Elle Vampa

It is a Monday morning and I am caught in a game of ping pong between my computer and phone screens.

*ping*

No, I can only do Thursdays reads my client’s so-manieth quite short and totally unlike her text.

Sh*t, I have no free Thursdays left until the end of August. Which is a fact my computer screen has just shared with me after I logged on to my online work schedule programme thingy. What a feast everything is digital – NOT.

PONG – I reply:

I am sorry in advance, but the first Thursday I can offer you is in 4 weeks.

Phew, crisis averted. I’ll just ask two Thursday afternoons off from my new job so I can finish my coaching programme with this client. No harm done, all is well, everyone happy. I must be brilliant after all!

Getting ready to pat myself on the back (not metaphorically: it works best if you do it for real), the game takes another turn:

*ping*

Actually, I don’t want to reschedule at all. I want to quit the coaching.

Huh? Wait… What?

PONG

I’m sorry, I don’t understand. We were doing so well. You were making great progress!

*ping*

My problems are very deep and I need more to help me solve them than coaching.

For the first time in five years, a client is unsatisfied and wants to quit with only two more sessions ahead.

And, not completely unimportant: we were making progress! Just the other session, I felt we really hit the root of the problem, and we…

Oh. Wait.

Problem. Root.

That equals pain.

As a coach, I search for the main pain, because I know that is also were the solution lies.

I sometimes forget that not everybody wants to look at that, let alone try and actively stop it. Most likely, this client got confronted with her real pain, the one thing underlying all her other issues, and got scared.

She is running away. From me, but more so from herself.

It also explains why she was short and snappy in her earlier texts.

I heave a sigh (I seem to do that a lot lately) and weigh out the situation.

Sure, this feels like another failure. But at the same time…

Did I not want to quit “regular coaching” because getting new clients is heinous? And running a coach programme takes a lot of time, attention and energy? While the profits kind of suck? Did I not want to focus more on family constellations? Redesign my business?

Is this… a blessing in disguise?!

I close my eyes and take a minute to process it all. Perhaps this is not the worst that can happen? I want to finish all the programmes anyway, this simply speeds up my plans.

My eyes back open again, I let my fingers fly over the keyboard: I respect your decision. We can end the programme today.

To lose or not to lose – sometimes one decision can change the game.

PONG