When the Student is Ready

I was never that good at coaching – in the traditional sense, at least.

During the nine years I was a teacher, I spent seven as a coach: of basketball, of softball, of lacrosse. The best coaching I did was when I headed up a junior varsity girls’ high school basketball team. My own love of the sport, combined with a solid knowledge of the game, good skills communicating with teenage girls, and a great relationship with my co-coach led to a successful season – in the metrics of fun and wins. The worst coaching I did was when, at a different school, I helmed the varsity girls’ basketball team. I was under-qualified and in over my head. We all knew it – the players, the parents, me – and it was miserable.

My own experiences coaching gave me new-found appreciation for the great coaches I’d had during my years playing basketball. My first basketball coach (not including my dad, who taught me how to dribble and shoot in my childhood driveway) was also my best. He welcomed me onto his CYO team when I was a stick-thin third grader. I remember wearing my black leggings and over-sized red sweatshirt – a tomato on toothpicks – to our practices and working my way up over the years from a glorified water-carrier to the starting point guard on our state championship team. I remember him trusting me enough as a fifth grader to put me in at a crucial moment in a big game. I remember him yelling at me years later when, in that same gym, I wasn’t paying enough attention in a huddle and called our last time-out too early at the end of another big game. (We won anyway.) I remember him sending me a note and my kids three matching Larry Bird t-shirts last summer.

I’ve long since hung up my high-tops and my whistle, but I recently had the chance to work with another great coach.

Last spring I posted about wanting to find a mentor to help shepherd me through the process of becoming a freelance writer. At the end of the post, I casually – and, I’ll admit, pretty tongue-in-cheekily – mused that maybe I needed a life coach. At the time, I didn’t really know what a life coach did, but had started hearing the term more and more (kind of like the way that I have since heard about honey badgers). So imagine my surprise when Rebecca of Altared Spaces responded to my silly aside by telling me what a life coach does – helping people set goals and move past the sticky things that hold them back – and what one looks like – her!

Rebecca was generous to offer me some of her coaching magic this fall just after I launched my freelance career. It was a big moment for me, bigger than I realized at the time and Rebecca helped me see that: I had taken a pretty dramatic step off of the linear path I had been walking for much of my adult life (college, job, grad school, marriage, kids) and placed my own passions ahead of what I thought other people expected of me. I came out as a writer to my friends and family and sent my work out into the world, knowing that rejection and criticism would likely follow.

This step was hard for me and Rebecca and I talked about that. We talked too about things like guilt and the weight of other people’s expectations – not to mention the weight of my own assumptions about other people’s expectations. She – with great skill and gentleness – helped me to unpack those feelings and helped me elucidate almost immediately some of the tendencies I have that sometimes trip me up even while defining who I am. She asked questions and offered me thought exercises that helped me identify tiny steps I could take to move forward.

Coaching with Rebecca felt a lot like talking to a good friend – a good friend who also happens to be smart, insightful, and focused only on you. And that last part might be the greatest gift Rebecca gave me – a chance at a busy and momentous time to stop and think about myself, to be mindful of my goals, and to reflect on ways to get there.

Thank you, Rebecca, for listening, for asking, and for helping me start to unstick the sticky parts.

Who helps you unstick the sticky spots? Have you ever had a terrific coach?