How not to be a life coach

I recently took an online free quiz about life coaching. Here are my results:

Out of a possible 50 points, you scored 33. Not bad.

Based on how you answered the questions you may have experienced some hesitancy. Or, you may be questioning if becoming a coach is right for you.

Oh, you know me so well, random life coach training website.  I AM questioning whether becoming a life coach is right for me.  I am divorced.  I think buying real estate was the worst financial decision in my life.  I still belly laugh at fart jokes.  Am I the best person to be giving others advice?  No.  But I still do. And sometimes I am forced into it by people who don’t have anyone better around to help them.

Case in point:  a recent yoga retreat in Guatemala, organized by a good friend, Sami.  First a little background on Sami: on this same trip I (with not such a great relationship track record myself) felt obligated to talk her into de-friending the “really nice” semi-stalker and the horrific ex-boyfriend on Facebook.  I also convinced her that she didn’t have to meet the latter to give his mother’s engagement ring back.  Leave it at the desk.  I think it’s because I was sick of hearing her stress out about both of them.  “Cut the ties, leave them behind!” I urge. I must admit, I am really good at that. “You don’t owe them anything.” 

Now let me give you a little background on how much fun I was having at this yoga retreat.  It was a mixed group of relative newcomers to yoga and a few, including Sami, who recently went through training to become yoga teachers.  You could tell the latter by their oddly muscular scrawniness (except for Sami, who is slim with curves).  The yoga teacher for this retreat, we'll call her Turu, was the best example of this - she is probably 30, but looks about 12.  She and her fellow yogis seemed to rely solely on supplements for nutrition and only drank tea instead of coffee (something I found irritatingly pious since tea has to be imported and we were surrounded by coffee bushes).  They passed around Sunbreeze (three eye-watering essential oils that can do everything from cure headaches to serve as pesticides) like drunks on a stoop.

Turu plunked down a large bag of pills on the table for each meal. I found myself hoping (for her sake) that one of the pills was a laxative - she sure acted like she was constipated.  A vibrator probably wouldn't have been a bad idea for her either.  One morning she was going on and on about her special supplement - stevia (a natural low calorie sweetener I've been using for years). Hers had chrysanthemum in it “which prevents the long term side effects of stevia, blah blah blah”.  I couldn’t help it, I’d had too much (delicious!) coffee.  I had to chime in "So I guess it's kind of a Stevia Wonder?"  The rest of the table erupted in laughter.  If possible, her face got more pinched.  She didn’t speak directly to me for the rest of the retreat.  I was fine with that.  Again, probably not good life coaching qualities.

Surprisingly for a yoga teacher, Turu had some control issues beyond her sphincter.  When Sami told me that she had to chug a glass of wine in the kitchen when she took Turu to lunch at a friend's house, I had to ask, “Why do you care?” Turned out that although Sami organized and recruited all the guests for this retreat, she had some deference to Turu because she was Sami’s yoga training teacher.  Turu didn’t want Sami to wear black: “It's so negative.”  I had a hard time taking that tiny belligerent girl-woman seriously.  I told Sami that black is the combination of all colors.  So there.  

I felt really obligated to intervene after Turu berated Sami the first night of the retreat when Sami and I were having a glass of wine (or two) in the restaurant. It was after "quiet time" (9 pm), and we were giggling pretty loudly – probably at Turu’s expense.  But when Turu beckoned Sami (who in my mind is Turu’s boss) over and demanded to know whether she was drunk, I thought, “It’s on, yoga bitch. It’s on like Donkey Kong.” 

That’s why I wasn’t too worried when I egged Sami on to do yoga for photos on the boat on one of our day trips.  Pinchy-faced, Turu moved away as quickly as is possible on a bouncing boat.  She took her yoga seriously.

Looking back, I realize perhaps my participation in this could have possibly made it worse.  Turu wanted to be the guru.  I was winning out as Life Coach.  Well, I am more fun.  It didn’t help that we started doing yoga classes separate from the group (I must admit that in my gut I knew that was inappropriate but I didn’t really want to be around Turu any more than necessary).  Turu told Sami at her next “intervention” that Sami was being clique-y and enjoying herself too much.  Yep, I accept the blame for that.

