Saying Goodbye: To the "Life Coach" and Cal Athletics

I’m going through a period where I’m reevaluating some of my longstanding relationships.  No, not my marriage – that’s actually one relationship I’m very happy with. Marriage, job, family, all very good, satisfying relationships.  It’s other relationships and where I’ve been placing my attention and energy, particularly the troublesome “life coaching” relationship and my weird, dysfunctional relationship with Cal athletics.

At this point I feel I’m done with the “life coaching” stuff.  There may still be a place for targeted coaching for developing energetic and spiritual aspects, and there likely is.  My evolution path is in developing my inner alchemist, my “Dr. Strange.”  But even this aspect isn’t asking for coaching now (because at this point the spending of more money would poison the benefits), but deeper exploration and practice.

There is no overlap at this point between the exploration I am doing now and the “life coaching” and group work I’d been doing for years up to now.  And as I check in, I see the energy of the “life coaching” for me is an anchor.  This is true even for the work I’ve been doing in support of the evolution coaching, actually it’s especially true.

While my higher self has known this truth for some time, my rational self came to this conclusion after finding myself irritated one too many times with what I was seeing coming out of the life coaching group.  It’s not one thing, it’s the whole energy and my relationship with that energy.

To be honest with myself, this modality hasn’t been bringing me value for a while now, and in turn I haven’t offered any real value.  It’s basically been a waste of both parties’ time and energy, another way to distract myself on the Internet.  And there’s too much of that in my life, too many places where I bleed energy in order to avoid listening to the higher truth. Or more specifically, to avoid going through the pain of my thoughts, feelings and beliefs that are between me and that higher truth.

It’s not that this modality doesn’t hold value – it’s clear in looking at the men in this group they are deriving value.  It’s that my experience is not aligned, so I just see the energetic inconsistencies.  And I’m reminded of my own imperfect journey through this modality.

In looking back I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I experienced a lot of personal growth.  On the other hand, it came with a lot of unnecessary suffering and a LOT of wasted time and effort that could have been better utilized. 

The big lesson here is, like every relationship, happiness comes down to how I show up.  I began this journey when I was not experiencing success or power in any aspect of life.  I felt desperate, and really was kind of a loser, though a loser who was willing to work hard to get out of Loserville.  The problem, though, is despite what the “life coach” people say, this is a poor place from which to make changes.

For one thing, spending a lot of money on life coaches when one is financially strained is a terrible idea.  I have yet to find any life coach who offers even a 1:1 return on investment financially, so you have to go in with money you can afford to lose forever, because it’s unlikely you’ll get it back financially. Most of the guys I’ve seen go through this either already had financial success (best place to be) and then had personal success (much easier to build) or came in with nothing and found some “feel-good” lifestyle profession that, if anything, pays worse than their previous job.  That leads to disaster.

The financial strain of overextending myself for this coaching was (and in some ways still is) a huge strain on my energy, which is a huge anchor to personal growth.  It’s like cutting your coaching value in half, and it’s a dumb approach.  It also leads to poor decisions and makes it that much harder to move into an abundance mindset.  The life coaches are wrong – going into debt for coaching is never a good idea.  Never.  They’re selling that concept precisely because THEY are in a scarcity mindset and afraid if they give you the best advice – to get your finances handled first – you’ll then not feel desperate anymore and not sign up for their services.  In other words, THEY don’t believe in their own value and have placed false time constraints on their OWN success, which they are passing on to you.  (It’s also a sign the coach himself is facing extreme financial pressure, so “helping him out” by going into debt yourself is really doing the whole universe a tremendous disservice.)

Bottom line – get your finances handled first.  THEN upgrade to life coaching from a place of some financial success and comfort.  ALWAYS.  And NEVER invest in a life coach who promises you financial success unless his finances are SIGNIFICANLY better than yours and he’s got a lot of financially successful reference.

