When I first started building Evolved From Empathy, the website was supposed to be another place to get my thoughts out into the world. It was also going to be another branch that might eventually help people find my book.
But for a while, I seriously considered becoming a life coach.
I know that might sound strange coming from someone who now feels uncomfortable giving anybody advice, but I wasn’t just kicking the idea around. I started looking into online classes and schools. I thought maybe I could build something that bridged the gap between everything I had spent more than a decade learning and the people who were standing where I used to be.
It started one night when I found a documentary called The Secret on Netflix. I watched it over and over, trying to put together exactly what they were saying. Eventually, I realized that my confusion probably wasn’t an accident. The documentary was basically an advertisement for Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret book series.
The basic idea seemed to be that if you believed strongly enough that your life was already a certain way, your mind and your life would somehow have to make it true. It was a flashy version of the Law of Attraction, and they made it sound a little like finding a magic lamp.
Naturally, my gullible brain was hooked.
I read three of the books. Then I spent the next ten or fifteen years reading, watching, and cramming every motivational idea I could find into my head. Some of it was built around the Law of Attraction. Some of it was about changing your habits, changing how you thought, or becoming a better version of yourself.
And the truth is, a lot of it did help me turn my life around.
Just not the way I thought it would.
I didn’t make a wish and wake up with a different life. I changed things little by little, and sometimes so slowly that I wondered if I was changing at all. I did the work, but it probably took me longer than it needed to because I spent years not fully understanding what some of these people were trying to teach me.
That was where the idea of helping other people came from. I thought maybe I could shorten the learning curve for someone else. I could explain the parts that had held me up, change the wording that made everything sound like a gimmick, and tell people the part I wish someone had told me from the beginning.
You really can change your life.
But it isn’t magic, and it probably isn’t going to happen as fast as the person selling you the book wants you to believe.
Why Becoming a Life Coach Made Me Feel Like a Fraud
The more I thought about becoming a life coach, the more I pictured someone from my past popping up and asking a perfectly reasonable question.
“Weren’t you the kid in our class with some of the worst grades? How are you going to give anybody advice when you barely knew anything?”
Honestly, I didn’t have much of an argument.
I was usually one of the worst kids in class when it came to both grades and behavior. I never thought I was stupid, even back then. I knew the real problem was that I didn’t do the work the way the other kids did. I was always looking for a shortcut, and apparently none of my teachers were willing to accept “untapped potential” as a completed homework assignment.
Still, knowing why my grades were bad didn’t make that imaginary question any easier to defend.
I could already picture the embarrassment. I’d put myself out there as someone capable of helping other people, and someone who remembered the younger version of me would remind everyone who I used to be.
To be honest, there are probably still a few people who think that now. They see the kid they remember writing a blog and publishing a book and wonder who the hell he thinks he is.
But I eventually had to ask myself what I was actually afraid of.
What was the worst thing that could happen? Someone makes fun of something I did when I was young and immature, and five other people see it?
I think I can survive that.
I can’t spend the rest of my life doing nothing because I’m afraid somebody might remember who I used to be. At some point, the possibility that something good could come from putting myself out there has to outweigh the possibility of being embarrassed.
The bigger problem wasn’t really my grades anyway. It was that even after I grew up, I made some tremendous mistakes. There were parts of my life I still felt like I needed to overcome. In my mind, I had more to prove before I had earned the right to stand in front of other people and tell them how they should live.
That was when the idea of becoming a life coach started making me feel like a fraud.
I believed I had something worthwhile to say. I just wasn’t sure I had done enough yet to be the person saying it.
What Does It Take to Prove You’ve Changed?
The truth is, I’m still not sure I’ve proven myself enough.
I’ve always held myself to a high standard in certain parts of my life. When you know you’ve disappointed some of the most important people in your life, it isn’t something you get over easily. Even after you change, part of you still remembers the person you were before you did.
People tell me all the time that they’re proud of me. They tell me I turned my life around or that they never expected me to make it out as well as I did.
That’s nice to hear. I know they mean it as a compliment.
Sometimes, though, it also confirms the ideas I already had in my head about how much of a failure I must have been. There’s a strange feeling that comes with hearing someone say they never thought you would make it. You’re grateful they recognize how far you’ve come, but you’re also reminded of how little they once expected from you.
Not long ago, I was talking with someone whose opinion had mattered to me for most of my life. The conversation turned toward what I had been like when I was younger, and they joked about how difficult I was and how little some people liked me back then.
I don’t think they were trying to hurt me. To them, it was probably just an old story that had become funny with time.
So I smiled and acted like it was funny too.
That’s what you do when something catches you off guard and you don’t want anyone to know it landed harder than they intended. You grin, stay calm, and keep the conversation moving.
But I can’t pretend it didn’t hurt.
When you grow up believing that a lot of people didn’t care for you, you remember the ones you thought did. Finding out years later that you might have been wrong about some of them brings back feelings you thought you had already outgrown.
Maybe moments like that are part of the price you pay for not being a great person for a large part of your life. You don’t get to decide when everyone else forgets who you used to be just because you’ve worked hard to become someone different.
