I am here for your excuses
The point of taking a boat trip through the canals of Xochimilco isn’t transportation — it’s the experience. (Image by DEZALB)
Every so often, I hear a tough-love coach or teacher say something like, “I’m not here for your excuses.”
Well I am.
I’m here for your tantrums, your whining, your complaining, and your pity parties — your fears and your frustrations.
That’s the good stuff. That’s where the breakthroughs happen.
Everyone needs to be able to vent. They need to have space to not be their best self.
This is especially important for high-achieving, successful people whom others are depending on. Often, they feel like they need to have the answers all the time. They get so used to this that it’s hard for them to let their guard down or admit to any vulnerability.
But I don’t want them to act like everything is great or keep a positive attitude. I want them to feel free to acknowledge their resistance and work through it. I hope they will feel safe enough to be vulnerable. It is hard work, and it often begins with expressing frustration, resentment, or other unattractive emotions that haven’t yet been processed and channeled productively. As I see it, it’s my job to help with that part.
I get it that not everyone wants to listen to people bitch and moan. Not everyone wants to deal with other people’s uncertainty and discomfort and second-guessing. That’s fine — not everyone has to. But if you’re going to be in the business of helping someone accomplish something they’ve never done before — which is what teachers and coaches do — you don’t just provide information. Ideally, you guide someone through the entire process, which includes the emotions that come up, the thrashing and panic as the long-term goal gets closer, and the “two-steps-forward, one-step-back” of it all.
On second thought, I guess people can just provide the information. They can write a book and not deal with questions like, “But how does this apply to me?” and “Okay, but what did you mean when you said this?” But most of us will always have such questions, and we will always need repetition of new ideas and support in implementing them.
Obviously, I have my limit. I’m not a therapist or a healer, so there are plenty of problems I don’t know how to solve. But I’m equipped for quite a bit of struggle. This idea that everyone is going to show up chipper and ready to go is silly.
It’s also unfair to suggest that the ones who are struggling are lazy and don’t want it bad enough. Our dreams bring out the best and the worst in us because they matter so much. When we’re behaving badly, there’s something deeper going on, whether we’re a three-year-old who just needs a snack and an early bedtime today or a fifty-three-year-old who is nervous about sending an email to her list to launch a new program. We need to embrace these experiences as normal and human and recognize that even if someone is being immature and petulant, they’re not just being immature and petulant.
In this moment when I really don’t want to be a coach because seems like everyone on the Internet is a coach, I have to accept that, at heart, I am one. I’m endlessly interested in the obstacles that thwart us as we pursue our heart’s desire — the external ones, sure, but the internal ones most of all. Helping someone work through them in order to accomplish the thing that they’ve set out to do is, it turns out, my life’s work.
So bring your excuses, your defensiveness, and your self-doubt. I’m here for it all.
It’s my job — I’m a coach.
