Every once in a while I randomly think this thought: I’m the only straight guy life coach I know. It’s very rare for me to be a minority, well, not really because I live in America, but at the same time I’m living in California and more specifically LA where there’s a lot of Koreans, so anyway I feel like a majority person most of the times but when I think of my profession it’s jarring that I’m the only straight guy life coach I know.
I know some people who are sort of in my field but not really life coaches, like my teacher David Bedrick or Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG. I remember being at my life coach school training and being the only Asian guy there, who was very obviously a straight guy (lol). All my peers and students who are coaches are females or LGBTQ.
This is interesting to me because, if you’re a straight female you have a lot of life coaching options available to you. If you’re LGBTQ you again have a lot of options available to you. But what if you’re a straight guy? I believe everyone can benefit from life coaching because everyone has a life, so what do straight guys usually turn to?
My gut answer is that they turn to men-oriented podcasts or more specific coaching on societal definitions of success in life, rather than general life coaching like me. But I was once a straight guy who got coached by a female coach and I had a very wonderful time, and most of my clients are female so the other way around works too. While I have some straight male clients, why is it so rare?
I was pondering this when I wrote the thought on Instagram. My friend Jacquie introduced me to some of her guy life coach friends and I saw their profiles. What I noted again was, “hmm everyone here is a niche coach”; the coaching provided was for men’s mental health either explicitly or implicitly. Then I got to thinking, why am I the only GENERAL life coach who’s a straight guy? It is at this point I realized I was digging myself a really specific hole and wondering why I was the only one in it.
There are female / LGBTQ general life coaches, but none of them are Buddhist. There might be another Buddhist life coach, but then I’d think why am I the only Korean Buddhist life coach? Then there might be another one and I’d think why am I the only Korean Buddhist life coach slash software engineer? So I got curious about why I wonder this in the first place.
I’m facilitating a learning program where people are discussing what their artistry in life is, and some of the conversations have pivoted to discussing their niches. Believe it or not I used to have a niche as well, I branded myself the Asian software engineering coach. At the time I believed I needed a niche because it was really hard to talk about… General problems? My certification program advocated for me to solve super specific problems but how the fuck do you solve a specific life problem… in general? ← this was the silly thought from the past Billy.
As I started promoting myself as the ASWE coach I found myself quickly getting super bored, because as you can tell from these writings I do every day… I like talking about a bunch of different shit. But having one niche made it feel like it was impossible to talk about other things (note: you definitely can). After a lot of back and forth I decided on being a general life coach because I found out hey, to solve specific problems as a general life coach you just solve one fucking problem at a time.
It’s been a while since I made that decision and now I kinda don’t care what I call myself, my work (and its copious amounts!!!) will speak for itself and let people know what to call me. When I teach my seminars and classes it usually has about up to 10 people because I like small classes; but now that I’m teaching hundreds of people I can’t help but see that the majority of the students are female / LGBTQ.
So during the normal course of the program this isn’t really noticeable, but every once in a while there will be a straight male student who participates. And for some reason they’re never vocally active, they like to chime in every once in a while. This big difference / discrepancy in behavior makes their minority status (?) more pronounced, because straight guys are usually the ones who are taking up the most space in the rest of the world.
This is also a phenomenon in my Buddhist sangha. My sangha is led by Ven. Pomnyun Sunim, a monk. The rest of the sangha are more or less “tiered” and at the governing level, or the board of directors of the sangha, there is a position called “beopsa”. While the position of “beopsa” isn’t restricted by gender it tends to be 95% female. When I go to my Buddhist events there are like… 3 guys max and I’m one of them.
This leads me to think, while the consuming, capitalist material world is progressing in a straight male oriented direction the regenerative, communal spiritual world is progressing in a female / minority oriented direction. More and more people are paying attention to ancient cultural rituals for healing (although there are claims of cultural appropriation) and more and more people are finding freedom in the ease of not needing to comply to gender norms (I especially find this happening a lot in standup comedy).
I’m doing some work for a fundraising event for Spill the Tea Cafe so I looked at some statistics around what professions have the highest percentage of LGBTQ people. What sectors would you think would have the highest percentages? Well, maybe you guessed better than me, but most of them were in service: flight attendants, baristas, and so on. But among the service industry, there was also! Mental health service provider like therapist and coaches. This whole industry is thriving because of them!
As you engage with the world in the next few months pay closer attention to who people turn to when the world situations get more and more dire. The current majority in the materialist world is going in a direction that they think is good for them. But unfortunately not everything we think is good for us is actually good for us, and what do we do when we find ourselves in a predicament? We seek help and aid.
When that time comes, are we willing to embrace the current majority with a warm embrace? Or are we going to tell them, “we told you so!”? I think we have a very big responsibility to reduce suffering in the world, but if we’re suffering because of the majority we won’t be able to reduce their suffering when they inevitably seek aid.
Guy, gal, nonbinary pal, black, Asian, indigenous, white, we are all one. When we have a bellyache the finger might not care because the finger has nothing to do with the belly. But that’s a silly way to think because we’re all part of one body. So with my reflection of my minority status today, I hope you reflect on what it means for you to be connected to the people you might be despising today.