Her name is Lyssa. Like Katherine, she’s American. Our coaching call is on Zoom, not Skype, and starts with a disaster: I press the wrong key on my computer, cut off the call and we have to start again. This takes up ten minutes, throughout which I’m cursing through teeth that are simultaneously gritted and embedded in my lower lip, thinking, ‘Minutes are passing! Minutes I cannot spare!’
At last we get it sorted. Lyssa and the room I can see behind her are nowhere near as life-coach-perfect as Katherine and her room were. Lyssa’s room is too long and not deep enough; she might, in fact, have set up a temporary workstation in a corridor of some kind. Still, I warm to her immediately. I allow myself to decide within seconds that I prefer her. Her smile is more true-friend than friendly-professional. I can imagine her giving me a hug, whereas that never entered my mind with Katherine. I should stress that I would absolutely hate it if any American life coach tried to give me a hug, but it turns out that I still like them to look as if hugs are in their repertoire. (As I have this thought, I picture Katherine handing me an apricot gin and tonic in a crystal-studded glass, with an expression on her face that says, ‘Is this not better than any hug?’ I think this might be what psychologists call projection. Or just plain weirdness. One or the other.)
Lyssa asks what she can help me with today.
I wonder how much to tell her. I’ve booked this session because of Hercule Poirot, but I have no intention of admitting it. Thinking about all the actors who have played him over the years, and how markedly different their Poirots were, made me wonder if it’s only Katherine or if all life coaches share the belief that changing your thoughts is the solution to every problem.
Since talking to Katherine and making my Happiness Hunches longlist, something has occurred to me: if we can change our thoughts about our workload and how much time we have available, surely we can do the same in relation to other people? And if that’s true, if Katherine would say it was true, then I might have to disagree with her quite a lot.
That would be a relief. Agreeing too completely with anyone always makes me feel like I’ve failed in some obscure way.
Of course, I could have booked another session with Katherine – that being the obvious way to find out what she’d say – and maybe I will at some point, but what she wouldn’t be able to tell me is whether all life coaches endorse her approach. Lyssa also won’t be able to speak for her whole profession, but she’s one more life coach to add to my study, or hobby, or whatever is the right name for it.
You see, something else has happened since my session with Katherine: I’ve become aware of just how many American life coaches are available on the internet, offering sample sessions, mini-sessions, very affordable one-off sessions. There are thousands of them out there. If I had the time (ha!) I would try all of them, the way I once tested every single perfume in every perfume-selling shop in Manchester city centre and became the north of England’s leading perfume expert. Once I decide I’m interested in something, whether it’s perfume, happiness, Agatha Christie or life coaching, I very quickly become obsessed.
I ask Lyssa if she believes that we can solve any problem by changing our thoughts.
Her: Absolutely. Once we change the way we think about any difficulty, our feelings and actions can’t help but change. All the results we see in our lives come from our thoughts.
Me: I see what you mean, but I wonder—
Her: Let’s talk about a specific problem that you’ve got. It’s always easier if we focus in on something particular.
I tell her the same story I told Katherine: my enormous workload, the sense of oppression I felt before I changed my thoughts about it, the suspicion that, post-Katherine, I might now be in a worse situation because I’m still doing way more than is good for me, and likely to carry on doing so because I’m now thinking it’s all amazing and not oppressive at all. Lyssa tells me I’m thinking about it in the wrong way.
Me: How so?
Her: Well, it’s obviously going to make you feel awful if you think that thought.
Me: Which thought?
Her: The one you just told me you’ve been thinking: that maybe you’re still doing too much and it’s not good for you, and now that you’ve redefined doing too much as great, you’re in a worse situation than you were in before. If that’s what you’re thinking, how’s that going to make you feel?
Me: I actually feel fine. I always feel quite happy. This is part of the problem, as I told the last coach I spoke to.
Her: Are you sure you feel happy?
Me: Yes.
Her: But if you believe that you might be colluding in a delusion that ultimately harms you – the delusion that you’re not under pressure and you have enough time and not too much work to do – that can’t feel good, can it? If you truly believe you might be acting in a way that won’t benefit you in the long-term? Do you truly believe that?
Me: I think it’s a strong possibility. I mean, I’m still working until I fall asleep over my laptop at 2 a.m. most days. The other day I drafted a round-robin email to all members of every branch of my husband’s and my family suggesting that we don’t bother with Christmas presents this year, even for the children, because I don’t have time between now and December even to think the word ‘Christmas’, let alone do anything about it. Luckily, I saw sense and deleted it before pressing ‘send’.
Her: Sounds to me like your coaching session with the other coach didn’t work as well as you think it did. You’re still very clearly believing that you have too much to do, and you don’t sound happy about it.
