Val in the Media

Help! My Life is Out of Control
by Joy Duckett Cain
Three women learn how to create the lives they want -- one step at a time --
with the help of professional coaches.

Essence, September 2000

The hard work has paid off. Last August Charmayne purchased her first home, a three-bedroom ranch-style house. But the mental and physical price has been steep. In a pensive moment, the usually upbeat Charmayne is succinct: "I'm tired of living like this."

Most of us can relate. In our never-ending quest to have more, be more, do more, our lives sometimes become a blur of activities that -- if we're gonna be real about it -- we don't always enjoy. And the things we do enjoy -- the pleasures and pastimes that give our soul and psyche sustenance -- never seem to make it off our "to do" lists. Sure, we want to exercise, take a dance class, paint and rearrange the bedroom -- but there never seem to be enough hours in the day. In that quest to have more, be more, do more, we often wind up losing ourselves.

Enter the professional coach (or personal or success coach, depending on the individual). Corporations have long used career coaches to propel executives and management teams toward greater achievement; not surprisingly, this strategy has spilled over into the personal arena. Coaches such as Cherryl Neill of Washington, D.C., help clients get clear on what they want to achieve and then maintain their focus. "I believe you can create whatever you want in your life to the extent that you're clear about what that is," she explains.

Valerie Williams, a personal coach in Edison, New Jersey, says that the key to reaching personal goals can be summed up in one word: integrity. "What we're talking about is keeping promises to yourself," she explains. "Women -- especially African-American women -- keep promises to our children, bosses, husbands and everyone else because we're Superwomen. But we're last on our own lists. And that's why we don't have the lives we want.

Is it possible for Charmayne and sisters like her to be coached toward a less hectic yet more fulfilling life? To put this idea to the test, Essence teamed three stressed-out women with three personal coaches over a period of three months to see if they could move closer toward defining and living the lives of their dreams. Here's what happened:

Charmayne Little, 28: Learning to say no, and other life lessons. In their first telephone session together, coach Valerie Williams asked Charmayne Little to name three short-term goals she wanted to achieve over the first 30 days for coaching. Simple enough: Charmayne wanted to take better care of her health, get her financial house in order and manage her time so she could spend more of it with her daughter and friends -- and herself.

Like Charmayne, many of us have time-management woes because we have difficulty saying no, Williams notes. By not saying no, we take on more than we can handle, which means that we're not taking care of what we need to handle, which means that some things go undone or get done poorly.

One of Charmayne's first homework assignments was to just say no - to anything. An opportunity soon arose when employers at her part-time job asked her to fill in for a coworker. Ordinarily Charmayne would have said yes, which would have meant rearranging her daughter's baby-sitting schedule and forgoing her plans to visit the gym. This time, though, she let her supervisor know that she would he unable to do it. Her employer said okay, life went on, and Charmayne learned she had the power to choose, freeing up more time to do the things that mattered to her.

Next she worked on delegating responsibility. As lead teacher for the seventh grade in her school, Charmayne was charged with making sure that bus arrangements were made for trips, correspondence for her grade was done and so on. Being a perfectionist, she usually took care of all those tasks herself. Williams suggested that Charmayne begin sharing the workload with other teachers. She did, and again life went on, showing her that she could dictate how she spent her time without compromising her work or her family.

In her fifth week of coaching, Charmayne's school closed for spring break. Normally, this would have been her time to rest, relax, shop, whatever. This time, however, during her week off, she created lesson plans for work and wrote papers for her science-education graduate courses. When spring break was over, Charmayne returned to work with her lesson plans written for the rest of the semester and with a jump start on her papers. The net result? When she had an early evening at home, she could spend that time watching The Lion King or playing Monopoly with Kayla.

Valerie Williams explains that a key to meeting your goals is "bridging the gap" -- or scanning the space between where you are and where you want to be. Charmayne, for instance, knew that she wanted to exercise "more," but until she quantified it by saying she wanted to exercise three times a week, she got nowhere. "Sometimes a person just needs a little boost, some clarification on what's missing," says Williams. "When they fill in the missing pieces, they close the gap." By week five, Charmayne was exercising at least three times a week -- once at an aerobics class and twice on a treadmill or other equipment. When it was warm out, she typically jogged around the track or lake as Kayla bicycled alongside her.

In the financial arena, Charmayne -- once a big-time impulse shopper -- learned how to delay gratification. "Valerie says that you know you really have control in your life when you can say no to yourself," says Charmayne, who got a chance to demonstrate that control after seeing a pair of shoes at the mall that she loved. In the past she would have brought the $30 pumps in a heartbeat. Instead, she asked herself Valerie's INW questions: Was she in Integrity with the situation -- meaning, could she afford the shoes? Yes. Did she Need them? Well... Did she Want the shoes? Most definitely. Because Charmayne couldn't answer yes to all three questions on the spot, she left the shoes in the store.

But later that evening Charmayne looked at the shoes she already owned, verifying that she didn't have a similar pair. Satisfied that she could get good use out of her desired shoes and that they didn't duplicate something she already owned, she bought them a few days later. But this time it wasn't an impulse purchase -- it was a well-reasoned decision.

"Coaching is not about deprivation or living a restricted life," Williams says of Charmayne's decision. "A lot of coaching is really being supportive of a person and letting them see certain things in their life, and then letting them do the rest." Charmayne concurs: "It feels great because Valerie is helping me to improve my life, and I'm actually seeing the results."

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