Accredited Interventions, and the rest of them.

This has become a sore spot for me. I'm working it out on paper...well, on this site because if it were on paper, I'd lose it.

There are certain professions that could be labeled Interventions. Among them are Teaching/Training, Medicine, Therapy, and strangely enough, Coaching. Let me explain what I mean.

In our lives, there are many times that our path through our existence needs to be adjusted, changed, or backtracked. We could exist very well without formal education, however, our society puts a premium on communication, number manipulation, and societal behaviors. To promote some sort of consistency, we indoctrinate the children roughly at the same time to read and write, do basic math, and get along with each other. We intervene with a child's natural development by sending them to school or teaching them at home. We continue to put a premium on training and incorporate that into our businesses in the form of Continuing Education, sales training, or new product/process training. We go to seminars to improve our interpersonal relationships and get an idea of what our Emotional Quotient is and how it affects our subordinates and our bosses. We gobble up self-improvement courses and read tons of books to get that mental edge we need to become more successful in life and business. So you see how teaching/training are interventions? These classes change our perspective, endow us with new skills and knowledge, and alter our path through life.

In medicinal interventions, surgery, vaccines, antibiotics, chiropractic care (yes, it is medicine), and holistic or herbal medicines are all acceptable tools to ease pain, correct injuries, and battle diseases to increase our mobility and our life spans. Who hasn't taken aspirin for a headache, or cold/flu medicine to aid in shortening the discomfort that comes with these common diseases? Who would survive a heart attack and refuse to seek help to reduce the causes of future heart attacks? Who would walk around with a broken wrist or a snakebite without seeking an intervention? Medicine can change our perspectives on healthy living (No you can't eat cake at every meal!!! What?), endow us with practical applications of self-intervention such as applying a bandaid, how to avoid illnesses, how to treat minor maladies and such, and (tada!) alter our path through life.

(beginning to see a pattern here?)

What if we're stuck? What if we cannot seem to get traction and continue to revisit old patterns of behaviors that do not serve us well? What if our emotional health and mental health are not in congruence? We seek a therapeutic solution. I had hip surgery a few years back, and due to the damage my hips had already sustained, my center of gravity shifted and affected my balance, and my stance. I was in pain in my back and hips. After my surgery, I had to relearn how to stand and walk all over again because my compensating behavior was no longer necessary. I enlisted the help of a physical therapist that gave me exercises to even my gait and strengthen long-unused or misused muscles. This was a welcome intervention! Other types of therapy work on mental illnesses and emotional trauma. They make a difference in adopting a healthy outlook on life, adjusting the brain chemistry to provide relief from some disorders, and allowing us to interact with society without anxiety or fear among other benefits. This type of intervention is often misunderstood and is sometimes fertile ground for charlatans and con artists. But correctly administered, therapy can change our perspective, endow us with the skills and understanding we need to navigate the rocky road of mental and emotional challenges, and alter our path through life.

What, then, does coaching do? Coaching focuses on the performance aspects of our lives. It is an intervention that causes us to really look at our lives...what we do well, what we wish to improve, what we wish to achieve, and what kind of people we wish to be. If you examine the other interventions I've mentioned so far, all of them have to do with getting individuals back to equitable standing.

What does that mean? In order for society to function, there are certain expectations: all should be able to communicate, measure and count, and get along with those people around us. So someone without schooling or formal education is not in good standing. Therefore, teaching brings unschooled people up to equity with the rest of the society (in theory at least).

Medicine seeks to restore mobility and reduce pain in people to bring them to a place where they are self-sustaining and able to do basic self-care at least that allows them a modicum of "normalcy." They repair broken limbs. They seek to cure diseases that might be life-threatening. They deliver babies! They work with prosthetics such as false teeth and hearing aids and glasses that make life easier. Some try to enhance the body with steroids to reduce allergies and of course, the charlatans try to improve performance with body/mind-altering drugs. The majority of their work, however, is concerned with bringing sick or injured people back to "normal".

Therapists work with people whose physical, emotional, or mental states keep them from interacting with others or controlling their thoughts and actions in order to live a "normal" life...working, having a family, or belonging to a society. It's a way to restore what society considers acceptable thoughts and behaviors. People who did not fit this definition were considered deviants. They deviated from the norm. Like the word "retarded" it took on a connotation of being less human, less acceptable, or undesirable. Just to be clear, the word, retarded, just means slow; gay means happy; mentally ill means not conforming to societal norms or deviating from what was acceptable. So because of the negative association with deviance, mental illness is considered taboo, just as retardation and sexual deviance. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH DEVIANCE!

As humans, we lack the ability to conform perfectly. I deviate from the norm in that as a "mature" woman, I still act like a kid sometimes. I have red hair; most don't. I have 5 kids; most have 2.5. I have multiple college degrees; most have one if they get one, and the rest have HS diplomas. To be unique is to deviate from the norm. AND EVERYONE IS UNIQUE! We celebrate deviance when we watch the Olympics and cheer as people break world records and overcome opponents. We spend billions of dollars going to see superhero movies with mutants that have swords protruding from their knuckles, people encased in a suit imbued with artificial intelligence, or a billionaire that makes use of technology and a silly costume to bring justice to the downtrodden. They're all deviants.

Only in Coaching does the participant seek deviance from the norm. Good coaching allows people to raise their awareness, expand their consciousness, and exponentially improve their performance in whatever area they choose. Participants are not seeking normalcy, they're seeking the extraordinary. In enhancing a person's character, skills, and knowledge, a coach is removing them from the average--from equity with the masses. This intervention empowers people to be more than their programming. It doesn't bring things back to normal, it enhances beyond what is considered normal.

Which brings us to certification. (Finally! What a long way to go to the title of the piece!)

To be a teacher, one must have a college degree in education with student teaching and internship requirements and then pass a state test. It takes some 5 years to accomplish this and costs upwards of $50K. To be a trainer, one must exhibit the ability to efficiently dispense information and train people for skills. Many times this is due to years and years of experience in the area and specialized training themselves.

To be a medical practitioner, one must have an advanced degree, a nursing degree, internship, extensive experience, specialization training, passing the boards, and lots of insurance,... and it costs upwards of $100K. One person I know is becoming a Dentist. She's been in school for 20 years (since she was 5) and in one more year, she'll be able to open her practice. She said it costs her $100K per year! She will have accumulated $500,000 in debt before she can even open a business.

To be a therapist, one must have an advanced degree in psychology or psychotherapy or physical therapy, get certified by a recognized medical authority, have internships, and it costs upwards of $60-70k.

To be a life coach, you put your shingle out. Let that sink in.

Remember that in the other interventions, the purpose is to bring people to normalcy, to equity with the rest of society. With coaching, you are moving beyond the normal to the extraordinary. You can get a certification for $7.99 if you believe the stuff you see on Facebook. It requires no degree. There are no medical boards or school boards that ensure compliance and the highest standards of professional ethics. There is no coursework, no observation, no critique, and no supervision. There are no standards. You can get as specialized as you like. You can coach exclusively on self-confidence, on emotional quotient issues, on marketing... You can even focus on Vision Boards. Most participants will come to a coach and expect them to wave a magic wand and suddenly all their heart's desires will be granted. They will not make use of the resourcefulness they have within themselves. They will never address their self-limiting beliefs. These coaches cannot effect a transformation in their clients, and yet they are in a position to do EXACTLY that.

If you want to transform your life, do your research. Get a good coach: one who can show they've done the work, under supervision, with copious amounts of coursework and experience, and are recognized by a supervisory entity as having the skills and the knowledge to coach.