Adventures in Finding Help
I am obsessed with two podcasts right now: Culture Study and The Dream (season three specifically). (Shout out to our current business coach Jill for the recommendation on the latter. And pro tip: if your coach recommends you listen to a podcast that’s critical of the coaching profession, she’s the right coach.)
So, when a couple of weeks ago CS’s host Anne Helen Petersen interviewed The Dream’s host Jane Marie asking, “Is personal coaching a scam?” (50 minutes) our whole team made the time to listen. In the episode, they talk about the various helpers available to us - and I think it’s important to share the how and who of two helpers of mine (well, three, if you count the shout out to Jill above).
My therapist and I began working together in summer 2019. I had to look at my Google Calendar to know. It was on a fluke as my previous therapist had a vacation planned and I was at a time in my life - post-divorce, newly dating - and needed a lot of support. I reached out to a colleague in the space for suggestions to “fill the gap” and lo and behold, I found Jess. We’re still seeing each other; she has directly told me what to do three times in those five years. And that’s the most important thing to share about why she is still on my team.
I went looking for a business coach for the first time in fall 2020. We’d reached a revenue plateau at The Collective Academy. I don’t have an MBA, but I hired an MBA to teach me how to scale. I found him through my financial advisor, who had heard about my vision to be a $500K business (spoiler alert: we got there; but not exactly how an MBA might suggest). I loved working with Brian; he taught me a lot about celebrating. I still tear up when I think about the Zoom party we had to celebrate my first 100 Day Sprint. The feeling of being able to say, “I did it” remains incomparable.
I share all of this to say, what we need and why we need it and to whom we go to is as diverse as our condiment preferences. Not to be reductive, but there is simply no “one size fits all” approach to being a better you. The only sure thing is you can’t do it on your own. I say at least once a week, “We can’t know ourselves by ourselves” though I’m thinking about shifting that more to, “We can’t know who we can become by ourselves.”
I interrogate myself and my profession/s (therapist and coach) regularly. Any helping professional that doesn’t have an eye on addressing the systems that make it hard for us to be better (i.e., internalized capitalism, gender based inequity, racism, ableism) is missing a vital part of the equation. For this reason, I’m committed to my own education and surrounding myself with people who are expert in what it means to be marginalized.
Inviting someone into your life is a big deal. Even for a season. Trust yourself when seeking help, and better still, involve others you trust in finding the right people.