Is the word "coaching" or "ka-ching?"

In the months since The Secret exploded like Monty Python’s unfortunate Mr. Creosote all over the cultural landscape, dousing everyone and everything within spewing range with its simplistic New-Wage wisdom about the Law Of Attraction, I have been receiving more than my share of spam emails from people claiming to be Law Of Attraction Coaches. Law Of Attraction coaching, of course, is merely one of the latest outgrowths of the burgeoning personal-coaching industry. And whether or not they use LOA as a hook, personal coaches, or "life coaches" as they more often call themselves these days, are swarming all over the place, with one of the largest breeding grounds being the famous Coach U. We are now faced with a veritable infestation for which, alas, no coach sprays or coach hotels exist.

More than ten years ago I wrote a piece that began and ended with a semi-facetious complaint about the overabundance of therapists in our lives. In retrospect my ire was a bit misplaced, especially since the meat of the essay was a summary of a personal experience I had, not with a real therapist, but with one of those pseudoprofessionals who all too often play at therapy: a life coach.

Things are arguably worse today than they were in the early 1990s when the event I wrote about took place. These days everyone who isn’t using a life coach of some variety is a coach, with many in the New-Wage culture being both coaches and coachees (the latter not to be confused with the famous Apache chief).

The ever-vigilant Tony Michalski, himself a reformed personal coach of sorts (more on that momentarily), alerted me to a thread on Marcy From Maui’s Powerful Intentions forum. The title of the thread is, "Sad... people explote others with the LOA," and though the misspelling of the third word somehow put me in mind of our dear departed Mr. Creosote, the topic had nothing to do with gluttony and flying entrails. And although the thread initiator seemed to have a bit of a challenge with spelling and sentence structure, the point was not lost:

Why people like to be exploted (sic)?...the law of atraction (sic) it is only one!...why do you need to pay for coach....coach what?... how to think?...or how to feel?... do you need to pay to learn how to dream?.. or how to vision your goals? or desires?... there are a lot of books…repeating the same thing , some of then are the copy or the others and some are just the way to sale the same thing with diferent (sic) name. The true is that you just need to read one to learn enough. I really don't understand....maybe I am looking the whole idea in a very different way that it is suppose to be.... Can somebody explain to me, is there something else to learn? about the Secret or LOA???

The first person to respond did so in typical Secremonious* fashion: "Your post makes me sad for you. You don’t get it."

The next reply, from a person named Gabriel, cut to the chase:

People who pay thousands of dollars for success coaching inevitably make a lot more money because coaching helps them get results. Hence it is an investment with a rich return, not an expense….

Steve Salerno presented a fine overview of the life-coaching phenomenon in his book SHAM:** How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless. In Chapter 6, "Put Me In, Coach, I’m Ready To Pay," he gives a brief history of the rise of life coaching as we now know it, beginning with the late Thomas Leonard, a Seattle financial planner who founded Coach U. Steve goes on to examine how the industry grew, and he takes a critical look at its effects on our culture.

Money isn’t the only issue, but it is probably the first one that comes to most people’s minds. So…is it true that "people who pay thousands of dollars for success coaching inevitably make a lot more money," as our friend Gabriel on the Powerful Intentions Forum contends? Do individuals or corporations normally get a good return on investment? According to Steve Salerno, feedback on life coaching is generally more positive than for other products and providers in the self-help industry. But in truth it’s hard to give an accurate assessment of the value of coaching. This is particularly the case with corporate coaching, partly because even with a lousy or unimpressive ROI, people who put out all that money are loath to admit it was wasted. As Steve writes:

…reckoning a coach’s provable bottom-line impact proves problematic, because companies often turn to coaches when they’re undergoing other organizational changes. This makes it hard to separate out the results of the coaching from the results of the structural tweaking. But corporate managers who pay top dollar for a coach’s services are inclined to view the process in the most favorable light; whether the payoff is quantifiable or not, there’s a strong incentive to report success, because the price of reporting failure is simply too high.

