If you are considering coaching but have not started yet, chances are the thing stopping you is not the cost or the schedule.
It is not knowing what actually happens.
Will I just talk about my problems? Will someone tell me what to do? What if I do not know what to say? How vulnerable do I have to be? What would people think if they found out I was getting support?
This post is for the person standing at the door. Not to convince you to walk through it. Just to show you what is on the other side.
The first few minutes are exactly as strange as you would expect.
If it is your first session, it will feel unfamiliar. There is no way around that. You are sitting across from someone you do not know, about to say things out loud that you probably never have before. That is not a comfortable starting position and pretending it is would be dishonest.
The first few minutes are usually about building common ground. Finding the level of trust that makes the rest possible. Not diving into the deep end immediately but creating enough safety that when the conversation goes somewhere meaningful, you are ready for it.
The best thing you can do as a client is show up with an open mind and a willingness to try. That is genuinely all that is needed.
If it is a second, third or fourth session, the opening is different. Usually a check-in on how the weeks since the last session have gone. What moved. What came up. What got harder than expected. The real work often happens in those in-between weeks, not just inside the session itself.
The thing that surprises people most.
Almost every client I have worked with has been surprised by the same thing.
They expected the coach to give them the answers. What actually happened is that they found the answers themselves.
Not because I sat back and said nothing. But because the right questions, asked in the right space, have a way of unlocking something the person already knew but could not access on their own.
It is a strange experience when it happens. You walk in with a problem that feels tangled and impossible. And through the conversation, something untangles. Not because someone handed you a solution. Because the solution was already there, buried under the noise and the pressure and the habit of trying to think your way through it alone.
A good coach does not convince or persuade or push their own opinions onto you. A good coach creates and holds the space for you to explore what is really going on. Asks the questions that let you see the pattern you have been standing too close to notice. And then trusts you to find your own way through it.
That trust is what makes coaching different from advice.
Yes, it can be uncomfortable.
I am not going to pretend otherwise. Some sessions are easy and energising. Others are not.
The discomfort is individual. It depends entirely on what you are working through. Sometimes it shows up as tears. Sometimes as relief that surprises you with its intensity. Sometimes as laughter at something you have been carrying far too seriously for far too long. Sometimes as silence.
Silence is not a sign that things are not working. Quite the opposite. Silence is often the thing that happens right before something shifts. The moment where the old pattern has been seen clearly and the new understanding has not quite arrived yet. That gap can feel uncomfortable. But it is usually the most productive part of the conversation.
As a coach, my job in those moments is not to fill the space. It is to hold it. To give you the room to feel what needs feeling, to think what needs thinking and to arrive where you need to arrive, without rushing you there.
The shift does not always look dramatic.
Sometimes it does. I have watched a client’s entire presence change in a single session. Walking in tense and overwhelmed. Walking out with clarity and genuine excitement about what comes next.
But more often the shift is quieter than that. A good session usually ends with the client having more clarity than they came in with. Clarity on what they actually want. On what has been getting in the way. On what to do next. Not in a vague, feel-good sense. In a concrete, practical sense. The kind of clarity where you walk out knowing exactly what your next step is, why it matters and how to take it.
And then the real work begins. Between the sessions. In real life. In the middle of everything. That is where the realisation gets tested. Where the commitment gets practised. Where the new habit actually forms.
Coaching is not just what happens in the room. It is what you do with it after you leave.
How coaching is different from everything else you have tried.
When I was getting certified as a coach, I experienced it as a client too. And the thing that surprised me most was how forward-looking it is.
Therapy often focuses on revisiting the past to understand it. Coaching visits the past too, but only long enough to recognise the patterns. The focus is always on the present and the future. What are you building now? What do you want next? The past helps explain the patterns. But coaching taught me that the past does not have to define what comes next.
The accountability was different too. When you know you are going to sit with someone next week and talk about what you did with the insight from the last session, something changes. It is different from reading a book and feeling inspired and then forgetting about it three days later. The commitment is shared. The follow-through is real.
And I was surprised by how good it felt to talk openly without fearing judgment. Not performing. Not managing how I was perceived. Just being honest about where I was and what I was struggling with, and having that honesty met with curiosity rather than criticism.
There is something else that makes this different from talking to a friend, a partner or a family member. The people close to you carry an old version of you in their mind. They remember how you were, how you acted, what you used to struggle with. That history creates baggage and expectations that shape every conversation, often without either of you noticing. With a coach, that baggage does not exist. There is enough distance to see you as you are right now, not as you were five years ago.
The fear that stops most people.
The most common reason someone who would benefit from coaching never starts is not cost or time. It is the thought of opening up to a stranger.
And I get it. The idea of sitting with someone you do not know and saying things out loud that you have kept to yourself is genuinely intimidating. Add to that the fact that life coaching does not always have the best reputation. Anyone can call themselves a coach. Finding the right fit takes effort. And there is a real vulnerability in trying something that might not work.
Then there is the deeper fear. The thought that needing support means something is wrong with you. That other people manage on their own and you should be able to as well. That if anyone at work found out you were seeing a coach, they would think less of you.
None of that is true. But it feels true. And feelings that feel true are the hardest ones to see past.
Here is what I can tell you from both sides of the conversation. The people who book coaching sessions are not the ones who cannot handle their lives. They are usually the ones handling everything, often impressively, while quietly knowing that something needs to change.
They could get there on their own. It would just take longer and require significantly more effort. Coaching is not a crutch. It is a shortcut to the clarity you would eventually find, taken with someone who knows the terrain.
If you are standing at the door.
You do not need to have your thoughts organised. You do not need to know what to say. You do not need to have a specific goal in mind or a clear picture of what you want to change.
You just need to be willing to show up honestly. Everything else, we figure out together.
You do not have to book a session to experience what coaching feels like.
The Discover Your Purpose workbook is a free exercise built on the same kind of questions a coaching session would ask. It takes twenty minutes. It will give you more clarity than you expect. And it might just answer the question of whether this kind of work is for you.
👉 Discover Your Purpose workbook
If what you discover makes you want to go deeper, this is where that conversation starts.
New posts drop every two weeks. Subscribe to the blog and read them before anyone else.
Read more:
What Are You Pretending Not to Know?
It is five o’clock in the afternoon, and you are standing in a supermarket aisle, unable to decide what to make for dinner. It was not tiredness. It was a symptom.
What Is Talent Hushing — And What It Is Quietly Costing You
Talent hushing is a new term for an old pattern — employees staying silent at work not because they have nothing to contribute, but because speaking up does not feel safe, worthwhile or effective. Only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree that their opinions count at work. This post is about the individual cost of…
What Are You Actually Afraid Of?
It comes out as a joke at the end of a meeting. Soon I will be out of a job anyway. Nobody picks it up, and the room moves on. One in three workers are thinking it, and almost none of them say it out loud.