The useful residue of your own guidance

Once the path exists, anyone can follow it. (Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay)

Teachers and coaches have an advantage when it comes to personal and professional growth.

When you spend hours every day contributing to the growth of others, it leaves echoes. A useful residue.

You will hear your own voice in your head when you attempt to accomplish something similar to what you’re students have been working on. You’ll have no choice but to practice what you preach. And if you struggle, you will be able to stand outside yourself and observe your own process with compassion, having spent so much time doing that for others.

For example, if you are constantly exhorting your students to take their time to read and reflect on challenging material and encouraging them to repeat dense paragraphs instead of zipping through, you will hardly be able to get away with not doing so yourself.

If your students struggle to ask for help when they need it and you spend a lot of time trying to break down those barriers, you’ll need to set an example by asking for help yourself when the opportunity arises — even when your students aren’t around.

And if you’re a personal trainer who advocates for pushing past barriers and sticking to healthy routines, you’ll be a hypocrite if you don’t challenge yourself appropriately, eat well, and get enough rest.

It’s okay to need your own coach or teacher — like those you mentor, you don’t have to have all the answers. In fact, recognizing the benefit of the service that you provide, you should be more likely to connect with someone who can do the same for you. So my point isn’t that you should go it alone. Rather, I’m suggesting that since you already understand so much of the process of learning and growth, you can skip the frustration, the shame, the reluctance, and the attempts to cut corners and focus instead on the attitudes and actions that will provide you with the greatest benefit: open-mindedness, self-compassion, and full engagement combined with mindful, deliberate practice.

For my readers who don’t have much experience being a coach, teacher, or mentor, understanding the mindset of a professional who brings out the best in others can make your own learning more effective. I can’t even tell you how many people I’ve worked with who, midway through a challenging exercise, have said to me, “It must be painful for you to watch me do this so badly.” Their self-consciousness is unnecessary, because I love bearing witness to an emerging skill. If I didn’t, I would have quit such work a long time ago! If you, as a student, can skip over the shame and frustration of doing something poorly and simply enjoy the process of watching your skills develop (which is what your teacher is doing), you will be happier and learn faster.

I’ll admit, it’s kind of annoying to play the piano and hear that voice in your head saying, “Okay, time to slow down and practice that tricky section,” or to study a challenging concept in science or math only to hear the voice reminding me to take the time to explain it in my own words before moving on. It’s like being possessed by a particularly helpful demon.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter whether it’s my own voice echoing in my head from years of giving others the same advice, or whether it’s my teacher’s voice. Hearing (and listening to!) those voices in our daily practice is how we find success. The more wisdom we have access to, the better. Eventually, it becomes our own.