Me: No, it really did work. I am feeling better. I’m just trying to describe to you the overall situation. Like, before the coaching session, the mention of Christmas would have made me want to start sobbing and fake my own death to escape the extra work. Now I feel totally fine about it: I’ll buy presents and wrap them, and it will all be fine. I’ll do it happily – because if I’m going to do it, and I am, then I might as well do it in a jolly way.
Her: And then later on you’ll fall asleep at your computer at 2 a.m.?
Me: Probably more like 3 a.m., if it’s a Christmas-chores day and I have to work as well.
Her: Here’s what I think you’re getting wrong, and please don’t beat yourself up about it, because it’s an extremely common mistake –
Me: Oh, I never beat myself up about anything.
Her: I think you’re thinking, ‘I have too many work commitments and I’m under too much pressure, and it’s bound to be doing me harm, but I want to feel happy about it rather than miserable because then I will suffer less.’
Me: Well … no, because after speaking to the last life coach, I know that ‘too many work commitments’ and ‘too much pressure’ are just thoughts I’ve made up in my brain. They’re not facts, so I don’t need to believe them and feel oppressed and overwhelmed accordingly.
Her: Here’s the thing, Sophie. That’s a very clever answer—
Me: Thank you.
Her: But you’re not being honest.
Her: You’re saying they’re only thoughts and not facts, but it’s clear to me that, whatever you say, you do believe that it’s an objective fact that you have too much to do and that your life contains an intolerable amount of pressure.
Me: (after a long pause) Yes, I think you’re right. I think … I do still believe that, and the reason I feel so much better since I talked to the other coach is that I totally understand that it’s just a belief in my brain, and that it’s possible to believe something that’s less depressing. If I’m going to be doing all the work, which I am, then I might as well think, ‘I’ve chosen to do all this, and it all matters to me, and I could cancel it all if I wanted to, which I don’t – and so I’m just going to do what I can every day and enjoy the process.’
Her: Right. You feel better than you did before because you understand intellectually that thoughts aren’t facts. You believe that you can change your thoughts, and so you feel more empowered.
Me: Right.
Her: The problem is that you think you’ve changed your thoughts and succeeded in thinking positively about a situation that is inherently negative.
Me: Well—
Her: Can I tell you how I know that? Because you do feel happier – less stalked and bullied by your work, as you said – so we know that the thinking positive part is working. At the same time, you’re worried that this new happy attitude might be doing you harm because your circumstances remain the same. The amount of work you have to do remains the same. So, your worry that being happy about it is harmful to you is all the evidence I need in order to know that you believe your circumstances are negative, and not something you should be happy about.
Me: I suppose that’s true, yes. Yes! Which means I haven’t really changed my thoughts! That’s why I’m still worrying, at some level. I’m trying to think positively about a negative situation, when I should be trying to believe that there’s nothing negative about the situation.
I can see my mistake very clearly. It’s not Katherine’s fault, either. It’s a result of me wanting to give myself a gold star for the brilliant achievement of changing my thoughts when in fact I’d only changed the top-layer.
Me: If I truly believed that work was just work and I didn’t have words in my brain like ‘too much’ and ‘stress’ –
Her: But, Sophie, the important thing is not to believe in every situation that everything is perfect. Sometimes you might choose to say, ‘This is not what I want and it’s not good for me.’ Sometimes the right thing for us is to choose to think a thought that’s kind of positive and negative at the same time – a thought like, ‘I don’t want my life to be like this any more, and so I’m going to make some changes.’ And then that thought empowers us to make some great transformations and up-level ourselves and our lives. The important thing is to realise that you can and should always choose to believe what it serves you best to believe.
Me: Right. I think I totally get this now. And the reason I want to think happy thoughts about my current workload, and my commitments for the next year or so, is that I have no choice but to do that work, so—
Her: That’s not true. We always have a choice.
Me: True. I mean, I’m not willing to allow myself the option of not doing the work I’ve promised to do.
Her: Okay. So you choose to honour your commitments.
Me: I do. So, I should just do the work and feel happy about it, right? And unstressed.
Her: I wonder. Is there a more important commitment you should have made a while back, and that you should be honouring?
Me: What do you mean?
Her: A commitment to yourself, maybe? To take care of yourself and not stretch yourself to breaking point? Can I tell you what I think might be going on here? I don’t mean to be confronting, but—
Me: Confront away, please!
Her: Could it be that you’re wanting to feel good about yourself, so you tell yourself you’re honouring your work commitments to other people, and you try to do that – and at the same time you’re neglecting everything that you owe to yourself?
Me: Um … yes, that actually sounds quite likely. Why would I do that?