Things escalated quickly. Sami told me one night that Turu had bullied the hotel manager into giving her the bill for the group. Sami worried that Turu was angling to get half the proceeds from the event.  (More life coaching required – you didn’t put things in writing about how she would be paid?  WTF?!)

In addition to her yoga skills, Turu mastered the art of passive aggressiveness.  Unfortunately for her, I'm just plain aggressive. When she tried to force the group on the second to last night of the trip to have what I could only imagine would be a bitch session, I sweetly suggested that if we were going to gather to “express our appreciation” for the week, the last night made more sense.  She called for a vote among an extremely uncomfortable group.  Only three people raised their hands.  I win! I win!

I suppose it was inevitable that Sami would get caught in the crossfire of the two demons fighting for her soul.  After dinner, Turu and Sami had a shouting match and the F-bombs were flying.  I am not sure whether that was an outcome celebrated as a success in the life coaching manual.

Sami defriended Turu on Facebook the next day, with only a teensy bit of encouragement from me.  I win again! 

Maximon's revenge

Maximon (aka San Simon, aka Rilaj Maam) is a "deity revered throughout the Guatemalan Highlands" (Lonely Planet Guatemala).  This is bizarre because he is not comprised of the nicest guys:  he's assumed to be a combination of Mayan gods, Pedro de Alvarado (the Spanish conquistador / mass killer of Guatemala), and the biblical Judas.  One story says that in a small Mayan village, a long time ago, all the men went off to work in the fields / fight a battle, except for Maximón who stayed behind to "watch over the women." When the men returned and found that all the women in the village were pregnant, and they killed Maximón. This upset the women terribly and therefore, to make up for killing Maximón, the men were forced to worship him. 


Other sources say Maximon represents chthonic (of the underworld) male sexual power. He's the god of revenge and vices, the god of gamblers and drunkards, and a chronic smoker (this is starting to sound like a Steve Miller song).  He accepts cigars or cigarettes and appreciates fine rum. But if you don't treat him right he will mess with you.  One story says that evil witches tried to destroy him but they couldn't.  When they got home they had horrible vomit & diarrhea.  This should have been a warning. 


We get an opportunity to visit Maximon's current home on a day trip to Santiago Atitlan.  We walk down an alley piled precariously high with soda bottle crates.  I am so busy looking at those that I trip into the small open air "waiting room" for his shrine.  I quickly compose myself, noticing that there are several people sitting on benches.  


My friend S beckons me to stand inside the shrine.  I'm looking around for the saint and then I look down.  The great saint is about three  feet tall and it looks like he's wearing 20 neckties.  I wonder if all this revenge stuff is bit of Napoleon complex-short man's disease. If he didn't have to stay in the village he would drive a big expensive car and pick fights in bars.


I look up - the ceiling is hung with red streamers and what look like giant fake sausages. Subtle symbols of chthonic male power? I remember reading that on holy days, only certain men get to dress him because of the "great secret under his robes."  A giggle starts in my tummy.  I hold it in, trying to be respectful, until S points out that one of the two Maximon assistants is ashing his cigarette.  The giggle bubbles out.  A saucer-eyed man next to us says direly "thiss siss not a game" and stalks out. He doesn't seem local; he is wearing a t-shirt and khaki shorts and, since he is barefoot, must be the one who left the Prada sneakers in the waiting room.


Now I don't know all the rules, but I'm pretty sure that an offering to a god/saint isn't supposed to be empty.  So when Saucer Eyes stumbles back in and opens up a fifth of Quetzalteca (cheap firewater; wait, is that redundant?) and chugs it, we are appalled that he puts that in the (handily perfect sized) slot in front of Maximon.  Our guess is that he is trying to get some help with a vice.  We guess that vice is drinking.  


Despite the alcohol, he has a good memory.  Later outside on the street he flips our group the bird as he passes by in a tuk tuk.  (Good to know that is a symbol that transcends boundaries.)  And perhaps the Maximon effects kick in slowly - we see him drinking a beer in a bar later on.  


Over dinner later we laugh about the stories that Lucas told us.  The Spanish didn't like how much power Maximon had so they put him in jail.  Yes, they put a wooden statue in jail.  The jailer's wife dreamed that Maximon was going to hurt her husband, so she woke him up, but he'd had a stroke.  Maximon got out of jail.  One of Lucas's friends had a Maximon statue but couldn't handle how high maintenance he was - more cigarettes, more booze.  She gave him away but then couldn't sleep.  


