“I know I need to make a change, but I just don’t know what I want to change to!”
This is one of the most common pickles my clients bring to me. They know that the status quo isn’t working, but they are mystified as to what will really make them happy. In this era of personality profiles and deep introspection, it’s easy to think that we need to do some serious detective work to figure out what makes us happy, and what we’re good at doing. But I’m here today to tell you that the clues really are all around us, if we just open our eyes.
A few years ago, I made a huge life shift by leaving biological engineering and becoming a life coach. Like my clients, I used to tell the story as if the realization that I should become a life coach took a ton of digging and introspection as I journeyed into the hidden recesses of my consciousness. Sounds like a sci-fi thriller, I know, but that’s how mystical and unforeseen the process felt to me.
Just this week, evidence has surfaced that blows holes in that story. I have been working from my parents’ house, while visiting them, and my mom asked me to clean out the old stuff in my bedroom. What awaited me was about two decades of poems and essays from English class, programs from theatre and band performances, and napkins and other bric-a-brac from supposedly memorable experiences that I no longer remember. In performing this archeological dig into the past life of Samantha, guess what I learned: teenage Samantha had “life coach” written all over her.
Exhibit A: A poem I wrote at age 13, entitled “The Encounter with the Shadow” Check out this passage:
There he met it,
Face to face
The shadow of his greed, and hate
His arrogance, and pomp
It was not like other fears
Which could be physically destroyed.
Ged knew he had to name it,
And name it he did:
Ged.
So essentially, at age 13, I was telling the world that we are our own biggest obstacles. Not much has changed in 20 years, has it?
Exhibit B: I won dozens of math and science awards, but not a single one made it up on my bedroom wall. What did make it up on my wall? This letter, written by a Vietnam veteran, who had coached me and my fellow actresses when we put on a play about women in Vietnam my senior year in high school:
“I want to thank you all for the fantastic performance Friday night. I wish that I had the ability to explain to you what this experience has meant to me. I was deeply moved. Half the time I had goosebumps; the other half I was busy wiping the tears away. Also, I now feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders…. and you all helped. Thanks again and again and again!”
Sounds exactly like the coaching fan mail I get these days, on a good day. 
Exhibit C: As I read through my yearbooks, I was blown away by how many people thanked me for being there for them when they just needed someone to talk to, even people with whom I don’t remember being particularly close.
And on and on. If I truly were an archeologist uncovering the patterns of a now-extinct society, I would be just as likely to conclude, “the people in Samantha-land were life coaches” as I would be to conclude, “the people in Samantha-land were engineers.”
The moral of the story, folks, is that the clues about what make us tick really are there, we just need to open our eyes and see them. At the age of 17, I wasn’t willing to do that, but that doesn’t mean that the clues weren’t always there, waiting for the day when I would be ready. That is SUCH good news. No complicated nuclear-physicist analysis required! Just an observant mind and a sense of curiosity.
Where do you feel out-of-touch with what you want? Time to go look for clues! Leave me a message and let me know how your own archeological dig is going.
Love,
Samantha
P.S. – Want me as your guide for an archeological dig all about you? I lead our flagship weekend workshops: the Life Coaching Crash Course. Register with promo code daily100 and save $100 for two days that will change your life! (Locations include: NYC, Boston, DC)
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Dr. Samantha Sutton is a Senior Coach and Director of Courses and Seminars at The Handel Group™. Samantha designs and leads the Handel Group’s™ flagship workshop, the Life Coaching Crash Course. Samantha additionally coaches at universities such as at Stanford and MIT. Prior to becoming a coach, Samantha received a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from MIT, and then moved from engineering yeast to engineering people’s lives.
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