Exactly One Year Ago
I plan to transition into being a therapist or a coach sometime in the next ten years. Right now I'm in a phase where "confusion" and "mysterious confidence" coexist.
The "confusion" is about whether this goal is even feasible, and what concrete path I should take. This turns into a typical career planning problem: first choosing a profession or position as the target, then working backward to figure out what kind of experience, education, or certifications are required, and then checking off those requirements one by one, hoping to eventually reach the goal. In practical terms, that means I would first need to get a master's degree or take coaching training, which then brings up questions of where to study, how much tuition costs, and how many years it would take. After finishing school, there are internships of varying lengths before I could get certified. After getting certified, I would need to meet certain requirements every year to maintain the credential. And once I have the qualification, do I work independently, or join an organization? And after that, do I stay in that role for ten or twenty years? Just thinking about all of this makes one anxious, doesn't it?
The opposite approach is to do what I want most right now, and then, in the next "right now", do what I want most then. Let these steps connect into a path, and let the place I eventually arrive at become the destination.
When I was in graduate school, a professor once told us that the goal of doing research is to produce results and make new discoveries, but the method is not to first choose a fixed target and then shoot arrows at it. Instead, you set a general direction, shoot the arrow, and then draw the target where the arrow lands, and write a paper around that. So it's not that you first have a destination and then plan the path; rather, you walk along the road that appears in front of you, step by step, and as you walk, the path emerges and the destination is defined at the same time. My "mysterious confidence" comes from believing that the road will naturally reveal itself at the right time, that in each moment of "right now", there will be something clear that needs to be done. What I need to do is to see it clearly, let go of all the baggage and blockages, and do it with courage.
I also realize that what I want to learn is how to help others make changes. That seems to naturally extend into a professional vision of becoming a therapist or a coach. But that is an extension of my original intention, not the intention itself. My original intention is to help others grow. There are many ways to do that. It could be as a therapist or a coach, it could be as a teaching assistant, through book clubs or small personal growth groups, or I could even simply be a listener. So the step in front of me right now is not to plan out how to become a therapist or a coach, but to start with the things I can already do with what are in my hands.
