Why is everyone on Instagram suddenly a life coach?

Or how my feed is full of people telling me to live my best life

I have done something weird with my Instagram feed. I now get a content that revolves around cats. Not just any cats but cats who have suffered injuries and have three legs. Or shake uncontrollably and find it difficult to eat their cat treats. Or cats who have been rescued and are feral, and the owner is carefully and sensitively bringing them back into the world of normal cats so they stop hissing and biting all the time.

I particularly like these stories about cats. I love seeing them being carefully shunted into a cat basket, getting their knotted fur brushed out (usually biting the gloved hand that tries to tackle the sticky mess on the back of their head), then seeing them sitting in a luxurious cat basket with toys, staring hatefully at their rescuer, hissing, then after maybe 6 weeks tentatively sliding one paw out and lazily pushing a ping pong ball across the floor. Gradually they get turned into friendly cats who purr and sit on laps.

These simple narratives soothe my frenzied, overthinking brain and give me hope.

Also a lot of life coaches. The slightly airy-fairy sort who don’t seem to have actually read books but are just stringing together the kind of affirmations you see on fridge magnets in the houses of certain women. Be your best self. Tomorrow starts today. Unlock your full potential. What you can dream, you can do. I often watch these reels, usually someone attractive talking direct to the phone, and read the first few captions and move back to my cat content. I feel the cat content is actually more soothing long term.

Then some days I might be feeling particularly vulnerable/have a headache and I’ll click on the link and be offered a discovery call for £500. I am not poo pooing life coaches. I know that life coaches work for many people. But these are a particular kind of life coach. The delusional kind.

The things is that there are situations out there where you have to do things that you don’t want to do because you live in a human world where money is the currency. I’ve found that many people, many women in particular, don’t tend to get to the place where they are living authentically and being their best selves every moment of the day. It’s just not possible. Life is about ups and downs and happy and sad feelings and it’s also about being pragmatic. There is always a time of the day when you have to eat the frog. I was doing park run last week and an athletic and gorgeous woman sprinted past me, a whippet on a lead running at her side. I was in awe of her. I thought she was one of the women who was a visual representation of one of these fridge magnets, then her dog hunched over and shat along the path ahead. She stopped suddenly, her arm almost jolted out of her socket and she had to hold one arm in the air to stop runners getting shit on their shoes, and with the other hand she stooped down and managed to get the poo bag wrapped around the offending material and then she ran off. Her run was slightly less jaunty and the bag knocked against her thigh as she ran. This is what life is about you see.

The pointy finger that comes down from the heavens and hands you a dog shit in a bag that you have to carry for a wee while.

Then on Instagram there are the short snippets from self-care podcasts where people talk earnestly about how they were living a lie (usually working in a 9-5) until they became their authentic selves and started eating seaweed broth and next they were running marathons and never sitting in an office or doing a zoom call at 10am. They are very smug when they say this stuff. It sounds so promising.

I love the idea of following your dreams. I have spent a lot of time following mine- writing books, getting them published (I’m not showing off but yes I am showing off because it was bloody hard to make this happen), doing podcasts, writing comedy…I don’t mean that we have to live in the trenches with no lofty ambitions at all. We don’t have to eat frogs all day long. But we need to be pragmatic. There are times when you do have to grind. When you have to also grit your teeth and try your best not to swear at the hand that life has thrown you.

Life coaches sometimes don’t seem to get this. What if you can’t do the thing you’ve always dreamed about because…you need to pay the rent? What if you have children and people relying on you to bring home the bacon? There is a certain privilege attached to being so free that you don’t need to be practical.

I've written before about how the notion of a ‘dream job’ can be unhelpful but so can the idea of a ‘dream life.’ It makes us project into the future, forget what we have going for us right now and importantly with life coaches (some) it becomes a way for them to cash in on our insecurities.

If you’re living a life right now and you don’t feel like springing out of bed each morning and high fiving yourself in the mirror…it’s okay. If you have to work in a job that sucks to make money, then it’s also okay. What else can you actually do? I don’t want to be a downer but we live in a world which doesn’t give us all limitless potential. Some of us are born with more privilege than others. I am one of these people but nonetheless I still have to work to earn money. This isn’t something to feel ashamed about.

This is why the cat content is soothing. It is also hopeful. It’s life affirming. Watch some before you do your work Zoom call. Watch some whilst you take out the bin and pick up the cat litter that has got stuck in between your toes.

Don’t feel bad about not living your best life.

Somewhere a cat is doing that for you. Rejoice in that at least.