Lessons of a Life Coach: 24 Things I Learned About Life by Being a Life Coach - Oli Anderson

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

What Life Coaching Taught Me About Being a Human Being

More than a decade ago, I found myself at a leadership seminar in London.

At the time, I was wrestling with a few personal challenges and was seeking some kind of direction in life (though I didn’t quite know what I was looking for at the time and had no idea I would eventually end up working as a life coach).

After the seminar, I received some life coaching for the first time and I realised what a powerful tool it could be for people who knew that there was ‘more’ from life but didn’t necessarily know what that looked like yet.

It wasn’t that I suddenly had no problems but it did help me to start seeing that most of my ‘problems’ weren’t problems at all: they were mainly patterns, habits, limiting beliefs, or gaps in my vision.

What I needed wasn’t to solve everything but to start seeing clearly and taking real steps forward.

That encounter was the beginning of what became a deep, consuming journey into coaching, human behaviour, and what it really means to live well. I was already obsessed with the human condition (I’d studied philosophy at university), and coaching gave me a tangible framework to use the knowledge I’d been accruing to help others – and myself – live more purposeful and REAL (of course) lives.

Not long after, I began writing my first book Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness and enrolled in a diploma programme with the Coaching Academy.

Fast forward to now, and I’ve been coaching full-time for about seven years and every single session has either taught me something new or allowed me to validate everything I’ve learned about the human experience.

Coaching, I’ve discovered, is not just something you do – it’s something that transforms you from the inside out.

This article shares some of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned as a life coach.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Life coaching is about helping you get out of your own way

Lessons from Life Coaching: What We’ll Cover In This Article

What Life Coaching Taught Me About Being a Human Being
Lessons of a Life Coach: Keep it Real

1. Everyone Has Untapped Potential

Absolutely everybody has untapped potential and can go deeper and deeper into wholeness and flow in their lives if they go through the process of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action (the process I build my coaching containers around when working with clients).

2. Ego Goals vs Real Goals

A lot of the time people are wasting their lives chasing goals that belong to a completely false identity (ego) that they’ve picked up based on what they’ve been through in the past.

Often, when they start exploring things deeply they uncover a more real version of themselves and their goals change accordingly.

This is a totally normal part of the process in many cases but can be surprising if the Shadow Dance between the ego and shadow self has been intense.

3. Your Power Is in the Shadow

A lot of people’s real power is buried in the shadow self because of years of conditioning that makes them ashamed of who they are and what they really want.

There is some amazing ‘stuff’ in the shadows like a deeper connection to truth (God) and the seeds that need to be sown to live a real life (and we can’t choose the seeds if they’re real, we can just sow them).

The lesson here is that when you get out of your own way, you can start tending to the seeds that you always knew you needed to nurture and grow.

4. You Have More Choice Than You Think

People have a lot more CHOICE in life than they think but a lot of the time they fear this choice because they fear responsibility.

This responsibility almost always threatens the ego and is usually the main barrier to moving forward and getting to where they say they want to be.

When you realise that almost everything you do involves a choice at some level (including reading this article) then it allows you to start taking control of your life.

5. Emotions Are Not Identity

Emotions are really important but they are just emotions:

Our culture tends to put emotions on a pedestal these days but this is a broken strategy because happiness comes from tapping into what’s real and lasting but emotions are always just temporary.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel our feelings – just that we shouldn’t identify with them.

6. You Can’t Heal Alone or in Isolation

Nobody ‘heals’ in isolation and everybody needs to explore ideas with other people if they want to go as deeply as possible into their humanity.

There’s a myth that we can heal alone (“self-help”) but that will only take us so far as we need other people whether we like it or not.

Being a real human being is about being a relational creature and you only real know if you’ve made progress when it comes to the way that you treat and deal with others.

It’s easy to be ‘enlightened’ when you’ve sequestered yourself off into a monastery or a cave in the mountains or something but real life means engaging with real people and not being unnecessarily bothered by it.

7. Not All Action Is Equal

Action is the only thing that will ‘cure’ anything but it has to be the right type of action.

If it’s just action for the sake of either itself or for the ego then it’s better to actually do nothing until the real path becomes clear.

8. Everyone Has Their ‘Stuff’

Everybody is struggling with something because life is “just one darned thing after another” (as somebody once said).

Even the most successful and powerful people have ‘stuff’ that they’re dealing with and we need to accept that this is the landscape that we’re dealing with if we want to live with the least amount of friction, frustration, and misery.

9. Let Your Results ‘Argue’ For You

The people that don’t believe in you probably don’t believe in themselves (and so they’re projecting that lack of self-belief onto you and your goals).

This is why they will try to talk you out of achieving ‘big’ things or sowing those ‘seeds’ that are already in you and screaming to be nurtured.

There is no point in arguing with these people:

The best way forward is to take real ACTION (not ‘ego’ action) and let your results be your actual argument because nobody can argue with the results you actually get.

10. There’s No Magic Bullet

Human beings are holistic creatures and there’s no magic bullet or panacea for solving all of our problems and getting us where we need to be.

We need to balance all of the moving parts in a real way: calming and mastering the mind, disciplining the body and regulating the nervous system, having a purpose.

Any coach or therapist or [whatever] that tells you that you just need to do one ‘thing’ (like a specific intervention or modality) is selling you something you don’t need.

If you want real change and transformation then it’s always going to be about your lifestyle and overall relationship with yourself.

11. Not Everyone Is Coachable

Not everybody is coachable and this almost always comes down to how attached they are to their ego.