That night, we all had weird dreams.  The next day, two of the women in our group got really ill.  Their symptoms?  Vomiting and diarrhea.  All 15 of us end up getting serious runs. We are not sure whether it was Saucer Eyes who cursed us or just Maximon, god of revenge, and thiss really siss not a game.




Learn more, at your peril:
http://www.santiagoatitlan.com/Religion/Maximon/maximon.html


http://www.luckymojo.com/maximon.html

Why multi-tasking is bad

So I'm lying there on the floor, petting my dog.  And she's really getting into it - I'm scratching the super furry part on her neck, and behind her ears, you know, the hard parts for a dog to scratch.  So she's grunting happily and snapping her teeth. And maybe I should mention here that I'm topless.  Not for any reason associated with the dog, I swear.  It's just that I get distracted.  I do a lot of things topless.  I'll be in the middle of getting dressed and think - oh, where's that shirt, I need to do laundry, look at the garbage can, it's full, I should make a list and put new garbage bags on it, let me check the fridge to see what else I need to buy, I need to sort through my coins so I can put them in that cool machine at the grocery store, but I want to put the quarters in a baggie in my suitcase 'cause I like to buy Cokes at the office in Denver, ooh, now I want a Diet Coke, but I'm out so I'll boil some water to make iced tea, and YIKES! I'm near an open flame topless. And the blinds are open. I should put on a shirt and/or close the blinds, but maybe I should put away the laundry first and check my phone for a text.  Ooh! a text, but crap, it's just my boss tweeting and that means I need to read another article.

Oh yeah, so anyway, I'm petting the dog topless and I wonder what would happen if she accidentally bit me on the boob. Would I need stitches? If so, I'd have to call a neighbor, 'cause I watch "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" all the time and they totally can tell whose bite marks they are, and then the ER doctors would call SVU and they will be interviewing my dog about abuse and she'll have to mention all the sordid things she's seen in the bedroom and, oh god, yet another reason I won't be able to run for office. And they might take her away from me, and put me on some kind of dog molesters registry where I can't live within 50 feet of a dog which would mean I could only live around cats, which would totally suck.  Or wait, are the registries species-specific?  What if I couldn't live near any animal? It would have to just be domestic animals - it would be so unfair if you couldn't live within 50 feet of a squirrel or chipmunk cause those fuckers are everywhere, and nobody really cares if you are mean to them. Squirrels used to get in our garbage spread it all over the yard when I lived with two other girls in Virginia and it really was gross if someone was on their period So, wait, what was I talking about?

Small talk vaccine

"Gosh, what a long line!"

"Crap, I can't believe the flight is delayed."
"Man, the luggage takes forever to come out."

I am allergic to small talk.  I'm not particularly good at it, maybe I'm a little bit sociopath (not psychopath, of course. I've never killed someone. Over small talk.)  I'd prefer a dirty joke from a stranger to talking about the weather.  I travel a lot; travel seems to demand small talk.  There's something particularly irritating to me when people must state the obvious, even if I agree with them.  I think it's because I'm barely holding on to my sanity thanks to the stress of traveling - how can I help this joker?  If he makes the mistake of saying it to the back of my head while we are standing in line, I ignore him. Flat out.  How would I know he were talking to me?  I can assume he was talking to someone they know.  Someone who gives a shit.

And I guess, perhaps unfairly, I include anything that is too personal as small talk.  I don't want to hear about your bunions. . . and I don't want to tell you, stranger sitting uncomfortably close to me on the plane, anything personal about myself.  Please don't ask me where I'm going.  Didn't they just say the plane is going to Denver?  Don't ask me what I'm reading.  I'm reading "So I Don't Have to Talk to Strangers."

The most egregious small talkers seem to be shuttle drivers.  Most recent example (6 am Thursday morning, Enterprise Rentacar shuttle, Denver airport):

Customer - "good morning, how are you?"
Driver - "well, I'm still sore. blah blah blah surgery. . . blah blah blah doctor says I shouldn't be working. . . blah blah blah lost 42 pounds in two months...wouldn't mind if I didn't have to sit all day blah blah blah...."

