Coaches: our new BFFs?

Once rarely spotted outside of athletics, we now see coaches everywhere. From "life coaches" to "diet coaches" to "executive coaches," it now seems that, if you coach it, they will come. Where did this wave of desire for coaching come from?
Maybe coaching just feels good...it fills the human need for inspiration, communication, mitigation, authorization, confirmation and other elements that may be missing in our daily lives. In today's busy world, simply having someone devote their full attention to you is certainly seductive! But coaching is no magic wand. Unless you are prepared to put in considerable effort on your own behalf, the best coach in the world is not going to make your desired ends come about. If it's partnership you're seeking, "renting" a professional partner can be a great investment. Assuming you fully vet your choice of coach, you can be assured of there being only one variable in your equation: you.
But we think there's also value in the giving-it-the-old-college-try, good old do-it-yourself mode. (Wasn't it only yesterday that ‘just do it’ was the homile du jour?) In spite of Jean Baker Miller's self-in-relation theory, the emphasis on being a team player, citizen of the world and social networker, a little autonomy still can take you a long way. Let's not throw this self-starting baby out with the bath water.
The radical part of us wonders if, in its worst iterations, coaching simply panders to our immature desires for easy gratification. When that is the case, coaching becomes the adult version of the three year old in all of us on the playground shouting into the wind “Mommy, watch me!”
--MSH & LBH