A 'Life Coach'

I met a man this week who said he was a ‘life coach.’  Think about that.  I asked him how he became qualified to become a life coach and he said he had read a book by Tony Robbins.  

Well, I’ve been a soccer coach, a wrestling coach, volleyball coach, football coach, golf coach, track and field coach and baseball coach.  But a LIFE COACH!? 

How would one become qualified to become a ‘life coach?’  I guess it would be to become well-acquainted with life.  Without putting a label on it, I suppose about forty years ago when I determined to continue on with school and become a doctor of philosophy that inchoate thought might have been on my mind. (I actually took my doctorate in education.) I liked history and philosophy and psychology and teaching and religious studies, and through my Church was starting to get a handle on life in ways, I have learned, that simply listening to Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil, or Ann Landers, or Delilah, et al., could not have qualified me.  

  

In process of time I have learned that by trying hard to be a good husband and father and serve with effectiveness in the Church and read as much as I could I was, in fact, becoming much more qualified to become a man of wisdom, or philosopher or ‘life coach,’ though I still hadn’t put a label on it, than I could have simply by taking every course in the university catalogue or by reading a book by a single motivational speaker.  (However, Stephen R. Covey’s writings will take one a long way in that direction if he/she has the other requisite life experiences.)

The larger question might be, why should one aspire to becoming a ‘life coach,’ or in former days a ‘philosopher’?  On one level the title does sound presumptuous, but I suppose there are a few counselors or psychotherapists, even sectarian pastors who are not in it simply for the money, or status, or power, but truly do want to help others come to a more abundant life.  And that is a worthy goal. 

 In fact, I think most legitimate ‘life coaches’ are known by more familiar titles: dedicated mothers, or fathers, or grandparents, or lay Church workers--even teachers, and I salute them. 

Jesus was called rabbi (teacher); indeed, he could have been called the true ‘Life coach’ since he came “that [we] might have Life, and. . . have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) If we need a model, and we do, He is the One—the Life Coach par excellence.