That may be part of what I thought I still needed to prove before I could help anybody else. I wasn’t trying to become perfect. I just wanted enough distance between who I had been and who I was becoming that nobody could look at me and reasonably ask:
“Who are you to tell anybody else how to live?”
The problem is, I don’t know how much distance would ever be enough.
Can Anyone Give Good Life Advice?
The older I get, the more I realize that good advice can come from almost anyone.
There are people out there I wouldn’t put in charge of pumping my gas, but if you listen to them long enough, I guarantee you can pick up at least one great piece of life advice.
Everyone has lived a different life. That means there are countless ways of seeing the same problem and probably just as many ways of solving it. A rich person and a poor person may never look at the world through the same lens, but they can still want the same things. They might both want to raise good kids, provide for their families, and leave the people they love better off than they found them.
They may reach the same conclusion after taking completely different roads to get there.
I don’t ever want to become so proud that I stop listening to someone because I don’t think they’re successful enough to teach me anything. A person can make terrible decisions in one part of life and still understand something I don’t. Sometimes the people who took the wrong road know more about the warning signs than the people who never came close to getting lost.
The problem is that I also know not everyone thinks that way.
Some people won’t listen unless they already respect the person speaking. That’s part of what makes me nervous about giving advice. It doesn’t always matter whether the advice is good. Sometimes people decide whether it has value based on who it came from.
Hell, I have family members who call me asking for advice and then either argue with me about it or turn around and do the exact opposite.
So I know damn well that strangers and distant friends aren’t automatically going to listen to me.
Maybe that’s why I still feel like I need to build a list of reasons someone should. Publishing a book might be one of them. Building this website could become another. Maybe if I keep doing things that show I know at least a little about what I’m talking about, somebody will eventually believe I’m worth listening to.
And maybe if I keep doing some good in the world and reminding people that there is still good out here, I’ll eventually feel like I’ve done enough to make up for parts of my past.
Then maybe I’ll finally be brave enough to start giving people advice they never asked for.
I’m sure they’ll love that.
Do You Need to Have Life Figured Out to Help Someone?
I don’t know how much my book has helped anyone yet.
I certainly don’t think Not My Brother’s Keeper gives people advice about addiction or tells families what they should do when someone they love is falling apart. If anything, the book asks more questions than it answers.
Maybe it helps somebody realize they aren’t the only person who has thoughts they’re afraid to say out loud. It could help someone recognize that caring too much can pull a person under too. A family that has lived through something similar might read it and feel understood in a way they haven’t before.
Or it might simply give somebody a few hours away from their own problems while they get lost in Collin’s story.
I’m still waiting to find out.
As more strangers read the book, I’m curious about what I’ll hear from people who have dealt with addiction in their own families. I might hear that the story helped or that I got parts of it wrong. I might not hear anything at all.
That uncertainty used to make me question whether any of this counted as helping. I thought helping someone meant giving them an answer, showing them the right direction, or somehow fixing a problem they couldn’t fix themselves.
I’m starting to think it can be much smaller than that.
Sometimes helping another person might simply mean telling the truth about something they thought they were alone in. It might mean putting words to a feeling they could never explain or giving them a character who understands a part of their life that nobody around them seems to understand.
That isn’t life coaching. It isn’t advice either.
But it still might matter.
Someday I might take one of those life-coaching classes I used to research. I could learn more, build more credibility, and find a way to help people more directly. I’m not closing that door forever. I still want to help people, and I believe I’ll eventually find the right way to do it.
I’m just not as convinced anymore that I have to wait until I become some finished version of myself before I’m allowed to try.
For a long time, I felt like I had to reach the top of the mountain before I had any right to help somebody else climb. I thought I needed enough success, enough proof, and enough distance from my past that nobody could question whether I belonged up there.
The problem is, I don’t know if anyone ever truly reaches that place.
There will probably always be another mistake I regret, another part of myself I’m working on, and another reason I could use to stay quiet. If I wait until I have life completely figured out, I’ll probably spend the rest of it standing in the same spot.
Maybe helping someone doesn’t require standing at the top and shouting instructions down to them. Maybe I can still be climbing and occasionally turn around to help somebody over a section I’ve already crossed.
I know where some of the loose rocks are because I stepped on them. I know which directions led nowhere because I followed them longer than I should have. I know how exhausting the climb can become because there were plenty of times I almost stopped.
None of that makes me an expert.
It just means I’ve been there.
Maybe that’s enough to help someone who hasn’t made it that far yet. The mistakes I spent years believing disqualified me could be the same mistakes that allow me to understand someone standing a few steps behind me.
I still don’t know exactly where all of this will take me. It could be through my books, these articles, or even giving people advice they actually asked for one day.
For now, I think the best thing I can do is be honest about where I’ve been, share whatever I’ve learned, and keep becoming someone I’m proud of.
Don’t erase the footprints behind you. Just keep walking.
Before You Go
If you enjoyed this article, I’d love to stay connected.
Every other Sunday, I share a new reflection about life, family, empathy, and the lessons I’m still trying to figure out. You’ll also get occasional updates about my writing and future projects.
If you’d like to come along for the journey, I’d be honored to have you.
Or, if you’d like to keep reading today, you can check out my debut novel, Not My Brother’s Keeper.
Thanks for spending a little time with me today.