My Journey to Hiring a Life Coach

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Today I’d like to share a little about my journey to hiring a life coach. I’m going to start by revealing where I was when I realized I needed a coach. Then I let you into a glimpse of my personal journey with my life coach and I close by letting you know how you can contact me if you want more information on how I might be able to help you as your own life coach.

It’s always interesting to learn how people are led into hiring a life coach. The field is still relatively new and though it’s gaining traction, there is a lot of confusion over the term ‘life coach.’ When I first heard the term years ago, I rolled my eyes and thought “How narcissistic does a person have to be to claim that they can coach someone on their LIFE?” I thought it was just another woo woo hack that people were using as a money making scheme. I

Over the decade since, we went through several huge struggles as a family. We dealt with hospitalizations, many births, a miscarriage, estrangement from my family because of abuse, and a cross country move. I was constantly trying to ‘get better at life’ and took course after course hoping that more knowledge would be the key I needed to unlock a more peaceful existence in my interior life. I prayed constantly and begged God for help and couldn’t understand why it seemed that nothing was working.

Through all of this, there was a bully living in my brain. That voice, which sounded a lot like my abusive parents, was constantly telling me that I was failing at everything. I couldn’t do anything right and I began to believe that I was God’s first mistake.

I can see now what a lie that was, and that it was heretical to believe that God could ever make a mistake. However, in the state I was in I couldn’t see how I could offer any good to the world because I was living in a vicious 24 hour negative thought loop. That bully took over more of my thoughts each day until every thought centered around my perceived failings.

It Began With a Podcast Recommendation

A friend of mine shared about her experience with a life coach and sent me a podcast recommendation. Because of how much I trusted and respected my friend, I decided to give it a try. I started listening to the podcast and learned that our thoughts impact our lives. It resonated with me, and I tried to implement some of the things I was learning. However, I was stuck in the weeds of my own thoughts and couldn’t implement the things I was learning. I need someone to help me.

Around that same time, a Facebook friend of mine named Misty started sharing that she was offering Life Coaching. I read her Facebook posts and saw myself in many of them. Many of her newsletters brought me to tears because I saw myself in what she was sharing.

Because of what I’d been hearing on the podcast and what I was reading in Misty’s newsletters, I knew I wanted coaching but I also knew that I needed to work on some healing. Thankfully, I was able to find a therapist through the military’s Telemynd system. I began working with a therapist to get myself to a more stable place. Through therapy, I was able to quiet that bully in my brain and experience more healing from the abuse I endured as a child.

After a few months, I was ready to start coaching so I contacted Misty and set up a consultation call. We walked through some areas of my life where I wanted to grow and I found myself crying during that first consultation. I felt so seen in that call. Even though I had great friends, I worried about being a burden on them and didn’t let them into my interior life. I kept people at arms length. My lack of trust likely goes all the way back to childhood. If the two people who are supposed to love you the most are the ones who seem to enjoy hurting you, it’s hard to trust people. In that consultation call, I was given the freedom and space to examine my own heart with the help of another person.

I signed up for Misty’s coaching package and began one of the hardest journey’s of my life. It was like going to a personal trainer for my mind and heart. There were several times when I got off the phone and thought, “That was so hard! WHY am I paying for this?!” I didn’t know how to share and process my emotions. There were times where I wanted to stand up and walk away rather than face the reality of where I was in order to grow into the person I wanted to be.

The reason it was so hard was because of the necessary, difficult and disorienting process of transitioning from the person I was to the person I was becoming. When we are giving birth to a new way of being, we always find ourselves going through a moment where we want to give up, or quit, or run away, or find an easier way through. I kept at it though and I made my way through each and every transition knowing that on the other side of that messy middle was the life I was longing for.

Through our sessions, Misty walked next to me as my equal. She never led me to a decision. It was a lot like going on a difficult hike through a forest and I was the guide. I knew where I wanted to get to, but I wasn’t sure where the path was. Misty was there to figuratively pull the vines away, take out a compass and a map, and ask me questions that helped me see the path forward.

I Learned that I Could be Transformed by the Renewing of My Mind

My coach also taught me that I was creating a lot more struggle for myself through my thoughts. If I went into a normal family dinner thinking, “I hate cooking. My family is too loud. I wish I could go upstairs and take a nap. They’re not going to like what I make anyway,” then I was going to be miserable the whole time. However, when I made the decision to change my thoughts, I could have a peaceful, enjoyable dinner. “I get to cook dinner with my family and eat together with the people I love most in this world. It will be loud but those sounds come from our enjoyment with each other. After dinner we can make fast work of clean up because there are so many of us and then I can go rest.”

No subject was too small or too great. We talked about everything from laundry to my kids’ education. It didn’t take long before I was looking forward to our sessions, and would actually ask to stop in the middle of a call to process my feelings.

In the beginning of our coaching journey, we talked a lot about ‘Old Amanda’ and ‘New Amanda’ and I wondered about this ‘New Amanda.’ Would I recognize her? What about my family, would they recognize her? Was she going to transform into a completely different person? Would she operate in the world in a completely different way than I was? I was intrigued by the idea of this new version of me and couldn’t fathom what she would be like.

It turns out that 'New Amanda' is actually just a more authentic version of me. In fact, it feels like the 'me' I was as a child in my happiest moments. I am more 'me' than ever before and I'm becoming a more true version of myself every day. Each day I show up in my life revealing more of my uniqueness than I did the day before. 

This new version of myself is a lot less afraid of people. I have learned how to kick fear out of the driver’s seat of my life. Because fear is no longer in control, I can see people through a lens of love that I didn’t have access to before. My love was limited to the amount of love I was willing to show to myself – just like the verse that tells us to ‘love our neighbor as ourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39). When I was in my negative thought spiral, I was constantly spiraling more inward and becoming more withdrawn and fearful. As I treat myself with more dignity and respect, I’m moving outward and embracing people more fully than ever.

Now I can cry with my friends. I can let them into the hard places in my heart and tell them what’s bothering me. In this process I’ve learned that I was never a burden on them. All they wanted to was to see me and be seen by me. They just wanted a chance to love me and be loved by me.

The most powerful difference has been in my family. I have dramatically changed the culture in our home. My relationships with my husband and children have transformed. I am still a work in progress and my life’s work is to be a better wife and mom today than I was yesterday, but our home is different now. It is the safe, loving oasis for my family that I longed for but didn’t know how to create.

My husband was so shocked by my transformation through coaching that he hired his own life coach. . .

My husband was so shocked by my transformation through coaching that he hired his own life coach not long after. Because we both hired coaches around our 20th anniversary, we like to say that we invested in coaching instead of going on a cruise and that we’ll still be thanking ourselves for that investment 40 years from now. We have a new language in our marriage and are able to work through disagreements more effectively and efficiently. We are able to connect on a deeper level than we ever did in our first 20 years.

I hope it was helpful to you to hear a little bit about my journey to hiring a life coach. It can be a daunting process to get to the point where you decide that you want to reach out for some help. It can be helpful to think of athletes who hire coaches to get better at their sport. No one puts down an athlete for seeking out a coach to help with pitching or running or any other area of their field. In the same way, a life coach can help you improve areas of your life so that you can have more freedom and peace in your day.

If you’ve been considering hiring a life coach, please reach out to me. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life or what to do with your life. I’m just here to be an aide to you on your own journey. You have one life and I want to help you make sure that it’s the best one it can possibly be. Don’t wait another minute. If your life is good, but you want it to be better, contact me for a free one hour consultation. I’ve walked hard, hard roads and made my way out of it. Your life can be better tomorrow than it is today and I want to help you get there.