Her: It’s very common. It’s usually rooted either in a belief that other people matter more than you do – that’s the people-pleasing part of it – or there could also be an element of perfectionism, the over-achiever’s Achilles heel: you can’t think well of yourself unless you’re over-achieving, so you take on too much, try to do it all perfectly and wear yourself out.
Me: Yes! I am both of those unfortunate things, for sure.
Her: Sophie, what if I were to say to you that I think you should take responsibility right now for your long-term health and happiness?
Me: I’d agree with you.
Her: Cancel half of your work commitments –
Me: Steady on.
Her: What’s the worst-case scenario? Some people would be angry and disappointed? You’d earn less money? So what?
Me: You’re right. That is absolutely what I should do. But I’m not going to.
Her: And that’s because of a thought you’re having that I doubt you’re even aware of. It probably begins with the words, ‘It would be the end of the world if I cancelled anything because …’
Me: I know it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Her: Intellectually you know it, but you don’t truly know it. Deep down, in the part of us that’s buried beneath the rational, we all believe all kinds of crazy shit. We have thoughts in that part of us that are so much more powerful and convincing than the ones we believe with our rational, presentable brains.
Me: I agree one hundred per cent. That’s why I love Iris Murdoch’s novels. Have you read Iris Murdoch?
Her: I have not.
Me: I think my deep-down thought is something like, ‘It would be the end of the world if I cancelled anything because … then I’d have to face up to or confront something I’d really rather not.’
Her: I agree absolutely.
Me: And … I’ve no idea what that thing might be, which is quite exciting!
Her: You’re not afraid to probe more deeply and maybe find out what it is you’re avoiding?
Me: No! I love a good mystery and I love solving mysteries – any mystery, no matter what the solution turns out to be.
Her: Well … that is actually a very healthy attitude to take to one’s personal growth!
We grin at each other. You could call it a British hug. That’s how I’m choosing to think of it.
Me: Wait. Can we talk about your thoughts and beliefs for a minute? At the beginning of our conversation, you said that all the results we see in our lives come from our thoughts.
Her: It’s true.
Me: But … it isn’t. If a hurricane blows the roof off my house, it’s not my thoughts that have caused the result of a roofless house.
Her: Nope. That’s the hurricane that’s caused that. Sophie, our session’s nearly finished. If you’d like to book another—
Me: Can I ask you one more question? Do you think, from everything I’ve told you, that I’ve taken on too much? Too many work commitments?
Her: I do, yes.
Me: But … isn’t ‘too much work’ just a thought and not a fact?
Her: Well, yes, the value judgement ‘too much’ is a thought for sure. But the facts – unarguable in a court of law – are that you have committed to do this piece of work and that piece of work and those other pieces of work. Right?
Me: Yup.
Her: And you only have twenty-four hours in each day, like the rest of us, and you need to spend some of those hours sleeping.
Me: Yes, or I’ll die. You’re right. The last coach I spoke to didn’t say facts don’t exist.
This is turning out to be more complicated than I thought. Thoughts are not the be-all and end-all; facts also have to be taken into account.
Wait. Didn’t Katherine say that my life sounded ‘impossibly pressured’ or words to that effect? I’m sure she did. So maybe she and Lyssa agree on the facts of the case. Thinking back to our conversation, I’m pretty sure Katherine wasn’t trying to say, ‘Just think differently and don’t cancel anything.’ Perhaps Katherine’s position could be more accurately summarised as: ‘If you’re not willing to decrease your workload, then you should think about it differently, because it’s not going to help you to think of it as a tyrannical, oppressive stalker.’
Lyssa took it one step further. Her advice can be summarised like this: ‘If you’re not willing to decrease your workload, then that unwillingness is caused by a thought, and that’s the thought you should work on changing – because you really need to take better care of yourself.’
Her: So, Sophie, that’s the end of our free mini-session. Would you like to book another session?
Me: Definitely. Yes.
As we arrange our next Zoom call, I feel a pang of guilt. Katherine – my first, my original, provider of my eureka moment – asked me the same question and I said no. Why? And why did Lyssa get a ‘yes’? Is it because she seems so biased in favour of me doing less work? Or because my session with Katherine – providing the One True Answer, as I believed it did at the time – felt so perfect and complete?
One reason I want to talk to Lyssa again is that I haven’t asked her the main question I wanted to ask her about other people and how their behaviour fits into the thoughts/facts philosophy. Actually, I’d like to know what Katherine thinks about that too. Most of all, I’d love to hear Katherine’s thoughts about Lyssa’s opinion of my work situation.
Can it do any harm to book second sessions with two life coaches?
Of course not. That’s not even a question worth considering. I have plenty of time for chatting to life coaches. And while I wait, I can read books by different life coaches – the ones I ordered online and which have now arrived.
I’m convinced I’m on the right path. This is how I’m going to find the solution to the happiness mystery.