Homeopathic life coaching
What is a “life coach”?
I’ve suddenly noticed that there are people who go around calling themselves “life coaches,” which seems like quite a presumptuous thing to call oneself. So I consulted Google to confirm what I suspected: it’s a way to charge people for advice without having to get any professional qualifications. Anybody can put up a shingle saying “Life Coach” and charge whatever fees they like.
Some sources consider this an exciting advantage – for the life coaches, that is.
Modern lifestyles are fast paced, highly competitive and come with the added pressure of meeting (often unrealistic) expectations. Many people find it difficult to juggle personal & professional responsibilities and do justice to both. Against this backdrop, a lot of individuals are turning to professionals who can help them navigate life situations and meet their goals, making life coaching the second fastest growing industry, worldwide!
But it is also one of the most unregulated sectors with no formal guidelines or requirements for specific qualifications, certification or licensing. As things stand, anyone who wants to become a life coach can become one!
Wait wait wait back up a second. You said “professionals.” You said “Against this backdrop, a lot of individuals are turning to professionals” – but if there are no formal requirements for qualifications then how can the coaches be “professionals”? The reason the professions have high status and are paid well is because they require higher education. Life coaches aren’t professionals then, they’re just randos who call themselves life coaches.
Well…one meaning of “professional” is simply that you get paid (as opposed to amateurs, who don’t).
But “professional” is arguably a weasel word here. Compare
I know, and I almost said that, but in context I think the qualifications bit is implied, which is part of the sleaze of the whole thing. Lots of weasel-wording in Life Coach World.
Well, they are professing.
pro·fess
/prəˈfes/
verb
1.
claim that one has (a quality or feeling), especially when this is not the case.
There’s also the sense that people are paying them money. They can be doing it adjectivally:
pro·fes·sion·al
/prəˈfeSH(ə)nəl/
adjective
1.
relating to or belonging to a profession.
“young professional people”
2.
engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
or nounily:
noun
1.
a person engaged or qualified in a profession.
“professionals such as lawyers and surveyors”
2.
a person engaged in a specified activity, especially a sport or branch of the performing arts, as a main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
I’m guessing that the writer of the article slipped between the “qualified regulated professional” clients to the “This is GREAT! People are paying me good money to tell them this shit!” coaches within the space of two sentences without realizing it, or telling the reader. If they’re making money at it, they must be successful, right? (Succesful at what, besides the making of money, is never really spelled out.) A list of rich, succesful clientel only means that the client (or someone in their organization) was gullible enough to believe that the “coach” could help them. Confirmation bias would have been enough to shore up the “correctness” of that initial gullibility. And as for the unlucky ones where the “coaching” does not work out, who’s going to pay all that money for the seminars, webinars, and DVDs and admit failure, or worse, having been duped?
If the shit these coaches are selling happens to ruin someone’s life, there are lots of ways to avoid and deflect blame. “It’s probably their own fault anyway;
they weren’t praying hard enoughthey didn’t apply my advice correctly. That whole “jumping off a cliff” thing was supposed to be a metaphore, (and I stopped doing that fire-walking thing years ago.) And they came too late for me to help them. After all, they were in such crummy shape that they needed to hire a life coach!”How does one know when they are ready for a life coach? When Tim Robbins and The Secret don’t produce the desired effect? When their inversion table collapses? When microdosing LSD fails?
Do they identify as professionals?
I think they kind of do.
I wonder if homeopathic life coaches become more effective the less you talk to them.
So basically it’s the skills my mother taught me. How to juggle several tasks was one she never did, but she was extremely successful at teaching it – all she had to do was assign me multiple tasks, and I figured out how to juggle them! Who knew she could be making big money for this?
A friend of mine caught onto this grift all the way back in the ’90s – she had the most effed-up life of pretty much anyone I’d ever met; I have no idea how she managed to convince anyone to pay her for life advice.
guest@9: Eh, that honestly doesn’t surprise me, any more than it does that a considerably disproportionate segment of college students going into psychology and psychiatry have diagnosed mental health issues. And honestly, good advice is often a lot easier to give than receive. Assuming your friend actually understood why her own life was screwed up, she might very well have been able to help others avoid the same pitfalls.
papito@7: Now, that one made me giggle. Thanks for the cheer-up!
Didn’t this grow out that other dodgy “profession”–“motivational speaking”?
Or are they twins separated at birth?
Ha!
@Papito #7 FTW!!
Maybe a two-headed dog?
@ twilighter #4
Tony Robbins? Not Tim Robbins, I think?
Thanks maddog, my mistake. That motivational speaker guy.