The other thing is I came in “lost,” as most men do to some extent.  But I was so lost I didn’t have any idea of what success would look like.  My current relationship at the time was hopelessly dysfunctional and I just “wished” for it to get better – which it did, by ending, but the coaching actually prolonged and exacerbated the suffering for everyone.  I was lost in my career, but so was my coach, to be honest, so all he could do was facilitate my ending the bad, again unnecessarily adding to my stress and suffering, while I found my way on my own, more in spite of my coach than because of him.  My energy was a mess, but really with the other two oppressive factors it was like swimming upstream in raging rapids.  So I got *some* value, but only a fraction of what I’d have if I’d waited and focused my energy on the two big problems I was avoiding by playing “life coaching” pattycake.

What’s more, my being “lost” meant that for a good amount of time I simply modeled the energy of my coach instead of actually directing change.  So I was changing, but it was still from a very disempowering place – I hadn’t done anything to solve the real problem of giving away my power, I just gave it away to someone who made me feel better than the others for giving it to him.  That is something, but not much.

And the part I’m finding really annoying now is I’m not the only one whose been his disempowered “protégé.”  In fact, I see a pattern, and one that I’m finding disturbing now.  I saw a coaching video of his newest protégé and I felt a combination of amusement, annoyance and mild disgust.  Similar to me, Protégé #3 has adopted the mindset and career goals of the coach (which is awful – really if you find yourself wanting to follow in your coach’s footsteps, both you and your coach are failing, but this is the third time this “mini-me-coach” pattern has shown itself, clearly something is off and it’s not just me). But even worse, he’s adopted the mannerisms of his coach, down to the annoying hand gestures and tonality, nervous tics and distracting energy bleeds (and no, they’re not NLP techniques, he’s ACTUALLY adopted the most unhelpful aspects of his coach’s communication, to the point of aping him and INTEGRATING that aping).  You have to see it to really appreciate the levels of “ick” here.  He’s even aped the coach’s use of icebreaker toys in social situations.  I’ll take wagers on how long before he goes to Thailand and gets a chest tattoo.

It’s annoying and creepy.  And for me, far more so because I can see so many embarrassing aspects of how *I* was being when I was the protégé.  And I saw what happened to protégé #2, who is still dealing with the aftereffects of that dysfunctional relationship. 

Really, it’s hard to look at that pattern and not say “this is a cult.”  And there are aspects of what this coach wants to do that, frankly, are cultish.  There are things this coach has done recently that literally ARE cultish – including unwittingly (assuming the benefit of the doubt) taking fellow students to a rape cult in the Philippines.  Now, he didn’t do this consciously (unless I’ve totally misjudged him and I believe my assessment is accurate), but his attraction to things that any normal person can look at and see “yah, that’s a creepy cult, what are you doing, bro” is troubling.  Add in his ambitions to create this in his own life with himself as the leader and his devotion to the words of one of the more famous modern rapist cult leaders and that’s a troubling mixture.  And then you have the pattern of former students “working under him,” all suffering from the same disempowering patterns (the latest one the worst I’ve seen, and VERY troubling) and it’s hard for me to say “it’s not a cult, he’s a good guy, it’s okay” without sounding like I’m brainwashed myself.  Something’s fucked in la-la land.

Because, even though I genuinely don’t believe it was intentional on his part, I did allow myself to be brainwashed, and I’ve gone through the trauma of disassociating, as has his Protégé #2.  There are a lot of weak-minded people who sign up for this who allow themselves to be willingly brainwashed under the guise of “evolution.” 

I still believe that positive change is possible and that there is an aspect to this modality which can be beneficial, but not when one is in a place of abject weakness and desperation.  And I believe a good coach who has his clients’ best interests at heart should screen out the weak, the financially troubled and the desperate. Those people need other kinds of help – financial and career coaching, professional therapy, etc., BEFORE coming to the life coach.  For this coach, unfortunately, the weak and powerless account for most of his customer base and a significant portion, if not a majority, of his income.  One cannot separate the toxic from the clean in that kind of energy exchange, it poisons everything.

