Who Needs a Life Coach? (A Philosophy of Life Coaching)

 A Philosophy of Life Coaching

It’s 2020, a time of flourishing for grifters and peddlers of half-baked life advice. Consider the life coach - a 20 year old university dropout living in their parents basement, a fit tattooed guy here to imbue you with his personal ideology, the Silicon Valley self improvement guru selling the secrets to fulfillment through techno-chakra alignment.

Who needs a life coach? I contemplate this, as I sit on my porch, thinking about my work as a life coach.  It’s a bummer of a brand to take on. Yet I can’t shake the conviction that people now more than ever need grounded guidance and support. There is a shadow of a cultural role which I see many people searching for.

 I will call this the role of the guide. It’s important in any society, and is found throughout history. We may call and iteration of it a mentor, teacher, master, sage, psychotherapist, coach. The guide provides an external view, helps the individual understand themselves and their path with greater clarity. They may make a brief appearance - providing some needed wisdom at a turning point, or be a recurring figure - offering advice, reflection, and asking pivotal questions. 

 The way this role has manifested in our society is in the modern therapist. However, it has failed at integrating people meaningfully into the world around them, and I believe has been parasitic to our collective health. The therapy mindset casts away our responsibility to care for one another and keep each other to account. It feeds on our sickness to sustain itself, but doesn’t make us truly well. It’s hold on our society points to a greater weakness - collectively, we don’t know where we are going, what we care about, or what life should look like. We’re searching for guidance, but are we finding it? 

I approach coaching as taking on the role of the guide on an individual level. I take seriously the responsibility of this position, and given how fraught the landscape is, I want to make my approach to it quite clear. The following is my philosophy of life coaching. 

1. You need a philosophy of life.

 What is your life for? What values and virtues guide you? What are your priorities? Why should you be motivated to go to work? The problems we encounter day to day look different when we know where we are going. General lack of direction, I believe, is the biggest aggregator of issues. Once you have a direction, the rest becomes much clearer. In practice, most therapy doesn’t attempt to provide this. It surfaces emotional trauma, unresolved desires, and addresses motivational blocks. My main focus is having people develop a clear, gut level philosophy of their life. 

2. You need to understand the world to understand yourself. 

This is almost inextricable from having a philosophy of life. What is your life for begs the question what is life for? You don’t exist in a vacuum. Your metaphysics - that is, what you believe the world is made up of, how benevolent you think it is, how you relate to it - deeply affects your understanding of yourself. You hold a place in the world, and if you believe it is a hostile world which is inherently destructive, your vision for your life will look quite different than if you believe it is a clay block waiting for you to sculpt it. 

You need a guiding vision of what you want the world to be like. Without this, you will not be able to have a vision for your own life. 

3. You need to understand your own internal logic. 

People often treat the actions and motivations of themselves and others as irrational. Consider instead that people are operating on a personal implicit logic which they may not know about and which may not be objectively true, but which is based on their experience. Usually, you try to impose an external intellectual logic, rather than trying to understand your own internal logic. This makes it easy to deceive yourself with grand delusions of rationality, while acting against your own interests. A whole new world of possibility opens up when you begin to understand how your own internal logic is guiding your behavior and thoughts. Once you understand it, you can begin to shape it. 

4. The work has to ground out 

I don’t want to spend years dredging up the same emotional trauma. I make sure to set concrete goals with people to test if our work is going well. Can you now accomplish tasks you couldn’t before? Has your capacity to relate to people increased? Are you driven by a clear vision? I don’t want to be engaged in endless dialogue, I want to set people on a productive course and then help them on their way should they need it. If it doesn’t seem like we’re making progress, I’ll suggest we reassess working together. 

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There is much more that goes into my work, but I consider the above to be the philosophical foundations. Despite my qualms about brand, I believe in what I do, and I have seen it have a real effect in people’s lives.  There is nothing like the experience of watching people regain clarity and stability in their lives. It has happened enough times that I believe this to be worthwhile. I strive always to work humbly, with integrity, and with a great love for the world. If all this is something you’ve been seeking, I hope you’ll be in touch. You can read more about my coaching here, and email me at willow.lianna@gmail.com. I’m always happy to chat.