Here’s a little story I hope will be helpful — from my perspective as a life coach of 15 years who does her best to keep it real. Being as honest as possible is a discipline I learned from my lifelong vocation as a writer.
So I was out at a milonga late Saturday night with a new dear friend. A bohemian milonga in Buenos Aires — the kind of place I’ve been coming to for over ten years, where people dance tango until 4am and then spill onto a terrace under the stars to talk on ratty couches. It’s not one of the formal, elegant milongas, it’s the underground where the address is not disclosed online.
I was chatting with this guy friend that I have loved getting to know. He has been a great companion in these two months of tango obsession.
I was telling him about running into a guy I briefly dated at a tango class. He looked to be with someone new, and yes, I had feelings about it. Catty ones.
My friend looked at me with some amusement: “How can you be saying this? Don’t you need to see a life coach?”
I looked back at him and said: “I do know a good life coach. It’s me.”
Here’s what I want you to know: life coaches and therapists are human beings. We are not perfect. We say catty things, make mistakes, and do not have our own lives figured out. Why? Because perfection does not exist.
A truly good life coach or therapist should never be seen as a guru who has all the answers.
My most impactful therapist — someone I’m writing about in my memoir Wet — once told me that no one can ever really tell another person what to do, and that she herself doesn’t always know what to do with her own life. That honesty has stayed with me for 15 years and deeply shaped my philosophy of life and leadership coaching.
The point of good coaching — the whole point — is self-acceptance and discovering your own path forward. The fact that I can sit on a terrace in Buenos Aires, share a catty feeling with a friend, and not spiral into shame about it? That is success, actually. That is progress — for someone who has spent a lifetime believing she had to be perfect to be valid, to be lovable.
People are hungry for gurus. We want someone to have the answers, to tell us what to do — whether we’re looking for a therapist, a life coach, or a political leader. I understand that desire. Sometimes we really do get lost and need a strong hand of guidance.
But the belief that someone else is perfect, has it all figured out, and can tell you what to do — I believe that’s one of the more dangerous impulses we carry as human beings.
The moment you hand your authority to someone who claims to have the answers, you stop doing the only work that actually matters: figuring out who you are and what you want.
That’s what good, deep life coaching is really about. Not someone telling you what to do, but someone guiding you along the hard, honest process of finding your own answers. Self-acceptance. Self-compassion. Being okay with sharing something catty with a friend on a Saturday night under the stars. I tend to teach people a lot of practices that help them do just this, for themselves, lifelong.
I’ve been a life coach for 15 years. I’ve been a writer my whole life, since childhood. My commitment to you — as both a writer and a coach, which makes me a little rare — is to keep giving it to you straight. The catty feelings and all.
If you want to work with a life coach who shows up as a real human being and helps you find your own answers for the path forward, I’d love to hear from you.
With love from my last tango-obsessed days in Buenos Aires, Sasha
P.S. I am so grateful that I have tango. Dancing has been such an escape from this world that feels quite jodido (Spanish for “fucked”). It’s been an absolutely amazing two months — full of ups and downs, difficult and incredible moments. Overall, the best time I’ve had in Buenos Aires since 2010, when my tango journey first began. I’ll tell you more soon. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get my missives.
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