Why coaching?

Because as I learnt when I was climbing a mountain in Colorado in the worst snow storm I have ever experienced, sometimes it is easier to walk in someone else’s footsteps.

The snow was at the very least, 1.5 metres deep the day before, it had been snowing all night and was snowing like crazy that entire day. I was with a small group of about 10 people including one man who was used to tracking wild animals in that region and knew the mountain well. The rest of us were from Australia and New Zealand where it was mid-summer at that time. Probably 35 degrees in the shade. Where everyone was tucked away inside their homes with the curtains drawn and the air conditioning on high.

What was I doing? I was climbing a mountain near Pagosa Springs in Colorado in the worst of the winter. It was something like minus 25 degrees Celsius and I was wearing three pairs of long thick, thermal socks, long underwear, the most seriously warm jumpers, one after another, I had ever put on my body, two pairs of pants and then a pair of wet weather pants which I didn’t even know existed two weeks earlier, three scarves, neck warmers and beanie’s, two pairs of gloves and the heaviest, most sensible shoes I had ever worn in my life.

It was a far cry from running around the city of Melbourne in my stilettos and pretty dresses as I was used to.

It was there that I learnt that each footstep took all the energy that I had in my entire body but stepping where someone else had already placed their foot, There were times when the footsteps had gone off track, that it would have taken too much time and too much of my energy to follow them exactly, when I had to step where no one had before, and those steps were the hardest by far, I sank so far into that snow, often knee deep, and it took all my strength to move from that place to the next. It was only moving my foot, leg followed by the rest of my body, but in that extreme snow storm, at that altitude, in those foreign conditions, every single step took everything I had. Moving very slowly, carrying a backpack of sufficient food and most importantly water, It was by far, one of the most physically challenging things I have ever done in my life. I knew prior that it would change me. I knew it as I was taking each step, and as I finally, five hours later, made it to the top and change me it did.

The weather was so severe, we could only stop for one minute before having to make the descent, before our bodies would start to cool down and be drastically affected by those extreme conditions.

And that was exactly when I knew, it was much easier, to make that climb, going where someone else had gone before, being guided by someone who knew the way, rather than trekking my own new path which took seemingly ta hundred times more energy than the other steps, where the snow was firm, set and moulded to someone else’s shoes, that was so much easier than walking where no one had been before.

My mentor that built me up before heading off for the hike, who saw the fear in my eyes, who saw and felt everything I was going through, who convinced me to just think of the next step and the next step and the next step, to not focus on the end point, to just see what was directly in front of me and to keep moving – he knew what this hike would do to me, he knew what I needed, he knew how I would change – he knew. He had been there and he had done that. He knew what I was in for and he mentally prepared me for it like no one else could.

And that is what coaching is all about.