The need to choose a Life Coach isn’t obvious to us right away.

When we reach the age of reason/budding consciousness around the age of seven, it dawns on us that we need help for all kinds of things we can’t do for ourselves.

We turn naturally to those who have longer arms to reach for something we can’t grasp, or more dexterity than we have to open something.

We trust parents, siblings, and others who seem to know what we don’t know–asking a ton of questions whether we’re afraid of the dark, or terrified of not being liked, or scared of a bully, or wondering why we’re supposed to pray.

It’s odd that the childhood awareness that we can’t manage on our own fades quickly for a lot of us. Why is it that most of us stop asking, simply and directly, those with more wisdom how best to get around our spiritual, emotional, and physical world?

Instead of a Life Coach, too many of us start trusting the “proof” of our own eyes and our own experiences too soon–especially when parents’ expectations don’t match ours.

“We suddenly think we’re old enough to know, yet beat ourselves up when we aren’t secure in what we know and are too full of pride to ask. No one around us seems to have it together to our liking either.”

Shirley Koritnik

So many of us know we’re missing something big and stumble through various temptations (escape? sex? drugs? sensation?) and plow through relationship drama, financial wobbles, and more.

So many try to right themselves after all the blundering by putting personal goals or business dreams in place and then trying and trying and trying to reach them. Sadly, some stop.

Others keep trying for years, not only wasting precious time but often spending thousands of dollars on various types of help, yet falling short repeatedly before realizing they just aren’t getting reach enough to grasp the quality of life they long for.

The truth is that, especially in our time of immense distraction when it’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t, most of us really do need a Life Coach.

Unfortunately, too many people want what’s quick, trending, and flashy, longing in vain for magical tools popularized in print and media.

Distracting options flow from all the screens in our lives, inviting us to buy buy buy–including the services of gurus who fail us time and again. Too many numb themselves, getting lost in fantasy–gaming or streaming videos for hours.

Mistake #1 = not writing your own life goal first

That is why some of us spend decades thrashing about for the key to success. Earl Nightingale describes the dilemma compellingly in his classic The Strangest Secret.

If you don’t have a specific goal, how can you achieve it? If you think abundance is only about money, how can you find real abundance? If you aren’t following the Laws of the Universe, how can you succeed?

I chronicled some of my fear and struggle figuring out my life goal in a blog I did several years ago. Like Nightingale, Charles Haanel in Lesson 16 of The Master Key System tells us the prerequisite for working with a Life Coach is using our own thought processes to figure out what we really want:

“We can form our own mental images, through our own interior processes of thought regardless of the thoughts of others, regardless of exterior conditions, regardless of environment of every kind, and it is by the exercise of this power that we can control our own destiny, body, mind and soul.”

Charles Haanel, The Master Key System, 16:15

Mistake #2 = not getting the right “know how.”

Once you’ve written down your life’s goal, you’re ready for a Life Coach who has the very best “know how” to hone it. S/he knows and has internalized ancient wisdom from the Laws of the Universe.

An effective Life Coach makes sacrifices for the greater good, has an effective spiritual practice, and works in a Master Mind that is constantly polishing skills, actively seeking new science, and assimilating and applying it all.

Life Coaches like this are even harder to find in this noisy, microwave time of ours. Getting the right kind of Life Coach is especially tricky if you have not made space and quiet in your life to figure out what you really want and need.

Thankfully most of us also know the truth of the old saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

You want someone who walks the talk. You want a Life Coach who guides you into your own effective and personalized daily practice that may be challenging, yet easy to follow.

You especially want a Life Coach who knows how to guide you to take your written goal and shape it with the exact word architecture that includes your personality’s personal pivotal needs.

You are helped to shape your Definite Major Purpose statement with S.M.A.R.T. goals and emotion-evoking words.

In addition, you learn to visualize images so specific that your Conscious as well as your Sub-Conscious can effectively work together to bring about the successful unfolding of your life.