As for coaching rates, they’re all over the map, as pointed out in SHAM. Interestingly enough, Jane Ellen Sexton, the "intuitive life coach" mentioned at the beginning of Steve’s chapter on coaching, has apparently reduced her rates since SHAM was first published. Sexton’s intuitive life coaching sessions, which were formerly $150 an hour, are now only $25 per hour. And "channelings," where Sexton connects with "information that flows through me from dimensions outside of the earth plane for purposes of expanding reality," are now $50 per hour-and-a-half session. Formerly they were $250 per ninety-minute session. In addition, Sexton now offer a free initial half-hour consultation. She sells a range of other services too, such as past-life regressions at $50 for an hour and a half, "energy investigations and clearings," at $100 an hour (one-hour minimum), and "clairsentient communications with children and animals," surely a bargain at $50 an hour.

You probably can’t expect such low rates from Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale, who, besides being unwilling to let us forget for a moment that he is one of the stars of The Secret, has been spending a great deal of time for several months pushing his own "Miracles Coaching" program. He even suggested, one can only hope facetiously, that Denny Crane, William Shatner’s fictional character on the ABC hit series Boston Legal, should have availed himself of the MC program. Joe does not publish his Miracles Coaching rates, at least not on his web site. He does, however, include this caveat more than halfway down the page (immediately following the video clip of his famous "Universe as a mail-order catalog" spot in The Secret):

Before I go any further, I must mention the cost. This is not a free program. In order for me to develop and deliver this program, it required certified professional coaches, preparation, and a huge investment on my part. Because of this, there will be a fair investment on your part.

And for the truly ambitious go-getter who really has a lot of dough to throw around, Mr. Fire offers a program that combines his Miracles Coaching program with his Executive Mentoring program. Again, there’s no word on the cost, at least on the promo site, but one can only imagine, since the "diamond package" top-of-the-line product in the executive mentoring is listed on another of his many web sites at a cool $150,000 USD.

What doesn’t show up on the main pages, but is nonetheless a part of every one of Joe’s "miracle" promo sites, is a very lengthy disclaimer that basically says, "Caveat emptor." But hey, who needs to read that stuff? Act now, click here, because the Universe loves speed!

Lest you think I am suggesting for a moment that any coach or other service provider should give his or her services away for nothing, that is not what I am saying at all. The above-mentioned Gabriel on the PI forum concluded his message with this observation:

In the world of success breeding success, no-one will ever be exploited. From another angle, anyone who thinks they can get something for nothing has a very basic lesson to learn which I believe most people who are attracted to this forum have already learned.

Yes, Gabriel, in a perfect world, no one would be exploited. But in the real world, success doesn’t always breed success; sometimes it just breeds more suckers to contribute to the coffers of the successful. Furthermore, what so many Secretrons, LOAnoids and other New-Wagers still don’t seem to get is that few if any of us from the naysaying camp are objecting to people charging money for their products or services. We don’t even object to people charging staggering amounts of money for their expertise. After all, most of us are capitalists too. What we are questioning is the actual value of the products and services being offered. And that is very much up for debate.

However, as both Tony Michalski and Steve Salerno have pointed out, the potential cost of coaching isn’t even the biggest problem. In SHAM Steve writes, "What qualifies someone as a life coach? A better question might be, What disqualifies someone?…Virtually anyone, whether he or she has attended Coach U or not, can anoint himself a life coach."

The truth is that because there are no uniform standards for the industry, life coaches can and do cross boundaries that should not be crossed, sometimes practicing therapy without the proper license to do so, and, in the worst cases, emotionally or sexually abusing their clients. This is by no means to imply that all or even most life coaches cross these boundaries. But many, perhaps out of fear of losing business, fail to make a proper distinction between life coaching and psychotherapy, sometimes with unfortunate consequences.***

I recently had an email exchange with the aforementioned Tony Michalski, who has done a specialized type of life coaching in the past. Tony, who has given me permission to quote him, had several observations about coaching, the first of which was this:

Some don’t need coaching; they need therapy. I don’t intend that as an insult. Just a point of fact. For some people, issues are so deep-seated that anyone who attempts to "coach" them is playing the fool. It's dangerous, not to mention practically criminal, especially if something should happen.

At a keynote speech to a conference of therapists last November, Steve Salerno spoke about the same problem.

