Coaching My 13-Year-Old Self

For the last three and a half years, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be coached and to coach.

It all started when I did a Write or Die session with Kathy Delaney-Smith, the winningest coach in Ivy League history. When we got to the last part where you imagine you have five minutes left to live and the opportunity to say whatever is on your mind to a loving, non-speaking presence, Kathy basically coached God, telling this presence how best to live their life.

I could see the outline of a powerful book in this brief “coaching session”, and I said as much to Kathy. Less than a year later, I was living across the country, working in Kathy’s home office while Bird scratched at Kathy’s leg for treats as she and I (and Laura Barnard) wrote what would become Grit and Wit: Empowering Lives and Leaders. (The most helpful thing you could do, if you feel like being helpful, is to go to your local bookstore or library and request they get this book.)

I got coached while writing this book. For one thing, I learned to keep (sometimes) my sentences shorter. Kathy and my writing styles are different, and in the effort of sounding more like her, I got to work on reining in my often wildly long sentences. I learned, in broad strokes, to be a stronger, more focused human. This kind of learning was fun because its purpose was to be better so you could do better and treat others better. So you could—the icing on the—cake, win.

When we finished the book and I came back to California, I started Martha Beck’s 9-month long Wayfinder Life Coach training program, and now I practice or read about coaching for hours every day.

What I would like to do is go back and coach 13-year old me.

Boy, would I love to show up to that sweet girl and say, Hello. I am 60-year-old you, and I have your back. (And, yes, you might consider using sunscreen from now on.)

The first thing I would do is to take her out for an ice cream, because 13-year-old Anne will do anything for food. I think a walk down High Street to Bergson’s and one chocolate walnut cone will make her want to see me again, and again, and again. She and I will have a conversation about what sugar does to her state of mind later, much later, after she doesn’t have such a sharp need for sugar’s numbing effect that helps her deal with the chaos she cannot articulate that lives in her mind and belly.

The second thing I would do is to go for a run with her, because at 13 she was officially in love with running, and I would get her talking about her feelings. I would listen and listen and say, Tell me more. Tell me more. I would offer no advice. I would run and listen, run and listen, for as long as she was willing to share. When thoughts and beliefs that do not serve you stay in your mind and in your belly, turmoil happens. Pain. Confusion. Sometimes all you have to do is say a painful thought for your own self to hear the lie in it and for your mind to begin to change.

I would be building up for the big coaching session on how to stay present, how to endure the discomfort (the agony?) of change, of growing up, of being a person with anxious attachment. Thirteen-year-old Anne and I might eat ice cream and run together for years before we got to this topic, but we would get there because I know what it’s like trying to grow up when part of you wants to stay a baby forever in the hopes whatever feels broken in you will get repaired if only you stay a child.

To be coached is, I believe, to be loved. I wanted to work with Kathy because I could see the love and energy she poured into her athletes. I saw the love and energy that came pouring back in her direction. She saw her players and, in the seeing, she was driven to help bring out the best in them for the sport of it, for the joy of it, because she could.

Coaching is a devotional practice in many ways.

I see you.

And you are good.

Let’s play.