Just Do It

In my inbox, on any given day, there are at least a dozen invitations to webinars on personal effectiveness, life-coaching sessions, holistic self-discovery retreats, self-realization courses and self-improvement seminars. Makes me miss the good old days of enticing offers for penis-enlargement contraptions and pleas from Nigerian royalty. A heart-to-heart talk with a trusted friend over a bottle of whiskey used to be enough to get you out of a rut and put you on your way. Not anymore. These days, to solve their problems people shell out anywhere between $50 and $250 per session for guided meditation, positive affirmations, thought refocusing, and shifts in perception in the company of a life coach – a mysterious miracle worker, it seems. But you know what they say, right? Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Most ironically, life coaches have all these tools and exercises that allegedly help you become aware of how you could waste less time and be more productive. And in fact, the most productive thing you can do is fire your life coach and simply get to work. To me, the best life coach ever is Dan Wieden, co-founder of the Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency who coined the famous Nike slogan: Just do it. You can only really measure the success of life coaching if you achieve the success or happiness that you're seeking, but achieving that is entirely up to you. So why not ditch the middle man altogether?