Life Coaching: Results May Vary (but they’re usually pretty damn good)
When I sat down to work on a rebrand for my coaching business (the artist formerly known as Pivot Coaching is now very creatively named Stephanie Finigan Coaching. Hi, I’m Stephanie Finigan), I went to do the thing all of us coaches are reliably supposed to do: tell you, our potential new clients who don’t know us, what exactly your results will be if you choose to work with me….In other words, what are you paying me for? How will my coaching help you? What will be different for you after working with me?
And then I got stuck. Because while I know coaching has helped me, and I know my coaching has helped my clients, I still don’t have that quick and easy “I help people save money/find love/lose weight/start a business” solution to paint the picture for you of what you’ll get in return for giving me money. The results I’ve gotten from coaching, and the results I commit to getting for my clients, are not always that easy to sum up.
And yet, I know this shit works.
When I got into coaching, I saw post after post on IG and the rest all about the results others have gotten from coaching, or that coaches shared about their clients’ results. Everything was direct and concrete and easy to conceptualize:
“I lost 50 lbs”
“I wrote a memoir”
“I got engaged”
“I bought a house”
“I had a baby”
“I started a business”
“I paid off my debt”
“I had my largest income month”
“I quit sugar forever”
…all clear, understandable wins, and all somewhat traditional or predicable for the world of “self help” (the fact that marriage/babies are still hallmarks of success for women in 2025 is a massively problematic and infuriating rant for another day but there we are…I see you, JD Vance).
What struck me from this list was that what are clocked as “successes” from coaching always seems to be something tangible - when change, growth, and all the things we coach people to do and reach and achieve really come from things that are much deeper, and much harder to pin down or see clearly than a number in a bank account or a ring on a finger. Things like self-concept, confidence, attitude, outlook, energy, patience, time management, proactiveness, problem solving, processing emotions, ease, and acceptance of yourself can be really hard to measure or see - and really hard tick off on a checklist of “What have I gained from coaching”.
At least, that’s what I thought until this year. 2025 (so far) has been, well, a lot. A new job, a new home, a neglected business, a flare up of my chronic depression, weight gain, in-home care for a parent with rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s disease (which has turned out to be a far more cruel and all-consuming disease than anyone prepares you for) and a tenuous adoption situation with my foster son of nearly 2 years all collided at once. Honestly, I was thrown into a tailspin for a few months where just getting through the day was a feat. Zoloft helped. So did the coming of spring after a long and gray Boston winter. I dipped back into therapy (something I’ve done on and off since my late 20s, and have found incredibly useful), but this time around it didn’t do the trick. Much of what I was struggling with wasn’t past-focused or rooted in unexplainable reactions or moods brought on by childhood-rooted triggers. Instead, I leaned into life coaching further, as what I’m wrestling with was and is present moment. It was and is happening now. It was and is absolutely explainable and understandable – it was and is totally reasonable to believe that anyone dealing with high-stress, emotional, physically demanding and emotionally draining personal challenges while still trying to function and parent and care give and pay the bills and go to work and not be a monster to their partner or friends would spin out, and spin down, somewhat. So I reached for coaching even though I was pretty sure that coaching wasn’t going to save me this time….
…unless it was.
Because what I’ve noticed this time around, in 2025, seven years since I first got coached by a life coach, was that how 2025 Stephanie handled these ever-stressful circumstances was quite different than how Stephanie of the Pre-Coaching Days would have…..
I have been overwhelmed, but am not taking it out on other people
I have been stressed, but am not overeating, drinking, bingeing tv, or avoiding the stress
I have been drained, but I’m not (usually) staying up until all hours scrolling aimlessly, dreading the morning to come
I have been anxious, but I’m not trying to ignore that fact and instead power through it by overworking
I have been exhausted and wanted to let people around me know what was going on, but I let it be OK to be totally honest with a few people and let everyone else’s texts and calls go unreturned until I had more energy.
I have been overbooked and unable to be 100%, or even be consistent, with my goals or habits (running, Solidcore, reading, creating content for my business,) but I haven’t beat myself up for it
I reset goals, objectives and timelines (like dropping out of an April 2025 marathon, pulling back on revenue goals for my business, and scaling back on work in my nonprofit) and didn’t beat myself up, feel like a failure or a slacker, or double down on future goals unrealistically
I have been sad, but I didn’t lean in to oversleeping or watching tv; instead I picked up some old tools that helped me once upon a time and dusted them off (like writing, meditating, 3 mile walks…)
I have been scared, but I didn’t let my Worst Case Scenario toddler brain take over; instead I recognized and rerouted my thoughts to other, more neutral and believable ones (“Yeah this might happen, but it might not….”)
I have been reactive, but I haven’t reacted like I used to; instead I’ve done a lot of “future self” thinking (“5 years from now, when this has all worked out and the stress/fear is in the rear view, how would THAT version of me wish I responded to this?”)
For each of these points, each of these differences in myself, I can tie back to age and life experience, sure, but mostly I can tie back to a skill or a tool or a habit I’ve learned through coaching, like:
Future Self work
Self-Identity work
Processing emotions
Creating new thought highways
Create boundaries (the right way)
Managing “avoidant” reactions to stress
Solving a problem from a place abundance vs. scarcity
…and so much more.
This work, these tools, and so many others, are harder to point to than a weight loss plan, or time management app, or a business strategy may be. But this is the invisible work of coaching. These are the tools that will get you through the hard moments, days, or years, when other methods just don’t work like they once did. These are the skills you develop, the muscles you build, the reflexes you sharpen and hone, when you didn’t even realize you had them. These are the boulders you’re pushing up a hill when you realize the boulders aren’t getting heavier because you are not piling outsized reactions or unhelpful habits or destructive thought patterns on top of them.
So no, coaching didn’t turn me into a new person, and coaching didn’t solve all of my problems. I still haven’t quit Diet Coke and I’m not out here manifesting parking spots (yet). But what I did do – what coaching showed me how to do – was quiet a lot of bullshit that was keeping me stuck in old patterns and old, unuseful ways of coping with challenges. Coaching added more tools to my tool belt that I can grab and use when I see old beliefs starting to creep back in through the cracked floorboards in my psyche. Coaching has given me a way to handle the moment I am in so that I can move forward from here, instead of having to dig myself back out of every hole my shitty thought patterns and quietly destructive habits and behaviors put me into. Coaching has changed how I think about my circumstances, and how I take action from them instead of in reaction to them. And maybe that’s the real result of coaching: not a different life, but a different way of living the one I’ve got.