Tony pointed out that the problem is not just with the life coaches themselves but also with their all-too-willing clients. And he has a point. After all, if there weren’t a market, the coaches would be spreading their wisdom in some other way.

Many are looking for the "silver bullet." Many have the impression that there is some silver bullet or "secret" to success, so they get a coach. It's silly, but look at how the coaches market themselves. Crazy stuff! So, people shell out the coin, get the "coaching," and [what else?]... Probably nothing.

Some folks, however, spend lots of money with no apparent or measurable results, but still find the experience valuable. Tony writes:

I know people who went through five coaches and THOUSANDS of dollars…Well, they SAY it was great and a good experience and they learned a lot. What about more money, success, etc.?? Nothing. BUT IT WAS STILL GOOD!

Hey, in the New-Wage world, "it’s all good."

Tony believes that for a subset of "business people looking for an edge," coaching can be of value. He adds that if he opts to "coach" again, it will be with the understanding that he is a consigliere – "someone who can look at things objectively for you and offer advice" – rather than a life coach. That kind of service, he says, makes sense.

Tony’s opinion of the life-coaching industry as a whole, however, is that it "plays on peoples’ hopes and fears and can really deliver very little other than ...MORE COACHING! Or another SEMINAR! Hey! Why not BOTH!" Indeed, that seems to be the pattern with most of the New-Wage practitioners, whether or not they are openly selling "coaching" programs.

Tony concluded with a remark that you won’t hear from too many life coaches: "Frankly, I tell people who come to me for coaching to put their money into a few college level classes and actually LEARN something that will help to make them successful rather than a life coach program."

So is life coaching worthwhile? Returning to the Powerful Intentions forum where I began, I saw this comment from a person named Seamus Ennis:

To paraphrase an old saying, one person's sucker deal is another person's money well spent. And the true point here is that you can't judge that from the outside…

…And if there are charlatans out there using any teaching, then they will be perfectly balanced out with the people who need to be taken. A Perfect example of like attracting like.

It could be argued, then, that people who get suckered deserve what they get. But that doesn't let the hucksters off the hook. And it doesn't negate the need for some standardization of the life coaching industry.

One thing is certain: As long as there are so many gluttons for the artificial wisdom and mostly empty calories of New-Wage thought, there will be life coaches around to serve up heaping helpings of pricey counsel. Endlessly adaptable, they will alter their shtick to match every exciting new miracle-breakthrough trend that comes along. Witness, for example, Coach Kate, a Law Of Attraction Life Coach, just one of dozens if not hundreds of life coaches who are riding the Secret wave. And when The Secret has gone the way of all bad trends, and new bad trends rise in its place, the coaches will adapt yet again. The good coach, like the solicitous waiter, knows that no matter how many courses the true personal-growth gourmand has consumed, there will always be room for just one more "waf-fer-thin mint…"

As for the rest of us, we are best advised to duck and run.

* Secremonious (seek-ruh-MOH-nee-us): Another Cosmic Connie neologism, referring to the sanctimony of Secret zealots.
** Amazon’s "also-bots" are really not very bright; according to the info currently on the Amazon page for this book, customers who expressed interest in this title also shopped for Wamsutta pillow shams.
*** I’ve noticed that on most of the "life coach" or "miracles coach" web sites there are very detailed disclaimers warning that potential clients may not achieve the type of financial success hyped in the program. But there’s nothing that says, "Under no circumstances should coaching be considered a substitute for the attention of a qualified therapist, counselor, and/or other healthcare professional." Perhaps these disclaimers are present in the actual contracts once the sucker prospect has signed up for the program, but they don’t seem to be in the promo copy or the disclaimer pages.

Half-baked thoughts

Oh, dear, it’s another busy Tuesday, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to serve leftovers again because I don't have time to cook up a whole big post from scratch. So here are some thoughts that were left over from the stuff that was whirling around in my head earlier this morning. They're not all new-age/self-help-related, but they definitely fall within the larger category of pop-culture stuff...

