Life Experience and Knowing

I used to think that being a life coach meant that I had to have it all figured out and then I had to "teach" it.  But now I know that it’s just me figuring things out as I go, applying what I know and sharing it because I love to coach, hoping that someone will benefit from my own experience and understanding.  It’s not my job to know it all; it’s my job to be a human, having a life experience and figuring it out along the way as best I can.  I can’t “teach” something unless I understand it, and the best way I can ever understand anything is to have my own experience and then apply it.  I can grasp a concept, but until I’ve actually done the thing or had the experience myself, I don’t really understand or know it.  It’s like telling a young child not to jump off the couch because it’s too high.  That doesn’t really mean anything to the child until the child has jumped and discovered something for himself.  Or it’s like telling your teenager not to drink too much because she’ll get sick.  Well, we all know how that works out.  They want to discover for themselves what it’s really like.  Don’t we all?!?  And they want to discover for themselves what their next choice about that is going to be, and how will they ever know, and how will we ever know, if we don’t have an experience that now deepens our understanding, and then now we can make a decision (it may or may not be different), but at least we now know, rather than it being some “theory” that we were told about.  When I had people describing to me what it was like to be pregnant, or about having a baby, I heard what they were saying, but until had my own experience of it, I really had no idea.  And then I knew.  The path to self-discovery and the path to confidence and the path to really knowing are by experiencing it yourself and not by someone else making that choice for you or telling you what it’s going to be like. 

So, as I live my life every day, I figure things out and I apply them.  As I live my life every day, I discover things about myself, and I experience things that I really like and things that I really don’t prefer, and I make new choices and I apply them to my life, and then I offer what I know, with the desire to help someone out.  I can’t have it all figured out before it ever happens, but I can figure it out one step at a time, knowing that if I share what I’ve learned, it may assist someone, but they’re never really going to know until they know.   I thought that me having it all figured out made me a better coach…..but I realize that me being just like everybody else, figuring it out along the way with a strong desire to assist, is what makes me the best coach I can be.