I’ve never considered hiring a life coach , but if I did, they wouldn’t be hard to find. It seems you can’t swing a cat without hitting one these days. They’re everywhere, jacked up on positivity and self-love, pimping out their programs.
Friends and acquaintances pop out of the woodwork to ask if I’m realising my dreams or want to be part of an “inspiring program” before they even type the words “life coach”. There’s something evangelical about it, which I have the radar for after being raised in the megachurch. You can sniff a preacher a mile off.
The dream team of life coaches: Julia Gillard, Baz Luhrmann and Jane Austen. Credit: Getty While I’m sure there are many who can help you to a) purge “toxic” relationships (see also, “emotional labour”) or b) create a purposefully action-oriented mindset (such as flossing your teeth more often) or c) understand why you think that swinging cats was ever an appropriate pastime. It’s become apparent in recent times that the life-coaching industry is an unregulated minefield of people coming up with creative names but who basically do the same thing with questionable results .
There are “empowerment coaches”, “success coaches”, “mindset coaches” and the incredibly optimistic “life-transformation specialists”, among others, which begs the question: If you need to give it a jazzy name, is it really useful? If I have a problem with my tooth, I don’t want an “incisor whisperer” or a �.