Check out those cupcakes!
I might have suspected some silly new trend was afoot when David Letterman mentioned last night that his two-year-old son had been invited to "a cupcake party." At the time I heard it I was pretty drowsy, having taken a couple of Excedrin PMs, and I couldn't manage to do much more than ask myself the half-baked question, "What the f - - - is a ‘cupcake party?’". My question was not answered, but Dave went on to talk about going to the party to pick his son up, and seeing all of the tots sitting around with vacant looks on their chubby little cupcake-smeared faces.

Well, what a difference half a day makes. I know now that those were probably some pretty pricey smears, and it kind of makes you wonder why parents would waste all that money on children who are obviously too young and uncultured to appreciate what a painfully trendy treat cupcakes have become. But then again, rich parents, and even not-so-rich ones, are known for splurging on kiddie parties. And cupcakes are pretty small potatoes, so to speak, compared to elephants, camels, and front-yard theme parks.

"Wait a minute," I hear you saying. "Cupcakes are trendy?" Yup, you read right: trendy, as in being the egregiously overpriced, must-have pastries for today’s cutting-edge consumer. In other words, cupcakes have become snob food. I learned about the cupcake boom today in a story by another David: the Houston Chronicle’s David Kaplan, who has the small-business and retail beat at the Chron, and has been one of my favorite local journalists for many years.

To tell the truth, I never much cared for cupcakes, and I certainly never thought I would actually read the words "connoisseur" or "niche dining" in relation to these omnipresent little muffinites. But they’re all there in David K.’s article*, complete with a quotation from Houston attorney Barry Leavitt, who considers himself a cupcake connoisseur. Barry knows from good cupcakes: "Too much icing or too many sprinkles takes away from the integrity of the cupcake," he explains.

And cupcakes are serious business, as evidenced by, for example, LA’s excruciatingly hip and minimalist gourmet cupcake boutique, Sprinkles. Word has it that Houston and other major cities are due to get a Sprinkles within the next few years as the company expands. We already have $3.00 cupcakes at some fashionable inner-Loop spots here, but Sprinkles ’cakes are really something special, at least according to their web site. They’re made with quality ingredients such as Madagascar bourbon, Senegalese bitter-mint chocolate, Patagonian butter rum, Brazilian rainforest guano, etc. Okay, I'm making most of those things up. But there is something on the Sprinkles web site about Madagascar bourbon something-or-other, and a few other snooty-sounding ingredients that supposedly justify the $3.25-per-unit retail price.

Next trend on the snob-chow horizon: American cheese-food sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off, retailing for $15.00 and up for half a sandwich.

It’s now or nether
I know you’ve been waiting for another progress report on Bryan the Lightworker’s "emptying Hell" project, which I last blogged about this past Friday. As you may recall, Bryan is attempting to rescue 50 million lost souls from the Nether Worlds. He is being aided by a channeler named Shondra Bert and also by Mary, Mother of God.

Here are the latest stats I have on the project:

As of 11/30/06, about 85% have shown some movement (42.5 million), 75% (37.5 million) have opened their eyes, 10% are walking around with some help (5 million) and a small percentage (1 million) are asking questions such as "Who am I?", "Where am I?", "What is this place?" and "Why am I here?"

Bryan and his crew also need volunteers to help at night during their dream state, and they’ve extended an amazing free offer for anyone who serves. All you have to do is dream you’re going to Hell. Here’s what you do, according to the email Bryan just sent me:

1. Before you go to sleep, ask to be taken to the Nether Worlds while in your dream state.
2. Provide support for the Holy Ones trying to revive the souls just coming out of comatose conditions.
3. Tell us how many nights you served via email at: contact@circleoflights.com

You will receive one frequency acceleration activation – a $24.99 value! – for every night you serve.**

No word on how much you get if your waking life is a living Hell.

Gray area
In yesterday’s blog I mentioned "Dr." John Gray, who hails from my neck of the woods and is a self-help superstar by virtue of his Mars-and-Venus franchise. Today, via the comments section on Steve Salerno’s SHAMblog, I discovered another blog, Stupid & Contagious, by an edgy young pop-culture commentator who goes by the name of RockitQueen. On her Dec. 4 post RockitQueen mentioned Gray too. Well, to me that’s just Goddess’s way of saying that it is time for me to recycle yet another tidbit from my BLP (book-like product), Cosmic Relief.