This exchange wasn't even with me but I was completely stressed out - I mean, this guy has our lives in his hands - and he, by his own admission, didn't seem healthy enough to be driving an oversized bus, especially with frequent turning back to look at said customer.  I mean, who's the real danger to society here?  I've learned to sit in the back of the shuttle bus for this very reason.  It's easier to pretend like the guy isn't talking to you...but still embarrassing when you are the only one on the bus.  I actually have a rule that I will tip the guy who gets me there quietly.  Chatty? No cash for you.

Devils on both shoulders

Midcity (fiction) - The improbably buxom Vietnamese girl leaned over the table:  "Another round?"  "Sure," I said, like I often do, "Why not?" It is just this attitude that gets me into these sorts of situations. I am sitting in Ooh La La - a gentlemen's club minus the gentlemen - with a married man. I barely know him.  I was more interested in his voice on the phone than the job he was recruiting for. Had agreed to coffee because he sounded cute and interesting.  And he was - before he mentioned something about the wife.  And kids.  Not so interesting anymore. 


So months later. . . he's in Midcity and so am I - bored out of my mind in the suburban Holiday Inn. "Let's meet for a drink," he suggests.  Why not? "Sure, let's meet at your hotel bar."  (Because mine is a sports bar where everything is fried.)


"I don't remember you being blonde," he says. Is that a compliment?  So, good, this is just casual, he doesn't even remember what I look like.  After a drink, I am starving and desperate not to eat in the Sports Grille (does the extra E make you feel better about eating there, alone? No, it doesn't.)  


We get a suggestion for a lame touristy restaurant on Frontier Street.   And to avoid stilted conversation (after all, we don't really know each other), he has prepared himself with two news items to discuss.  This is how good I am with news items - I only remember the strange photo taken while Clinton made his humanitarian visit to bring back the reporters from N. Korea.  


We are professionals, networking:  "How is your new job?" he asks.  Great. Except for all the lonely times in Midcity.  We discuss brownfields developments, sustainability, all professional.  But it is after the second beer that the conversation turns to condoms in the Standard Hotel in LA. [It dawns on me now that perhaps I was supposed to ask whether the Hotel M (his) has them.]  Feeling awkward, I joke about they had to do that after lawsuits for unwanted pregnancies caused by inappropriate use of the ever-present free shower caps.  

And, somehow that led to Montreal, where the strippers are gorgeous and encourage touching.  So I hear.  And then, because we are both from Southcity, the Gold Club came up.  I have to share (these are strong beers) that I have a college friend who danced at the Gold Club to put herself through law school.   I need to make that my story.  But it would be hard to lie about law school.  Don't laugh - that's just plain mean.  That brings us to the conversation of which strip bars we've been to, and, weirdly, I have been to several - in DC, Montreal, Atlanta, New Orleans. . . One Christmas my roommates and I went to Tits R Us after our present exchange.  Why not? 


So maybe three beers later there are devils on both shoulders when we walk out of the mediocre restaurant and see the neon sign for Ooh La La.  And...one drink?  Why not?  I am the only woman not working.  We are the only people talking to each other.  If it wasn't so wrong, it would be depressing.  And our lovely waitress is far too attentive.  Another beer?  Why not?  We finally look up at the dancers.  They are exceptional in their ordinary-ness.   I feel a little better about the junk in my trunk.  The first inappropriate comment comes out: "I bet your boobs look like hers."  Devil #1 says (just to me): wonder how far he'll take this.  Is he a pig? Am I that interesting?  Is he that lonely?  But I am in control.  I am not that girl.  Or am I sort of that girl - is it wrong to be in a strip joint with a married man?  We are just friends, right?  He has clearly done this before.  


"You've got to tip the dancers," says Devil #1, out loud.  He does.  How far can I push him? "You really should get a lap dance," says Devil #2.  His angels are gone, too: "okay."  I have to laugh at him pretending he hasn't already picked out a dancer.  Then I have to laugh at his face.  Guys are terrible at keeping a poker face when they get lap dances.  So I hear.  Inappropriate comment #2: "I bet you'd be good at this."  Time to go.  The Devils agree.  His "poke her" face was pretty goofy.