You can tell the energy of a man by the energy of the women he attracts.  For a long time, I was in a place of self-disempowerment, so I was attracting feminine energy that was dominant and taking.  This created really draining and unhealthy relationship dynamics.  When my energy was drained enough, I’d then feel angry.  It was a terrible pattern that started with Mom and went through my second marriage.  (Unsurprisingly, all my exes over that time HATED my mom, because their energy was the same and thus a natural conflict, which only added to my self-inflicted misery.) On the rare occasions when a nice, submissive feminine energy would show up, I wouldn’t stay. 

Eventually I broke this pattern (even with Mom, our energy is very different now) by changing my energy, but this was something I did on my own.  If anything, my relationship with my coach fed the “give away my power” beast by creating a positive feedback loop for disempowering behavior.

In looking at the energy of my coach’s many women, there is a troubling pattern.  The huge majority have terrible energy – they’re not just carrying wounds, they’ve made those wounds an essential part of their identity. 

I’m good at intuitively reading energy, I’ve just never really been able to consciously explore it until very recently. (And for many years I was damn crappy and integrating this gift into my personal experiences – still working on this.)  Many times I’ll come across a woman whom I can objectively sense is physically attractive, but the energy is so bad I’m physically repulsed.  For a long time I struggled with this conflict, but I’ve learned to trust it because it’s right on.  And almost no other men have this capability  - for years I doubted my intuition or thought there was something wrong with me.

And this coach attracts a LOT of women from whom I get that feeling of energetic revulsion. (His current primary lover has a clean energy, but I sense part of him is still “looking around,” maybe because this clean energy doesn’t resonate with him in a fully satisfying way.)  Some of the women he holds out as thought leaders, their energy is so corrupted that I can’t even read or listen to what they’re saying without taking strong energetic precautions or adopting a confrontational energetic stance (always a lot of fun in a group setting, now I’m the jerk for trying to keep someone from polluting me and everyone around me, so I stay away from those potential scenarios –why make life hard for myself and everyone else?)

Which is all a long way of saying I need to break this off as a coaching and working relationship.  And since this has been a big part of my life, time and energy, that’s a challenge.  If I let this go… what will I do?

Then there is probably the most unsatisfying, stress-inducing and general unhappiness-creating hobby I’ve ever had – Cal athletics.  Check that, it is CERTAINLY the most unsatisfying, stress-inducing and general unhappiness-creating hobby I’ve ever had. 

I’m proud of my education, but at this point it’s a degree. And not even a relevant degree, given how old it is.  The entire energy is a lot of time wasted, energy spent and stress over a psychological attachment to an idea. Yes I enjoy watching football and basketball, but closely following this team – with the online forums and all the other energy, plus the games themselves – has been a stupid and fruitless waste of time.

The teams suck.  The administration has done nothing over all the years I’ve been a “loyal fan” to make the teams anything more than mediocre.  There is zero evidence the teams will be anything other than mediocre.  And how much energy are mediocre teams from a mediocre university worth?

Add to that the fact that UC Berkeley really doesn’t deserve my loyalty.  The university, its students, faculty and alumni, regularly spit in the face of my values and beliefs.  And now the university has taken to basically censoring opposing points of view.  Like mine.  So I’m investing energy rooting for the team of a school that slaps me in the face.  A lousy team of a school that slaps me in the face.

Why?

Over some weird sense of loyalty?  For what?

No, it’s out of habit.  It’s an unhealthy addiction.  I live for the brief moments of joy when the team actually does well, which immediately leads to wanting more. Then being disappointed when they lose for seemingly random reasons and needing that good feeling even more.  It’s a total addiction.

And the bullshit on the forums?  Fuck these people.  I don’t know any of them, and I don’t care. 

In both cases, I should be spending my time doing better things.  Or burning in the boredom and unhappiness of not having anything better to do, until I get out and do something. Because in both cases, these things have become worse than nothing.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying football games.  Nothing at all.  But then do that, enjoy that experience, and let it go.  If it’s not enjoyable, fucking stop.  And it hasn’t been enjoyable.

And if I stop… then what do I do?

And that’s silly, there’s SO much I can do, and being done with both of these things frees up ALL kinds of space and helps me appreciate the people and things who do give me value.

So goodbye unhealthy habits. Hello life.