The #1 Reason People Don’t Hire a Life Coach (Even If They Want To)
Daniel Ruettiger harbored a dream to play for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, despite being undersized at merely 5'6" and 185 pounds.
For years, he worked his butt off to earn a spot on the team and in his final year of eligibility, the coach decided to put him in their final home game, albeit for only three plays. In the final play of the game, he rushed the quarterback and tackled him to the ground becoming one of only two players in Notre Dame history to be carried off the field by his teammates.
Ruettiger’s story (a.k.a. “Rudy”) is so inspirational it got turned into a popular movie starring Sean Astin and Jon Favreau.
Maybe you’re not into sports movies and you could care less about football, but we can all relate to someone having a dream and pursuing it with the utmost tenacity and persistence, especially through bad days. At a particularly low point when he was ready to quit, as depicted in the movie in dramatic fashion, Rudy gets a firm talking to from one of his supporters:
“You're 5 foot nothin', 100 and nothin', and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years. And you're gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself. And after what you've gone through, if you haven't done that by now, it ain't gonna never happen. Now go on back.”
It’s not your typical sports story of the kid who gets cut from his high school team and goes on to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time, winning 6 NBA championships along the way (Michael Jordan). He’s just a regular Joe following his personal dream to play college football.
Like Rudy, you have a dream. Everyone does. We all have deep desires to be hoisted onto the shoulders of others and carried off the field. Or to have our own 15 minutes of fame, whatever that looks like.
Even though a life coach can help you pursue your dream, hold you accountable, push you when you feel like quitting, it’s hard to justify the cost when, like Rudy, you have a good paying job, a roof over your head, and a family that loves you. It makes you wonder, is life coaching just a big scam to solve first world problems? Is it only because you have the luxury of an abundance of food and shelter that you can worry about pursuing a self-indulgent dream - like risking everything to play a stupid football game?
Rationalizing to yourself that overall, your life is good enough kills dreams. It’s stuffing them in a drawer of complacency. It’s stopping you from hiring a coach who is going to hold you to your dream, even if it seems scary as hell.
Imagine if Rudy had given up. This blog post wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t be here today, reading these words, moments away from pursuing your own dream.
Go for it, hire a coach. Who knows? Maybe one day they’ll write a movie about you.
This article is written by Stephan Wiedner, co-founder and "Head Coach" at Noomii.com.
