A Different Approach to Life Coaching

What if you're not a self-improvement project?

I have spent more than a decade as a life coach, which means I have spent more than a decade talking about growth. I’ve helped people identify patterns, challenge limiting beliefs, set goals, establish boundaries, navigate enormous life transitions, deepen their spiritual lives, and make changes that genuinely made their lives better. I believe in that work. Let me start there, because what I’m about to say is not an announcement that I’ve thrown my journals into a ceremonial bonfire and decided self-awareness is bullshit.

I still believe there is tremendous value in understanding ourselves. I believe our past shapes us. I believe unconscious patterns can run the show if we never stop to examine them. I believe there are times when we need to take responsibility, have the difficult conversation, change the behavior, set the boundary, leave the situation, ask for help, or do something that scares the absolute shit out of us. But lately, I’ve found myself asking a different question:

At what point does working on ourselves become another way of not actually living?

When Personal Growth Becomes a Full-Time Job

Somewhere along the way, personal growth became an industry. And then, for many of us, it became an identity. There is always another book to read, another podcast to listen to, another morning routine to perfect, another limiting belief to uncover, another trauma response to understand, another habit to build, another boundary to establish, another version of ourselves waiting just over the horizon. We optimize our sleep so we can have more energy. We optimize our mornings so we can be more productive. We optimize our bodies, relationships, careers, parenting, spirituality, emotional regulation, nutrition, finances, and free time. Hell, we have even figured out how to optimize rest. How exhausting does that sound? And underneath all of it can live a message we rarely stop long enough to question: Who I am and how my life is right now are not quite enough.

I'll be happier when I heal this. I'll feel worthy when I accomplish that. I'll relax when this season is over. I'll enjoy myself when I lose the weight, make the money, find the relationship, fix the relationship, understand the pattern, get the kids through this phase, become more confident, get less anxious, find my purpose, or finally become the person I know I'm capable of being.

Except there is always another thing!

There is always another horizon we are trying to reach, and eventually I started wondering: What the hell are we trying so hard to arrive at?

From Optimization to Optimal Living

This question has been changing the way I think about my role as a holistic life coach and, frankly, the way I think about my own life. Let me make it clear that I don't want to stop growing. I just want to stop believing growth is the admission price for enjoying my life. That's a very different thing.

I'm beginning to recognize there is an important distinction between optimization and what I've started calling optimal living.

Optimization says: How can I make this better?

Optimal living asks: How can I be more fully here for this?

Optimization keeps our attention on the next version of ourselves, while optimal living brings our attention back to the person who is already standing here. Most importantly, optimal living doesn't mean resignation. It doesn't mean staying in a miserable job because of acceptance! It doesn't mean tolerating unhealthy relationships, abandoning goals, ignoring patterns, or pretending painful things don't hurt.

• You can love yourself and want something to change.

• You can understand your past without living there.

• You can plan for your future without postponing your life until you get there.

• You can work on something without making yourself the problem.

Maybe that's the balance I've been looking for all along.

You Can Want Change Without Buying Into the Idea That Something Is Wrong With You

This idea has become increasingly important in my work as a holistic life coach. Traditionally, coaching tends to begin with some variation of: Where are you now, where do you want to be, and how are we going to close the gap?

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Sometimes there really is a gap - sometimes you hate your job, your relationship isn't working, you keep repeating a pattern that is hurting you, or you've abandoned your own needs so thoroughly that you genuinely don't know what you want anymore. Sometimes you need someone to lovingly call bullshit. (I remain extremely available for that last one).

But what if coaching didn't always have to begin with dissatisfaction? What if life coaching could also be a place to become curious about yourself? To hear yourself more clearly, to reconnect with play, creativity, spirituality, connection, rest, pleasure, or whatever makes you feel alive. What if sometimes nothing is terribly wrong? What if you just want to experience your life differently?

Joy Is Not Waiting at the Finish Line

This may be the biggest shift for me. For a long time, I think I unconsciously treated joy as an outcome. I believed on some level that if you do enough healing, make enough good decisions, create enough alignment, and become sufficiently evolved, eventually you would arrive at this magical place where you'd finally feel the way you've been trying to feel. What I've come to understand, particularly over the last year, is that joy doesn't work like that.

Joy can only happen now.

We can absolutely work through our past, and in lots of ways it's our responsibility to do so. Understanding it can create enormous freedom for ourselves and the relationships we nurture. We can also create goals for our future. Vision and intention matter very much, BUT, we cannot experience joy yesterday. And we cannot experience it tomorrow. We can only experience it in the moment we're actually inhabiting. Which makes me wonder how many moments of our lives we've spent preparing ourselves to enjoy some future version of them.

Maybe Progress Looks Different Than We Thought

Maybe progress isn't always becoming more disciplined, successful, healed, productive, emotionally regulated, or self-aware. Maybe sometimes progress looks like laughing so hard your stomach hurts, or choosing the conversation over the to-do list or trying something you're absolutely terrible at for no other reason than because it sounds fun. Maybe it's resting before you've earned it, giving yourself permission to change your mind, or letting something be unresolved. Maybe it's saying no or...saying yes. Maybe it's spending an afternoon doing something that serves absolutely no measurable purpose or not turning every uncomfortable feeling into an assignment. Maybe progress sometimes looks like becoming more available to your own life, which doesn't mean we stop doing the deeper work. It means the deeper work finally has somewhere to take us.

A Different Kind of Holistic Life Coaching

This is the direction my work at Intuitive Balance is moving. Not away from growth so much as toward a more balanced relationship with it.

I still believe deeply in the connection between mind, body, and spirit. My approach to holistic life coaching will continue to incorporate self-inquiry, intuition, embodiment, meditation, breathwork, energy work, honest conversation, and practical action.

I'm just less interested in using those things to manufacture a “better” human.

I'd rather use them to help us become more honest, more trusting of ourselves, more curious, more connected, and more capable of participating in the lives we already have.

There will still be goals, uncomfortable conversations, and patterns worth changing and choices worth examining (sorry, not sorry), BUT...there will also be more play. Rest. Pleasure. Contradiction. Curiosity. And hopefully a lot more laughing. That's my favorite part! Because after more than a decade in the personal growth world, I'm becoming increasingly convinced of something remarkably simple:

Your life is not the reward you receive when you're finally finished working on yourself.

This is it. The messy, unfinished, beautiful, boring, tragic, hysterical, uncertain, ridiculousness and everything in between. You are not a self-improvement project.

You are a human being having a life, and maybe the point of all this work isn't to finally perfect that human, but just to learn to BE HERE for that life. I'm excited to help you look at it through a new lens. ;)