Advice Is Cheap. Self-Trust Is Rare.

My last birthday card from my son included a note of gratitude for being his “on-demand personal business coach and consultant.” It was so sweet and deeply felt. And totally true. Lucky kid!

In late high school, Ethan learned that he is a much happier camper when he is generating his own income. He thrives on self-driven outcomes and challenges, and the kid needs gas money and support for his compulsive thrifting habit. Making his own money really matters to him, so he chose immediately in college to take a “real job” and work for an institution. He’s had a great experience there. He is beloved and has learned a ton. And… he also has no clue how to manage workplace dynamics, because why would a nineteen-year-old know how to do that? So he calls me. You’re welcome, bud.

I’m not sure there is much in life more challenging, fluid, and constantly changing than parenting, for those who choose it or are called into it. It has certainly been one of the most primary invitations to grow and stretch in my own life.

Parents classically drone on about how quickly it goes. How they were just born, and now suddenly they are driving, working, colleging, becoming. Ours are in those years now, which feels both extraordinary and terrifying.

But while watching children grow is its own tremendous gift, what has been equally, really more profound is watching my own journey in the journey.

These last few years of my professional growth and expansion have transformed me as a parent in ways I never could have predicted.

When children are small, they rely on us for everything. We keep them alive. They need us for the management of their lives. We tell them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, literally showing them step by step as they learn to navigate the world in some of the most basic ways.

Then, slowly and suddenly at the same time, that season ends.

Parenting children is a continual act of letting go. Of loosening your grip while staying connected. Of learning that your role is no longer management, but stewardship. Guidance. Presence. Turns out it is all about coaching and maybe has been all along.

As I now parent teen and young adult kids, coaching is becoming the only way because, believe me, they ain’t here for the management-style parenting anymore.

When E calls me about the latest workplace issue, I immediately experience how much I want to tell him what to do. How to handle the boss. What to say. How to respond. How to solve it. And ok, because he is NOT my client, I sometimes get to do that and have you met me? I enjoy it…

Where I strive, though, is for the “better” path. Helping him discover what he knows to do.

That is so much harder. It requires patience. It requires restraint. It requires trusting him enough to let him practice trusting himself.

That is a completely different piece of work.

Turns out, it is also the center of my work, particularly with women. Brilliant, capable women are so often looking outward to the world to tell them if they are okay. Looking for confirmation. Looking for the absence of negative feedback to mean they are safe. Looking for someone or something else to tell them what to do.

Yet without fail, the evidence shows we already know. When we get quiet enough and check in with our inner compass, the answer is there. Sometimes that answer includes reaching for thought partners, experts, resources, but we know what we need to do next.

One beloved client who leads a small organization, where she consistently receives feedback that she is doing a phenomenal job, comes back to this lesson again and again. She is always struggling to feel like she is “doing it,” in the strategy, moving the work forward. She thinks she needs something outside herself to tell her where to go next. Yet every time, when she gets still and honest, she already knows.

One of my fave client convos this year went like this.

Her: “Well, I don’t want people to think I’m an asshole.”

Me: “Are you an asshole?”

Her: “No, of course not.”

Me: “Okay. So there is the point.”

Another layer of this work teaches people how to use their negative response as information. I see this same work with Ethan all the time.

When something does not feel good for him, the first place it often goes is anger. Since forever. Epic lore in our family is the Lego-throwing four-year-old screaming that the build he was working on was impossible, nothing could ever work, and there was no way we could help him. Throwing Legos out of the family room at high velocity, no less. That internal signal that something is off very often arrives as frustration, heat, reactivity.

I see this in organizations and leaders almost every day. Discomfort shows up as threat rather than information. The response is reactive and misaligned and messes get made, people behave badly, impact and bottom line and personal mission are compromised.

The thing is - discomfort is always guidance. Yep, I said always. Pain’s only job is alert.

Sometimes it is showing us where we need to grow. Sometimes it is showing us what is not aligned for us. Either way, it is useful.

So much of my parenting now is helping him translate anger into information.

➞ This doesn’t work for me.

➞ This matters to me.

➞ Something needs attention here.

➞ What do I want to do with that?

And then to make grounded, connected, self-supporting decisions accordingly.

That practice is a skill and IS the deepest form of self-care there is.

Not the manicure, the massage, the day off, the run. Those things are lovely and nourishing and helpful, often important. Trust me, I ADORE my biweekly nail ritual. It lights me up. But it doesn’t keep sustained joy and freedom in my life. Those are gifts of the deepest work there is. Learning to trust yourself, support yourself, and act in alignment with yourself, no matter what anyone will think, no matter what anyone will say… even when the potential outcomes seem scary. Sound impossible? Send me a response, let’s talk about it. I will show you that it’s not.

My clients remind me daily that it is possible. And I KNOW it is because it is also the work I am still doing on myself every day. Imperfectly. Nonlinearly. Humbly.

Both coaching and parenting keep teaching me the same lesson: the goal was never control or management or even advice.

It was always helping another human become fully themselves. Alignment changes everything.