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Life coaches are everywhere. I’m one of them. Coaching is a booming business and a vital component to the elevation of our culture’s consciousness. Coaches are experts who come along side of us and help us accomplish our goals and overcome obstacles to success. Coaches are found in every aspect of life from athletics, academics, business, high performance, personal development, health, nutrition and music.

A big shift has occurred with the onset of online life coaching. In the past, an expert truly had to be seasoned, qualified and vetted. While many life-coaches are experts in their field, expertise and qualification is relative. Today, content is king, not diplomas, not pedigree, not years in the field. While those things can add credibility, it’s a buyer be ware world. The success of one coach compared to another usually boils down to a marriage of marketing and content.

Content is where I want to focus.

The information age has allowed life coaching to flourish. As more and more people come online, adopt technology and seek to get ahead, access to content is the gateway to big change. Those who “figure things out on their own” are no threat to the emerging world as they will get left behind by the integration of shared knowledge and the global community that is serving one another. Only fools assume they could become an olympic champion with no coaching, thus the New world knows it needs to exchange with others to become more. The shift from independence to interdependence is a massive jump in consciousness. 

I’m privileged to have had access to the biggest and best coaching programs in the world, and it hasn’t been cheap. If you buy more than a book, you are accessing coaching content. The deeper you go, the more personal and expensive it gets. (More on this in minute). My point is that coaches distill the most vital information which allows people to advance much faster than the traditional frameworks. 

If we combine the distillation of information along with the gold rush of online life coaching businesses, we learn something about content that I hope is helpful to you. While content is king, content is also pretty homogenized across the board. Most of it is the same thing which means you are paying for the 1-2% that is unique. Coaching practices offer practical content and for the masses, that’s as far as it goes. Content is the product for sale. We believe it’s the key to realizing our dreams.

The hidden pitfall only appears after trying coaching and nothing really changes. The wave of life coaches has created a wave of disillusioned people who were sold a pick axe on their way to stake a claim. Coaches make it your fault, not the contents.

The problem is the underlying philosophy of coaching.

Coaching begins by us believing that we can BE more if we can DO more. It’s sold to us as “we can have more if we can do more.”  Our being is presupposed. We get to be validated, liberated, elevated, but only if we have………………. (fill in the blank).

So long as we buy into this false claim, we will invest more and more as we strive to find ourselves. I know this because I spent $250,000 over six years being coached under the framework of a pastor and his church. I believed I just needed to wind it tighter and work harder and it would come. After that I spent several thousands more trying to convince myself I did the right thing. It forced me to ask why it wasn’t working. After accepting failure, everything changed and now looking back, it was all worth it.

Now everything is different. My goals, ambitions and motivations are rightly located and my life flows. It’s not a struggle, its not a climb, it simply is. Everything we think we want is gained by ascending, but what we really want is gained by descending. It’s the paradox of big Truth.

My cost is your gain. This is why I call myself the Un-Coach. Any coach that doesn’t begin the process with your BEING will never be able to alter your DOING. Most coaches are experts in their field and break down the practical details, but become instantly lost as the conversation moves to who we truly are at our core.  To do this, we need to access a totally different plane and few have mastered its content.

Un-coaching is first about deconstruction, not adding activity on top of blindness. True coaching leads us to being, and for most, that is a descent, not an ascent. Only when we know who we are can we even know what we really want. Then we can establish goals for our life, then we can enjoy the success of incrementally growing into conformity them each and every day.

When your therapist, life-coach or pastor fail you, call me for un-coaching.