Don't Call Me A Coach!

"I see you're a coach," people often say to me, especially here on LinkedIn. "What exactly do you do at Total Well Coach?"

Ugh! I hate this question.

You see, I only call myself a coach because I don't know what else to call myself and I've had professional coach training. But I'm also a registered nurse with a nursing degree from Simmons University and I have a degree in Bio-Psychology from Tufts University. And I'm also a USA Hockey Level 5 hockey coach, a mother, a grandmother, a cancer survivor and I raise chickens! Oh, and did I mention I have two podcasts?

My many years of education and the wisdom I've accrued from the school of hard knocks and having hit rock bottom more than once (rock bottom has a basement) cannot be respectfully captured with the title "coach."

I hear people who are therapists, doctors and spiritual guides describe what they do and sometimes it sounds an awfully lot like what I do. But of course, it can't be. There may be some similarities but there's only one me.

Many people, these days, use the word "coach" to describe their profession and the last thing I want to say about that is that if you've known one coach, well, you've known one coach.

Maybe it would help if I tell you about what I have done to help people to answer the question, "Joyce, What do you do?"

Once, I reminded a middle-aged man who had previously won a medal in the Olympics to remember he was still an athlete. I connected with the competitor in him and somehow that re-lit his fire! He became motivated to get back to a healthy lifestyle. He couldn't compete with his younger self but he could still compete and competition is what he loved. I then supported him along the way, rekindling his identity as an athlete and provided him with cutting edge information about health and nutrition so that he grew to understand the root cause of disease and the power and importance of prevention.

Another time I helped a woman in her 40s quit a job she hated but felt stuck in because of financial pressure. She eventually returned to school and accomplished things she never thought possible. Funny thing is that she came to me for help losing weight. She had no idea how miserable she was inside because she was stuck on the hamster wheel of life and numbing all her feelings with food. She wanted a quick fix to get the weight off. What she really needed was help talking things through. Incidentally, she did lose weight but that just a nice little bonus beyond her realizing she had so much more to give the world.

For several years I worked with a brilliant, famous, wealthy man who knew so much about the world that I couldn't have imagined it would even be possible for me to help him. He could buy anything and had access to all the world's resources with the snap of his fingers. It turns out the one thing he thought he knew, because he was legitimately always the smartest guy in the room, he'd been gravely misinformed about and no one was about to go against him. It didn't matter to me that he was brilliant, famous and wealthy. I talked to him like I talk to any of my clients and I think he found my relaxed and direct manner and my ability to shoot from the hip refreshing. He could just be himself when he talked to me and that's exactly what he needed, to just be a regular guy. It can be lonely at the top.

I've helped several couples who presented as happily married when, in fact, they were not. Some stayed together and some split up. I'm not here to fix anyone because I don't believe people are broken in the first place. If you know anything about Marshall Rosenberg and his practice of Nonviolent Communication, you know a little bit about the way I think. As Rumi says, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." When couples learn to communicate things get better fast. It's a beautiful thing.

People often come to me because they have symptoms of eating and drinking too much of the wrong thing, or their relationship with a spouse or a kid or boss has gotten rocky or they feel unfulfilled in their job. I help them look beyond the symptoms to the circumstances in their lives in a holistic way. This often comes down to three key principles.

1. Feelings, Asking and Perception: I teach people how to identify how they are feeling so they can communicate more effectively and then ask to get their needs met. People often have difficulty solving problems when they are stuck on seeing things from only one vantage point. That's a perception problem. I help people hear the stories they are telling themselves so they can re-write their stories and re-design their lives the way they want them to be.
2. Information. I help people sort through misinformation and come up with a simple understanding of how the body works to address the foundations of wellness through nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, play and learning. Einstein said there are five ascending levels of intelligence: smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius and simple. I like to keep it simple.
3. The third principle is highly personalized. For that I need to have a conversation with you. If you are ready to go fast and dive deep (that's my style) to make a difference in your life right away, let me know how I can be of service.