually used by people who already have the advantage of status, comfort and money. This is the where narcissism is camouflaged as coaching and the need for new age courses on anything that ends with -ness ‘happiness’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘wellness’ flourish.

Life is not an illness

The Life Coach industry sees life, like the Abrahamic religions, as a sickness. The starting point is to see people through a pathological lens, as fallen from grace, even victims. The life coach has a therapeutic, counseling role is to cure you, guide you out of your state of sin. They position themselves as priests who peddle therapy as salvation. It smacks of a deep-seated need for a religious substitute, a higher power, who has the moral authority to give you a 'sense of direction'.

Life is not a course

Who has the arrogance to describe themselves as being able to con another person into believing they need them to help direct their entire ‘life’? How can you set yourself up as an ‘expert’ on ‘life’? Get advice on tax, law, finance, but ‘life’? Life is not a course and a life coach is nothing more than a paid, inauthentic friend. Paying for a friend is undignified. I suppose it does act as a sort of dating agency to match up those who feel the urge to pay for a friend with those with no concrete skills, other being paid to listen and ask reflective questions, a sort of escort agency for lonely minds.

Conclusion

Therapists, life coaches and happy campers are some of the saddest, or at least ill-adjusted, people I know. The belief that human nature is so simple that a simple calculus of happiness, mindfulness or wellness can be coached into you to solve your problems, is as old as witch doctors. Human nature is complex, so life is complex. Relentless positive thinking through coaching comes at a price. It ignores this complexity.

I’m not against getting help, advice and support but when it’s formalised into these expensive paid-for services, with the tag ‘life’, I can feel my left eyebrow raise an inch or so. I’m not even against coaching, in specific domains, such as sport, gym technique, for chronic illness, skills development, whatever. But ‘life’?

Get a life not a coach.