Get A Life Coach Or Your Head Will Fall Off

If you phoned me up looking for a life coach but were unsure whether it was the right thing for you and I said “You need a coach, people who don’t hire coaches are idiots and should understand that they will live meaningless and wasted lives and die feeling unfulfilled and unhappy and oftentimes their heads inexplicably fall off” What would you think?

 

You’d probably think I was an imbecile at best and more likely that I needed my very own team of psychotherapists, and you’d be right. The fact is, that I would never say something like that because I have no intention of selling my service on fear. Not only that, it wouldn’t even work because people don’t want to be scared to death in that way. I do understand that sometimes in sales you do need to stir people out of their apathy by exposing a little worry or concern that they may have turned a blind eye to. Then you can show them how you or your service/product can help to remove that fear, but that is a world away from the relentless attack I am talking about.

 

So what sells on fear and fear alone? I’m not talking about scary movies or roller coasters but something much more prosaic and day-to-day? What exposes people’s fears over and over again and constantly tries to undermine any feeling of contentedness or even heaven forbid, happiness? What is in our faces and uses the power it has to add nothing of value to people’s lives?

 

The TV news that’s what.

 

About 12 months or so ago I posted something similar to this and it’s also a chapter in my new book ‘Don’t Ask Stupid Questions – There Are No Stupid Questions’ but it bears repetition.

 

On Friday for some reason I found myself watching TV at 10.00pm when the local news came on. I hardly ever watch the news for the above reasons but I found myself strangely captivated. Not by a desire to understand what horror was coming my way next (and mark my words if you watch this stuff regularly that is what you will probably end up believing) but by a desire to understand whether there would be anything of real value covered. There wasn’t. It was 30 minutes of depressing and demoralizing stories that were ramped up to ridiculous extremes to ensure that the viewer didn’t turn off before they had finished telling you how bad life is. After all, who goes to bed not knowing why their taxes are about to go sky high, the housing market plummet further, if there is a pedophile living in their neighborhood or if they are going to contract some horrible virus whilst being attacked by a swarm of killer bees on the Interstate that sees lord know how many deaths per year? Not many, I can tell you. 

 

If you want to watch local TV news, realize what the programme makers are doing. If they kick off a programme saying Newsflash: Everything is just great! You’ll probably switch off and that won’t generate advertising dollars. They want you to be fearful and they will use every trick in the book to make you think you need to know what they are telling you. The reality is that almost all of the time you don’t. It was the first time I have sat through an entire broadcast for months and I seem to be struggling through.

 

Next time you watch, ask yourself these two questions afterwards. Did watching add any value to my life? Do I feel better for watching? If the answer is little or nothing and no, then you don’t need a life coach to tell you what to do.

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