You'll have to click on the pic to look at the larger version if you want to read the whole thing. I'm the first to admit that artistically (and probably every other way), the piece is quite crude, but you must consider that all I had available in those days was vector clip art. The face of "John Grate" actually began life as a clip-art pic of Martin Short. I do think I captured the smirk, anyway, and the attitude as well. And I have the sneaking suspicion that it was this piece that helped convince Gray’s mom, the late Virginia Gray, not to carry Cosmic Relief in her metaphysical bookstore, Aquarian Age Bookshelf. (Yes, I did try.)

Now go out and have a great Tuesday (or Wednesday, if it’s already Wednesday in your part of the world). Don’t forget to send love and light to all those lost souls in the Nether Worlds, and send some money my way so I can continue to do my own work for the highest good. And, most important of all, watch out for cupcakes that lack integrity.***

* Please do not blame David for this. He is only reporting it.
** Essentially, you get $24.99 worth of something the seller can’t prove actually exists for doing something you don’t have to prove you actually did. Heck of a deal!
*** Such as Pamela Anderson’s. Or Britney’s.

We've come a long way, maybe

Oh, my, it seems that I’ve been away from my blog for a while again. I really do have so many cosmic matters of consequence whirling around in my head (whirled musings, indeed!), but at the moment I have more mundane matters to take care of. I just can’t concentrate on the cosmic stuff today. Still, in the interests of keeping the Musings current, I feel compelled to blog, even if it is a slight departure from my usual subject matter.*


Bling head
For years now, feminists and others have criticized the Barbie ™ doll for promoting an unrealistic and unattainable standard of female beauty. Barbie’s body in particular has come under fire; her exaggerated proportions have been relentlessly scrutinized, analyzed and criticized. An article on Canada's Media Awareness Network web site entitled "Beauty and Body Image in the Media" reported, "Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions…found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel. A real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhea and eventually die from malnutrition."

In response to years of criticism, Mattel went back to the lab and created a slightly more realistically proportioned doll (liver and bowels not included), but "the present Barbie doll body is still uncharacteristic of most women," according to the Barbie entry in Wikipedia. So little girls still have that Barbie-body ideal hanging over them, whether or not they are conscious of it.

But there are clear signs that values are evolving. I just haven’t been paying attention. Maybe that’s because I don't have children and rarely shop in toy stores. I do look at ads, though, and just yesterday, when I was going through the Sunday ads, an item in the Toys-R-Us circular caught my eye. It was the My Scene Bling Bling Barbie Head. Here we have Barbie without the body, but with a boatload of faux jewels and other accessories that little girls can wear and share. And in a nod (so to speak) to diversity, there’s also "Madison," a Bling Head of Color.

"Now, that’s progress," I thought. At last little girls can be liberated from the tyranny of the Barbie body, and they can finally learn to accept that it’s not your body that really counts in this life – it’s your jewelry. It’s just too bad I don’t like jewelry. Oh, well. For those who prefer an entire doll, there's also the My Scene My Bling Bling Real Gem Doll, which includes two real diamond rings – one for the doll and one for your little girl. "Blinged out and ready for fun, she comes with a big sparkler on her hand and accessories for ultra-glam occasions," says the copy on the Target web site. She also has a bendable waist, perfect for leaning over into a car and asking Ken and his buds if they want a date.

Naturally, there are profound sociological connotations surrounding this whole bling bling doll thing. For a serious and scholarly discussion about Bling Barbie and the direction in which our society is headed, click here.

V is for victory
Little girls aren’t the only ones benefiting from new enlightened ways of thinking. We big girls are seeing a lot of progress too. For example, in recent years the media, including women’s magazines, have become much more frank and open about – and even celebratory of — female sexuality. Our naughty bits, which women's mags in the old days coyly referred to as "down there," are now officially called "The V-Zone." That's much more hip, don't you think? And it's much more woman-friendly as well: instead of implying something hidden and shameful, to be spoken of in a whisper, this new terminology implies a thing to be celebrated and shouted about, if not actually mentioned by name.**

On the web site for Cosmopolitan magazine I found an article about the V-Zone that offers a wealth of wisdom about "the surprising TLC it needs, where its secret lust trigger is located and why doing the deed on a regular basis is one of the best ways to keep it healthy." Doing the deed?!? I guess Cosmo is still into cutesy prose. At any rate, just in case you were wondering, here's why women have a V-Zone (and why Barbie doesn't): "...to bring you sexual pleasure, allow you to menstruate...and serve as an exit strategy for a baby."

