(2019-08-20) Hobart What Is Philosophical Life Coaching

Pamela J. Hobart: What Is Philosophical Life Coaching? Philosophical life coaching has at least two close cousins: therapy and conventional life coaching. We can rule out what philosophical life coaching is not on our way to pinning down what it is. (cf Existential Therapy)

Therapy

different therapeutic worldviews are significantly unified by an emphasis on correcting problems and treating disease.

Medicalizing challenges which may be better described as "moral" or even "existential" can help people afford the services they want or need, via insurance reimbursements. Yet it's far from clear that the services patients find via the conventional healthcare system actually fit the bill in these moral and existential situations.

Life coaching

If a life coach could really help you to become your best self, with a life you love, maximizing potential, crushing your goals, etc - well, who wouldn't want that?

*All of the facets of conventional life coaching are thoroughly saturated by higher-level philosophical issues. But there's no reason to believe that ordinary life coaches are well-positioned to address those.

What is your "best" self? Best how? Will you know it when you see it?*

The regular life coaching toolbox has value, but it also has blind spots: visualizations, habit-forming tricks, pro/con lists, "wheel of life" diagrams, etc are like mere party tricks when you're trying to get at something deeper.

Standard life coaching also has a certain subjectivism built into it

What does a focus on philosophy add?

I don’t want to help clients achieve any of their goals, I want to help them to achieve the right goals.

What can a philosophical life coach do for you?

Unearth assumptions of yours that may or may not actually be true

Interrogate the nature of neurodiversity and mental "illness," especially as it pertains to your own quirks

Achieving true well-being may involve difficult mental labor, especially including the rooting out of cognitive dissonance.