Frank A. Jones

3.21.05

I was sitting in a Borders Books Cafe a few days ago and overheard a particular Life Coach in her open and free public coaching of a client. I tried not to overhear the conversation, but you know  Americans talk to the world when they talk on their cell phones or to friends about the most intimate or inane matters. I often wonder why we blare our ignorance for all to hear. Could it be that we really think much of the drivel we talk is important enough that others want to hear it?

This encounter, as I characterize it, made me wonder about a number of things: Why can’t we assess our own superficiality and curb our dogs? Why is it that those with little insight usually offer it so freely, frequently, and so publicly for all to hear? Why will Americans do just about anything for a moment of recognition, whether of fame or infamy? Rarely those who have insight  pronounce it to the world, but frequently, those who do not have it are unable to see that fact, and so blare nonstop claptrap, allowing others to see their ignorance. 

This was my second Life Coach counseling experience in a public place. But why public places for Life Coaching? These places seem like inappropriate venues for having one’s life refashioned by another. And why Life Coaches for adult human beings anyway?

My first encounter was in a Starbucks; as I sat trying to develop an article for this magazine, I heard an intrusive and needlessly loud discussion between two individuals. One weakened person was talking of her tragic choices in men and how she was unsatisfied with those choices and her inability to get and keep the right person in her life; then there were the job situation, the bills, the general discontent with her personal life. And there was the nervous laughter and the looking around to see, I supposed, if anyone in this congested coffee house could not have overheard all her regrets of life vented shamefully to all the Starbucks’ world of coffee drinkers.

As exhibitionistic as the coachee was venting her regrets, so was the coach’s advice given to her and us all. This coach’s advice, as we all heard it, was just commonsense and mildly reasonable, but not profound; yet it was clear that the coachee** could not have received any profound counseling pointed at her.

I had not then perceived that this was the cottage industry of Life-Coaching blossoming before my eyes. This session seemed like a scene from Waiting to Exhale that may have been pawned off as some black middle-class issue being resolved. My second encounter helped me see what was going on. 

The second encounter was in another public place, and I wondered about the use of these public places. The sessions of these Life Coaches seem like the unsophisticated cell phone culture elite that speaks ever so loud about intimate matters for all that captured audience to hear. Maybe these Life Coaches are trying to generate business by this public display of their new cottage industry; or maybe it is the clientele they generate that stirs such a loud ambiance and the resultant attention.

Whatever the reason is, these sessions do not enhance this new industry or the stature of Life Coaches. Thus far, with the grand total of two sessions I have seen and heard, I can scientifically say that I am totally unimpressed by the problems and the wisdom offered to resolve those problems. If what I saw and heard is the wisdom of the industry, I suggest that parents need to parent their children into adulthood so that those children are independent thinkers. The problems I heard were commonsense flaws in reasoning; the advice I heard for resolving the problems was mildly commonsense to mildly reasonable--that is all. 

But what is this notion, this industry of Life-Coaching anyway? Why would a fully grown person need someone to take his life and correctly advise on everything from God, sex, jobs, finances, social perspective, relationships, etc., except for being mentally disabled in some severe way? The Life Coaching industry sounds  much like the behavior of the many insecure ministers I have railed against, who think themselves qualified about things far outside their scope of training [if they have any training at all] yet they dogmatically and boldly, albeit, ignorantly, advise their congregants on subjects from voting, politics, education, social stances, sex, jobs, to finances, etc. 

Maybe, my historical and cultural bias against psychiatrists is raising its head here; I’m not sure. However, I do think, in spite of the black cultural context in which I was raised, that counseling is often very needed and can be very useful to many people—black people and others as well.  But the stuff I heard in the full range of my two Life-Coaching encounters, their clients I’ve seen, and the places these sessions were hosted make me conclude that Life Coaching is really little more than old-fashion parenting for grownups, who, at this stage in their lives, should be coaching their own late teenage children to emerge properly into young adults. And these coaches only show the gross parenting deficits of their clients.

As I see these chronologically matured adults surrendering their entire lives to Life Coaches, I am reminded of the admonition of the great and learned Apostle Paul, who criticized the Hebrew Church about their slow learning curve: “When you should be teachers, you need another to teach you of the first principles of the oracles of God...You are babes.”

Isn’t there a danger in this movement that asks one man/woman to allow another person whom he/she does not know to guide his/her entire life? Each person is responsible for his/her life--not another's. Remember, Jim Jones was a Life Coach also, and he took thousands of faithful followers of him, not God, to Guiana, and they did not come back.

Is this new and unregulated industry of Life Coaching*** a danger zone, or is this just another of the many national fads that Americans are so fond of passing through without lasting harm?

** I use this word loosely to identify a person who is coached, the client of the Life Coach.

***There are no qualifications to become a Life Coach. Kits are being sold on the internet on how to become Life Coaches. These are the people who take over the lives of many.

Home