Amy and her former life coach mentor Bev Barnes discuss the journey women often take through life coach training and the importance of embracing one's true self. Bev highlights how accomplished women often forget their talents in pursuit of fitting into traditional roles—and are silenced in the process. Both reflect on discovering authenticity, breaking free from societal expectations, and reclaiming our joy.
From Amy:
I have so much to say about the richness and challenge of my journey through the life coach world, and someday soon I'll be ready to write about that. But if there's anything I would tell my former self, as she moved through that process, it's this: You aren't doing this wrong, and you don't have to justify this training (at an advanced level, no less) by becoming a FULL-BLOWN LIFE COACH. You can educate yourself (and invest in yourself) just because it's helping you learn who you are, in deeper ways than you have before. So you can trust in the process, and trust in your gifts unfolding, even if you don't know how to apply them yet, especially when—up until now—experts told you how to meet and exceed their expectations. Beloved, I'm proud of how you're taking this time to redefine your own expectations, even if the clarity is taking a while.
After all, your life's work is unprecedented. Life coaching tools are expanding your vocabulary. That's more than enough.
Most of all, you get to enjoy being exactly where and who you are. No apologies needed for wanting to play with new kinds of knowledge.
Here's some added context in retrospect: After I quit my increasingly scripted teaching career, I turned to life coach training to heal and to build my (unnamed, undefined) new career at midlife, because I didn't believe I was finished with my work in the world. But it was never as simple as calling myself a life coach; that's never felt entirely right, even though the training felt necessary. That title missed so many of my core gifts, the ones that had brought in the money before, which is why I stayed too long and got so wounded in the first place. But listen.
Just because I no longer wanted to be a teacher in that setting, didn't mean my teaching skills were no longer valid. Those remained part of my curriculum vitae—my life's body of work. Even if I wasn't seeing it anymore.
I have gifts like nobody else in this world. So do you. Finding new context for our life's body of work? That's courageous.
So maybe also, I'd like to say, Thank you. Thank you for taking this risk even though you were scared. Especially because you were so scared. While you might be tempted to feel ashamed of your very big feelings, you can be proud that you let yourself feel what your body was saying.
Your body has been steering you to what matters, and what you don't truly require. Such as that title of "Master Life Coach."
Nowadays, I call myself an author, podcaster, book writing mentor, and editor—who has life coach training.
Which is another way of saying: I'm a language teacher. I teach embodied narrative craft.
All of which brings me to this: There are people on the path with information, all kinds of people you'll engage with, but you get to decide which parts are most useful for you to grow, how you interpret that information, and which parts hold the meaning that you'll carry forward.
Since I can't offer this advice to Amy in 2017, I offer guidance along these lines to the writers I work with today. Where it also applies.
Finally, I would say this to 2017 Amy: Notice your glimmer of hope when Bev Barnes takes one look at your work, never having met you before, and calls you a teacher. She's truly a Master Life Coach. You're going to want to invite her as a guest on your podcast to talk about this exact topic, after you've proven her right. (Yes, there will be a podcast. Enjoy!)
PS—And if you want to play pickleball, play pickleball. Because it's fun.
Bev Barnes guides midlife coaches and creatives to stop circling their calling and finally create the work their soul came here to do. A Certified Master Life Coach, Soul Work Midwife, and Life Coach Mentor, Bev has been guiding women at midlife to claim their brilliance and shine their light for decades. Today, she specializes in working with women who are at midlife or beyond, who trained as coaches but never quite got going—or never followed their true calling—helping them finally put the pieces together and bring their soul’s work to life.
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