“What do you do?” is a frequent question everyone gets asked.  I used to say Software Engineer before I left that profession after many decades.  I tend to now say Content Creator or YouTuber.  But for a period of time there … I was a Life Coach.

The short version of what that means is that people will pay another human large sums of money to simply not answer their questions.  Seriously!  

Life Coaching is all about asking the right things to get an answer locked inside of someone out.  Want a better marriage?  I gots the questions for ya!  Better career?  Sex life in the toilet?  Again, you could pay me not to tell you what to do, but rather ask you enough hard questions until you figure it out for yourself.

While I liked the profession on paper … and even  thought it would make for an excellent “Career 2.0” … it never really took off.  I was mentally stuck on being a famous YouTuber, and spending hours embroiled in other people’s personal lives seemed like time competition.  

But taking the training did help me in one (should be obvious) way.  I can coach myself!  (Although I’m not sure yet if I’m also supposed to bill myself).

Here’s how this works … and feel free to play along with your own life (no charge!).

It all starts with a goal.  What is something you want?  I mean, really really want?  Fame, money, a better job, a less argumentative relationship, bigger pecs?

For me it would be to be a Successful YouTuber.  As in, to make enough money doing what I love so that I don’t have to do what I don’t love in order to also make videos and tell stories.  

You pick your goal … I’ll wait.

OK, the rest should be easy, right?  Just make a list of what you need to do in order to grab that golden ring and then start checking off those boxes.  But wait!  You actually have a couple more tasks to do first.

Let’s start with your starting point.  Where are you now?  Not so much physically or digestively, but metaphysically.  You can’t walk a path until you have a place to begin.

For me that would be answering … what what are my current skills?  Financial needs?  My motivation, restrictions, abilities, and everything else that describe the current Rick Higgins?  

Who exactly is this guy who wants so much?

And here’s the fun part … this isn’t a one-time exercise!  Whatever you just answered for yourself (you did do the homework, right?) … would that describe the you from say last year?  Are you the same person?  Will you be the same person next week?

I ask that because the final piece of the puzzle absolutely requires the answer.  Because you need to draw lines between where your goals are and where you are now.  And unfortunately all of those “possibility lines” do not have fixed points.  If you change your now, then those paths may not work anymore.  Same with your goals.  Your path today cannot be your path tomorrow unless you adjust.

Life Coaching is a game of motion.  Trying to get to a specific point when everything in the arena is constantly moving.  Which means that you don’t create a one-time plan and execute, rather you constantly read the playing field and make endless adjustments to your motions.  

Fun, right?

So for me … I currently have YouTube skills, I need (censored) dollars per month to live, and I have the motivation needed to become said famous YouTuber.  Well, that’s almost all that I currently am today.  More on that in a bit.

A possible path between here and there is … continuously creating videos, learning from them what worked and what didn’t, and then making a better one the next time that I analyze and … lather, rinse, repeat.

But as easy as that sounds, I’m missing certain ingredients that keep me from success.  Something in my here and now.  Namely myself.

There are skills that I don’t currently have and really need to somehow acquire.  In your own personal example there will be some too.  In my case it’s the dreaded intersection of stubbornness and impatience.  

Making YouTube videos is more than film, edit, release, and thank your endless fans for their accolades.  It’s so much more.  Only around 3% of those who try make it to the big leagues of YouTube will actually succeed, much like the thousands of actors who descend on Hollywood and only a few who get to be Brad Pitt.

Being willing to change your goals (and yourself) to fit the bigger goal is key.  Acknowledging that I might have to sell a little piece of my soul and even (gasp!) admitting that I might be wrong in certain beliefs … well, it’s something that this stubborn man has trouble with.  And when my ideas of what works doesn’t actually work and I have to wait patiently … well … you get the idea.

So … where does this leave you and me, my friend?

Did you play along?  Do you have your goal in mind and a few possible paths to it?  Did you ask yourself the tough questions that revealed the secret sauce that’s missing in the equation?

Yea, me neither.

But I am going to.  It’s so easy to throw darts at the wall, hoping that one will hit the target in roughly the right place.  Understanding the three pieces of the journey (start->path->goal) and knowing exactly who you are and what you need to do are just some of the keys.  And being willing to re-evaluate every day and adjust your course … or even abandon parts of it! … is the only way it will happen outside of chance.

So yea, that’s life coaching and honestly, it’s hard to do on yourself.  It’s hard to do with friends and family because they already know you and have their own (vested interest) ideas of what you should do.

So maybe paying for a stranger to ask you questions and never tell you the answers isn’t all that silly of an idea.