I didn’t know pre-born babies were capable of planning strategies, exit or otherwise. They must be a heck of a lot smarter than I thought. I wonder if we could enlist the pre-born to get us out of Iraq?

But I digress. The Cosmo piece, which you can read yourself by clicking here, offers 25 "Down-There Facts" and 3 "Down-There Myths."

Some things never change.

* Being a commentary on certain aspects of contemporary pop culture, however, today's post is in keeping with the larger theme of this blog.
** Okay, I know they say the word all the time on The View, and then of course we have The Vagina Monologues, but I'm talking about mainstream women's magazines here.

One week and counting

The week shall inherit the mirth
Today is Whirled Musings' one-week anniversary. Thank you to the three or four of you who have visited, and all two of you who have commented so far. No, make that three now. :-) Since I was so long-winded yesterday, I decided to take a short break from "Con-tificating" today and just serve up some sight bites.

Funny, you don’t look blue-ish (but I might)
Someone asked me why the colors look a little bit off around here. Ambience, baby, ambience! No, actually, I am going through the obligatory "blue period" that all serious artists and creative types go through. Okay, not really. I just like blue. So if the book covers and people here look a little blue around the gills – or if things that are normally blue-ish look more rosy than usual – you're not color blind. I've just been swapping the reds and blues in the photos. It's a cheap trick that I do in a graphic previewing and editing application called ThumbsPlus. So, now you know: that’s really a fragment of a Monarch butterfly, and in real life, Kinky is pinker and so am I.

Absolutely annoying
If I hear one more celeb or random interviewee on TV answer a question with, "Absolutely!" I am going to go absolutely bonkers. Whatever happened to, "Yes"? Or, "That’s right"? Or, "That’s correct"? Or even, "You bet"?

Or has everything actually become absolute of late, and no one told me about it?

Not that I expect my complaint to make any difference. Back in the late 1980s, I wrote extensively on the egregious overuse of the word "awesome," and nearly one generation later, people of all ages are still using that friggin’ word to describe everything that isn't actually loathsome. Stop it now!

Your support is desperately needed.
August is Magnetic Ribbon Awareness Month. Please show your support of the magnetic ribbon industry, and plaster as many of those things on your car as you can. If you are Ann Coulter, please place them all over your computer screen as well.

Numbers don't lie
The numbers for Cosmic Relief just keep increasing...now, according to Amazon, they have reached a whopping "#2,853,024."

That happens to be the sales rank, not the sales figure, but still, it's a pretty big number, don't you think?

Here's more exciting news: C.R. is holding steady at a five-star-average review, based on one review by a person I know. (I didn't ask her to do the review; she liked my book and asked me if it was okay if she wrote something nice about it. Do you think I would turn that down?)

I believe if I think positive thoughts and say enough affirmations, and visualize that big number above as an actual sales figure for C.R., it will come to be. Of course there aren't nearly that many copies of the book in print...but if I think good thoughts long enough and hard enough, who knows what might happen?

So I'm going to get busy.

Bleep this…
The underground hit movie, What The Bleep Do We Know? has recently been released in a new director’s-cut edition. Subtitled, Down The Rabbit Hole, it comes in a Quantum Edition (of course). This new and improved version has less of the Marlee Matlin story line of the original, and more stuff from scientists. You can tell by the cover of the new DVD that it is much more scientific than the original, because it has a big cartoon scientist head. I am making a rare exception here and not swapping the reds and blues on the respective graphics, mainly because when I tried it, the smaller basketballs on the original cover looked disturbingly like rabbit turds. They still sort of do, but the effect is not as pronounced. So...the original Bleep is the blue-ish one, and the new edition is golden.

And just in case you’re not aware of it, there is a whole Bleep lifestyle afoot in our culture now, which means, naturally, lots and lots and lots of merchandise. To find out more, go the official What The Bleep website.

I knew you’d want to know.