The right Life Coach is another set of eyes on Your Prize and a guide rail.

“Visualization must, of course, be directed by the will; we are to visualize exactly what we want; we must be careful not to let the imagination run riot. Imagination is a good servant but a poor master, and unless it is controlled it may easily lead us into all kinds of speculations and conclusions which have no basis or foundation of fact whatever. Every kind of plausible opinion is liable to be accepted without any analytical examination and the inevitable result is mental chaos.

“We must therefore construct only such mental images as are known to be scientifically true. Subject every idea to a searching analysis and accept nothing which is not scientifically exact. When you do this you will attempt nothing but what you know you can carry out and success will crown your efforts; this is what businesswo/men call far-sightedness; it is much the same as insight, and is one of the great secrets of success in all important undertakings.”

Charles Haanel, The Master Key System, 16:35-36

Mistake #3 = not being allowed to do your own work

So there are challenges and few of us make it on our own. At the same time, your Guide must not unduly influence you. The New York Times Bestseller The Influencer: the New Science of Leading Change gives scientific evidence that the best influence is no influence!

A really skilled Life Coach supplies the guide rails of experience and word architecture. You supply the burning desire, hard mental labor, and enthusiasm for the journey.

When we know what really works, we can laugh at the so-called “Self Help” industry. If it is self help why do you need to spend thousands of dollars on gurus, books, webinars, retreats, and more?

But YOU DO NEED guard rails and a skilled and loving Life Coach who has experienced what you are experiencing, is using the tools you are taught, and knows the way around roadblocks like fear and fatigue and walks with you.

Your collaboration comes together in beautiful success as you put in place your Definite Major Purpose + a Plan of Action + a Positive Mental Attitude + a powerful MasterMind Alliance.

Then the 2nd part of the old saying moves into place. “When the student is really ready; the teacher disappears.” Once again, Hannel shares his wisdom with us:

“Wealth should then never be desired as an end, but simply as a means of accomplishing an end. Success is contingent upon a higher ideal than the mere accumulation of riches, and s/he who aspires to such success must formulate an ideal for which s/he is willing to strive.

“With such an ideal in mind, the ways and means can and will be provided, but the mistake must not be made of substituting the means for the end. There must be a definite fixed purpose, an ideal.

“Prentice Mulford said: “‘he wo/man of success is the wo/man possessed of the greatest spiritual understanding and every great fortune comes of superior and truly spiritual power.'”

Charles Haanel, The Master Key, System, 16:5-7

The ultimate goal of choosing the right Life Coach is to use their guide rails till you can step into success on your own.

Get the Key, Free Breakthrough Tool

Through the Master Key Experience–after decades of searching–I’m finally empowered with the tools of mind-mastery and collaborate with Life Coaches in a powerful MasterMind as we coach new seekers.

I’m using all seven ways we humans learn to anchor skills deep in my students daily. We gratefully realize we were not able to create breakthroughs we have longed for on our own.

So I understand if up till now you have not had something like this and have been missing out. I skimmed life, too.

If you’re ready to stop skimming and to start doing the deep work that creates breakthroughs in mind-mastery, I can help you get the conditioning that will help you accept the gift of the Master Key.

I’ve been given the privilege of offering a very special free tool to help you start training your brain to think the right way. The MKE course and its scholarships happen only once a year, starting the last Sunday of September.

Fortunately you can get started today by putting your name on the waiting list for the next Master Key Experience course.

When you’ve clicked to do that, the 7 DAY MENTAL DIET comes up. Download, print, read, and try it! Once you sign up, we’ll keep in touch by email, even sharing tips of what helped us to do the Diet.

Sound good? Why not check it out now? You can opt out at any time. Or you can sign up ONLY for the Diet here.

You know what they say–if not now, when? If not you, who?

No one can get the key to YOUR breakthroughs but YOU. No one can get through what’s locking that door but YOU–it’s a YOU-shaped key.

No one can make it work except YOU. I wish you mind-mastery in your future.