Advice Is My Comfort Food, coaching the healthy khaana

The similarity between comfort food and advice is an analogy that helps me understand that coaching is such a good head and heart space to spend time in. Let me explain. I need comfort food now and then, but it should not become my daily diet. Similarly, advice should be consumed sparingly. The healthy diet of thinking for myself is hard work (as compared to consuming advice which is so freely available) but much more beneficial in the long run.

It is nice to listen to the advice of a well-meaning friend (knowing that I will most probably not act on it) but still enjoy the comfort and reassurance the conversation offers. It is much harder work to think for myself, to examine my emotions and challenge some self-limiting beliefs that have become my friends over the years. These familiar travellers (my patterns and stories) who have been my companions for life have become unwanted crutches that I often go to when triggered by the external environment. No amount of well-meaning advice can help me let go of these crutches. However, a shift in perspective or a deepening of self-awareness can give me the magic wand of self-permission that allows me to walk and then run crutch-free. My coach often makes me look in the mirror and helps me see things that I cannot or do not wish to confront.

A steady diet of unsolicited Instagram advice in delicious and beautifully packaged bite-sized morsels is so easy to consume. But they don’t stay with me or help me when I need them. Why? Because I have not internalised the insights or made them mine. The same with self-help books and so many YouTube and TED talk experts. They peddle their wares of advice but I am not able to wear them for long even if I agree and understand.

I need to make some of these insights into rituals and habits for them to become my new travelling companions. I must choose wisely and with care because they will be the ones who take care of me and bring me joy in my life’s journey. The safe space to pause and just examine my life and what is important to me is a healthy place to visit. This is where coaching takes me. I often call my coach an “awareness and accountability partner” supporting me to feed my mind a healthy diet of insights and make the right choices.

Having this coaching companion who every so often holds up the mirror for me to see myself is supportive of living more consciously. And when I stray from my path, my accountability partner helps me stay the course. Simply by reminding me that I have the power, the choice, and the freedom to go in any direction that I want.

What do I want? A simple question, that is not so easy to answer. But when I pause and reflect, then the answer becomes clear. It often becomes easier to choose the more difficult path because it leads me where I want to go. The easy path often leads me astray. Interestingly when I do find the right path even if it is difficult it is always filled with a feeling of completeness and enjoyment. An hour well spent, in alignment with my core self, my values and using my skills soon becomes a day well spent and then before I know it a life well spent.

This alignment of the “human being” and the “human doing” connected by living my life’s purpose is what my coach helps me find and then stay in touch with. Living intentionally is the gift I have received from being coached and more recently from being a coach.

I have spent many years giving advice and receiving it. Living life for others and on others' terms. More recently I have started listening to myself and that has made all the difference. Looking at who I am and what I want with honesty and kindness. Accepting all parts of me and then embracing those parts that can best serve others has been a wonderful experience. In doing so I serve myself as well as a higher purpose. This healthy diet of introspection, self-acceptance, and self-awareness is a much more wholesome space. I still go in search of good advice every so often and sometimes dole it out myself. The trick is to make sure that advice is just a part of my diet now not the entire meal. Too much comfort food, like too much advice, makes me uncomfortable and is not good for me or those around me.

The example of learning how to swim or cycle comes to mind, after all the techniques have been shared, I need to jump into the pool and get onto the bike and do it myself. I can keep consuming advice and not act on it or change anything. Coaching on the other hand often catalyses me into action, shifts my perspective and keeps me swimming laps or enjoying putting in the hours in the saddle. Cut down on the advice and integrate some coaching into your diet. Stay fit. Stay healthy.

Nikhil Dey is a certified ICF coach and founder of soul2solecoaching. He is the first recipient of the ICF India coaching excellence rising star award.