The Hero’s Journey
A Metaphor
For illustrative purposes, it can be helpful to think of a coach as someone who is accompanying you for a time on your own “hero’s journey” toward greater health and wellness. As a client, you are starting out in your current life and health circumstances, and you’re looking to take on new challenges, rise to new heights, or maybe even answer a call to action because of a concern that has arisen. Along the way there are old habits and challenges and distractions to slay, valuable insights to gain, and new ideas about what is possible to forge. Your coach is there to join you as a travel companion and to hold a lantern for you at key turning points in your journey via the coaching process. This lantern (aspects of the coaching process) can help you see your path more clearly, shed light on setbacks in order to reveal hidden opportunities for learning, help illuminate and direct your strengths toward your goals, and assist you in identifying the nature of the obstacles you might encounter in order to find ways to overcome or outsmart them.
Your coach is there along with you at key points in the journey—to ask questions, provide support, and highlight strengths and learnings. However, as a client, you are the protagonist of the journey—you are the one who applies the learnings, makes decisions, and ultimately emerges victorious— having activated your own strengths and having made changes, realizations, and achievements that will be of value to you and propel you forward in life both now and in the future.