Real coaching will challenge you and make you grow but if you think you already know everything or have something to prove then you’ll just get more entrenched in old patterns.

There has to be a certain degree of openness, curiosity, and courage to even get started.

12. Don’t Dwell in the Past

You don’t need to go poking around in the past to move forward (which is what life coaching and real transformation is about).

Interventions like therapy etc. can actually make things worse (in my opinion) because they just get people to further identify with old stories and the unreal identities that come with them.

The only reason to go ‘back’ is when there’s something you’re still carrying from the past that you need to let go of because it’s an obstacle to progress.

Digging for the sake of digging does more harm than good – you need to dig sometimes but you don’t need to dig up everything.

(Digging too much is actually often a form of self-obsession).

13. Habits Create Your Future

The thing that makes the biggest difference for most people is learning to be focused, disciplined, and consistent.

The truth is that it’s the small things over time that get the biggest results which is why I often encourage my clients to create a Vision, break it down into Goals, and then cultivate Daily Habits.

Your life is changed one choice at a time and so your habits really will change your life if you make sure they’re the habits of the person you’re becoming and that the results compound daily.

My new book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace will take you deeper into implementing these kind of lessons and growing real.

14. Use Your Pain

We are all broken in some ways and have battle scars from the things we’ve been through but we also have way more power and potential than we’ve been led to believe.

There are two types of pain: pain that uses you and pain you can use.

The latter is the type that will allow you to find your real life and is actually a gift in many ways because it wakes you up.

(Pain still SUCKS, of course, but if it’s used for long-term good then its a blessing).

15. Don’t Overcomplicate Your Thinking

Being intelligent isn’t just about being book smart:

Some of the most creative and scintillating people I’ve worked with haven’t been traditionally educated (university or whatever) but they have amazing creativity and drive. They also understand the real human concepts that matter without dressing them up in unnecessary conceptual complexity.

Being too complicated in our thinking can make us feel ‘intelligent’ but it can also hold us back because it just gives us more to rationalise and create mental obstacles and stumbling blocks with.

16. Direct Experience Changes Everything

All you need to undo years of conditioning and programming is a direct experience of the truth:

The best way to get this is to put yourself in the flow and start taking real action (by having a vision, goals, and habits).

I’ve seen so many people create barriers for themselves by looking to human design and astrology etc. but this kind of spiritual bullshit just stops people believing in themselves and trusting life directly (and gives them more excuses to keep not being real with themselves).

17. Real Action Crushes Limiting Beliefs

One thing I’ve seen time-and-time-again is that conscious transformation can happen really fast when you start taking real action and get held accountable until it becomes your nature.

This is because real action gives evidence that all of the old stories that once kept us from taking it and becoming who we’re supposed to be were just ‘Gremlins‘ and self-limiting beliefs.

18. Presence Over Pleasure

Learning to give up addictions and distractions will serve you in all areas of life because it allows you to overcome the need for immediate gratification and to start being present in life.

So many people are not present in their own lives because their reward systems have been hijacked and so they’re constantly running on autopilot.

Mastering ourselves at this level makes life much more real because we can actually be in our lives instead of in our heads.

19. One Real Conversation Can Change Everything

A real conversation can truly change your life.

This is because it asks you to show up as your real self, helps you uncover insight, and changes the trajectory of the way that you relate to yourself.

You can change your life in about an hour if you ACT on what you’ve shared and learned in that hour.

20. Emotionally Distorted Thinking

A lot of people don’t believe the truth – they believe what they want to believe because of their own underlying emotional ‘stuff’ and how it distorts their view of things (usually unconsciously).

Once you see this, you’ll see it absolutely everywhere in the world around you (which is unfortunate because the truth really will set you free – even if it pisses you off and makes you miserable first as you let go of your illusions).

21. Conscious Desires vs Unconscious Intentions

If people aren’t living in the way that they want to then it’s quite often (not always) because they have an unconscious intention that outweighs their conscious desires.

An example is that they keep saying they want to lose weight but never do:

In this case, the conscious desire is losing weight and the unconscious intention is to stay the same (because there will be some pay off like avoiding the fear of leaving the comfort zone).

22. Don’t Let Other People Define You

Absolutely everybody will have an opinion about how you should live your life but you don’t have to listen to a single one of them (though it’s often helpful to listen to the real ones).

23. Everything Goes to Plan (If You Let It)

Things ALWAYS go to plan if you have a growth mindset:

It’ can only go ‘off’ plan if you have a fixed identity and a fixed vision.

The truth is that reality is always teaching us things and we can keep growing no matter what happens.

24. You’ll Change on the Way to Your Vision

You can live the life you want but you probably won’t recognise it until you’re there.

The person you become on the way there will be different to the version of you that sets off on the journey. This is because if the journey is real then you’ll let go of anything unreal on the way.

My coaching will make you 'better' at life by helping you grow more real.

Lessons of a Life Coach: Keep it Real

Being a life coach has given me the privilege of witnessing countless transformations and undergoing my own along the way.

These lessons aren’t abstract theories; they’re grounded in real conversations, real progress, and real breakthroughs.

If you’re ready to live your own real life – free of comparison, self-deception, and stalling – and you’ve resonated with some of the things I’ve shared here then maybe it’s time to learn some new lessons together.

It all starts with a single real conversation (if you’re ready to have it then book a call with me).

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re interested in experiencing what my coaching can do for you then book a free session with me and we’ll get moving right away.

Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.

It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.

This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).

Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.