There Are No Shortcuts to Human Being's Journey

On Sunday, I registered for a webinar conducted by a life coach. I had been thinking about whether I could become a good life coach myself.

But I didn't attend the webinar.

Partly, it was because I was doubtful. What does it really take to become a life coach? How much do I need to learn? How much experience should I have before I start guiding another person?

Since I didn't attend the webinar, I missed her insights. But the questions that made me register for the webinar stayed with me.

Over time, I have developed a somewhat cautious view of the coaching industry.

There are coaches for almost everything—business, relationships, careers, confidence, communication, money and personal growth. Many offer frameworks, strategies, webinars and seemingly simple paths to transformation.

There is nothing wrong with guidance. A good mentor can help us see something that we couldn't see ourselves. A teacher can save us years of unnecessary struggle. A coach can provide structure, accountability and perspective.

But I increasingly feel that human life itself has no shortcut.

A coach can show us a direction.

A mentor can share experience.

A webinar can give us an insight.

A course can give us a framework.

But nobody can do the work of living our life for us.

This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand the relationship between a coach and a client. Learning from an expert does not automatically make us an expert. Attending a webinar does not create transformation. Even becoming a disciple of a successful person does not guarantee that we will reproduce their success.

The person who learns still has to practise.

The person who starts a business still has to find customers.

The person who wants confidence still has to face uncomfortable situations.

The person who wants to communicate better still has to speak.

The person who wants a different life still has to make different choices.

And perhaps this is also why every person's success story is different.

When I look at my own journey, I realise that many things I am proud of were not handed to me through a shortcut. I had to figure things out, make decisions, make mistakes, start again and continue. I did things myself.

had to do the work. And the majority of the work I did in the last ten years was on an independent note. And that is why I count those experiences as my successes.

Perhaps the role of a coach should not be to make people dependent on the coach. Perhaps the real value of guidance is to help people become more capable of handling their own lives.

I am still not sure whether I will become a life coach (I'm rooting to become a business coach).

Maybe I need to learn much more before I can answer that question.

But one thing I am becoming increasingly certain about: There are no shortcuts to human life.

We can learn from others. We can borrow wisdom. We can seek guidance. We can listen to people who have travelled a road before us.

But at some point, each of us has to walk our own road.

And perhaps our greatest success is not that somebody showed us the way.

It is that, after receiving whatever help was available to us, we had the courage to do the work ourselves.