My business card says Im a marriage and family therapist. That doesnt very adequately describe what I do.

For example, spend more than 30 seconds with a new person and the inevitable what do you do for a living? question arises. I usually get one of three reactions:

1) Oh, thats nice, and then they walk away. (Im really not that scary.)

2) So are you analyzing me right now? (As if thats all I do in my spare time.)

3) Oh, let me tell you about my husband/wife/kids/etc. (Makes me want to tell people Im a plumber!).

Many folks just dont really know what goes on in counseling. What notions they do have come from TV and movies with some boring at best and weird at worst shrink talking strange sounding psycho-babble.

Good therapy is really not at all like Woody Allen whining and complaining while laying on a couch week after week forever. In fact, the only person who ever lies on my couch is me, if Im really tired between sessions.

In my humble opinion, the two best portrayals of therapists/counseling are Judd Hirsch in the 1980 Robert Redford movie Ordinary People, and Robin Williams in the recent award winning Good Will Hunting (minus the choking scene, of course!).

What these two movies have in common is they show the counselor doing what I believe good therapy is really all about: coaching!

Thats right, coaching.

All I really do is to meet a person where they are, ask them where they want to be, and design tools and solutions to get them there. Most of the time, when things go really well, we end up moving even further than they thought they could.

Thats just one of the many valuable things that good counseling/coaching has to offer. Heres a few more that clients have shared with me:

Someones undivided attention for at least an hour. Thats a very rare thing in our fast paced instant culture.

New perspectives other than your own.

Tools and solutions designed for your particular struggle or challenge.

A coach whose job it is to help you do well in life. Even Michael Jordan had a coach.

Someone to actually listen to you. In his book The Lost Art of Listening, Michael Nichols says Few motives in human experience are as powerful as the yearning to be understood. Being listened to means that we are taken seriously, that our ideas and feelings are known and, ultimately, that what we have to say matters.

Someone to help you get unstuck. So many times, we get stuck in doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. A good counselor/coach can show you many other options for getting what you want in life. Remember, if you keep doing what you have always done, youll keep on getting what you have always gotten.

Someone to check-in with as you face the various challenges of life. After we have solved the current crisis that brought then in, many of the folks that I counsel/coach dont do the traditional same time next week for the rest of their lives bit. We begin to taper off to every other week, every third week, and so on. Some people have monthly check-in appointments, others check-in 3-4 times a year.

As Scott Peck says in the opening sentence of The Road Less Traveled: Life is hard. There is nothing wrong with asking for some coaching along the way. Even if you have been doing it wrong, theres really nothing wrong with being wrong. The only wrong thing is to keep on being wrong once you have realized you are wrong. Right?

So if even Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes we will ever see, needed a coach, why not you as well. Whos your coach? Will this be the year you give your self the present of a little life coaching?