For the last few months, I’ve been waiting to feel like a coach. Not waiting to be one, exactly. I’ve been coaching. I’ve taken the classes, logged the hours, practiced the skills, asked for feedback, and gotten feedback I loved along with feedback that made me want to cry in frustration. I’ve coached friends, peers, clients, and recently, complete strangers. By all measurable evidence, I have been doing the thing. But there’s a difference between doing something and believing it belongs to you.
This week, something shifted.
I was thinking one morning about the people I’ve coached lately. Their stories, the things they’ve trusted me with, and the way pieces of them linger with me after our conversations are over. I genuinely care about the people sitting across from me. I want good things for them. I wish sometimes that I could take away the hard things they’re carrying, but I know I can’t. Their lives aren’t mine to navigate for them. What I can do is create a space where they can hear themselves a little more clearly, ask the questions that help them see what they might not be seeing yet, and trust that they can decide for themselves what comes next.
And somewhere in the middle of thinking about all of that, I had this strange little thought: I feel like a coach today.
Not I think I could be good at this. Not maybe someday I’ll feel legitimate. Not once I get the credential. I just felt like a coach. It almost felt like I’d been born, which sounds incredibly dramatic considering I was sitting around drinking coffee in my pajamas at the time.
But I think identity changes can be like that. We expect some big moment when the new version of us arrives. A certificate. A promotion. A certain amount of money in the bank. Someone important telling us we’re finally good enough. Instead, I think sometimes we become something slowly, through evidence. One conversation. One uncomfortable risk. One person trusting us. One mistake we learn from. One moment where we handle something differently than the old version of us would have.
Eventually, maybe the evidence gets heavy enough that the old story has a harder time carrying itself.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months comparing myself to the version of me who spent 25 years building a career. She was competent. She knew what she was doing. She knew the answers, or at least knew how to find them. Starting over has meant being willing to be a beginner again, and that has been much harder than I expected because apparently I liked being competent. A lot! lol
Somewhere along the way, though, I think I started confusing being new with not being good. Those aren't the same thing.
This week I got feedback from someone I specifically chose because I knew she wouldn't just tell me what I wanted to hear. She gave me things to work on, which is exactly what I wanted. But she also told me my coaching presence was outstanding and that I’m well on my way to becoming a great coach. And for once, instead of immediately explaining away the compliment or deciding she was just being nice, I let some of it in.
Maybe other people have been seeing something I’m still learning to see.
I think that matters because we so often expect confidence to come first. Once I feel confident, I’ll put myself out there. Once I feel ready, I’ll take the risk. Once I believe in myself, I’ll do the thing. But that isn’t how this has worked for me. I did the thing while I was wobbly. Then I did it again. And again.
I asked strangers if they would trust me enough to coach them. I let people watch me practice. I let people critique me. I had sessions I loved and sessions I replayed afterward wishing I would have done things differently. I kept showing up. And somewhere inside all of that showing up, confidence started sneaking in through the back door.
Maybe that’s how we become. Not by convincing ourselves we’re ready, but by collecting enough lived evidence that eventually some part of us says, Oh. This is who we are now.
The strangest part is that I didn’t actually become an entirely different person. The things that made me good at my old career didn’t disappear when I left it. My tenacity came with me. My curiosity came with me. My ability to connect dots came with me. My desire to help people came with me. My ability to figure things out came with me.
I didn’t lose the competent woman I used to be. She’s just learning something new.
Maybe becoming someone new isn’t really about inventing a new person from scratch. Maybe it’s about discovering which parts of you were never attached to the job, the relationship, the role, or the chapter you left behind. Maybe those parts were yours all along, and becoming is partly about discovering new ways to express them.
And maybe you don’t have to completely believe in the person you’re becoming before you start becoming her.
Sometimes you just have to keep showing up long enough to meet her.
