Have Dreams? Personal Coach Offers Pep Talk

If the recent Winter Olympics taught us anything, it’s that behind every malnourished, sobbing ice skater lurks a tough-minded, caring coach.

Team Doug knows he, too, needs plenty of help if he’s ever to win the gold.

Enter Becky Myhre. The Spokane woman is willing to guide Team Doug through life’s triple axels and embarrassing fanny falls.

All Team Doug must do is cough up $225 a month. That’s what Myhre charges to listen to a client’s hopes and dreams during weekly half-hour telephone gab sessions. In exchange, Myhre imparts her wisdom and makes suggestions on how goals can be achieved.

Myhre is a “personal coach.”

She is part of a fast-growing new age trade that caters mainly to members of my generation: self-absorbed baby boomers who want more out of life and have money to burn.

It’s no coincidence that 46 is the average age of coaches and clients. Myhre is a little under the curve, but no less a boomer at 38.

I knew nothing of this until a friend pointed out Myhre’s ad in a local shopper:

“Give yourself more. … More time. More laughter. More prosperity. Hire a personal coach. Coaching is like having a personal trainer for your mind. Call 747-1991.”

It sounds like buying a friend. Except, counters Myhre, “a friend is going to have a personal agenda. A coach is objective. A coach wants what’s best for you.”

And what is best for Team Doug?

I dropped in on Coach Becky’s immaculate duplex to find out. An unmarried, gregarious woman with an explosive laugh, she gave me a test to get a better grasp of Team Doug’s many flaws.

Sample question: True or false. “I do not gossip or talk about others.”

“Whatayou kidding me?” I yelled at her. “That’s what I do for a living!”

Sample question: True or false. “My hair is the way I want it.”

“Whatayou think?” I hollered again, pointing to my defoliated dome.

Getting in touch with yourself is painful.

“I think you’re coachable, Team Doug,” announces Myhre, examining my test scores. Funny, none of my teachers ever arrived at that mental bus stop.

Personal coaches shouldn’t be confused with legitimate counseling arts - psychiatry, psychology, bartending. … Nor do coaches try to be, offers Myhre, who gladly will refer people to a mental health professional.

That’s part of the controversy surrounding this brave new profession. A recent news story reported that therapists view personal coaching as treading “dangerously close to, if not into, territory better served by the formally schooled and highly skilled.”

Personal coaches are unlicensed. Their work is regulated by nobody. Whatever training coaches receive is usually by taking classes conducted via the telephone through Coach University.

Don’t ask to tour the campus. Coach U is an Internet Web site started in 1992 by Washington West Sider Thomas Leonard, a former financial planner.

Myhre decided to become a coach over a year ago. She was at one of those crossroads, dissatisfied with her job, looking for more. A friend told her about coaching. She found the Web site and saw a future.

It takes about $2,500 and 36 classes to graduate. Myhre is halfway there, but says she has helped friends and clients realize their ambitions. “I’m a natural at it,” she adds.

According to the news story, from 6,000 to 10,000 coaches practice throughout the world, although fewer than 140 have actually finished Coach University.

Anyone my age has had nagging thoughts about what might have been. Feeding our insatiable need to be fulfilled is a constant boomer quest.

That’s because most of us graying flower children were spoiled rotten as kids. Now adults, we whine at the least discomfort. The question is, do we need a personal coach to point us to happiness?

“It’s not about whining,” assures Myhre. Personal coaching “is about attainment. It’s about going forward.”

, DataTimes