A few days back, I was home with my daughter.
I made food for her. Made her do her homework. Then I made myself a cup of tea — hot, and a cup full.
I came back to my laptop, which was on a desk, on a stand.
While I was adjusting the viewing angle, the laptop accidentally slipped off — and it pushed the cup of tea, hot, straight into my lap.
Oh God.
Now, here’s the interesting part.
I removed my clothes and went straight into the washroom. Used the jet spray to cool it off.
The disaster — I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I saw my skin flushing off my legs.
But that was the available resource at that point in time.
And then followed the pain.
Here’s what I want to say about that moment:
Sometimes, the pain we go through makes us paranoid.
It makes us take whatever decision is in front of us. Use whatever resource is available. Not necessarily the right one — just the nearest one.
I used a jet spray on a burn because in that moment, that’s all I could think of. That’s all that was within reach.
But in contrary — if there was someone with me:
They might have gotten water in a container instead.
They might have given me an ointment.
They might have known exactly what a burn needs, because they weren’t the one in pain.
They would have seen a different picture.
This relates exactly to coaching. Especially NLP coaching.
When you’re going through a certain phase — a certain pain in life — you are the one in the moment. You are the one reacting. You reach for whatever is closest, whatever feels urgent, whatever seems to make the pain stop right now.
But you’re not always reaching for what actually helps.
You’re reaching for what’s available. Not necessarily what’s right.
This is exactly what a coach does.
A coach isn’t in the pain with you.
They see a different picture — not because they don’t care, but because they’re not flooded by the same panic, the same urgency, the same instinct to grab the nearest thing and hope it works.
A coach sees the resources you can’t see, because you’re too close to the burn.
Think about how often this happens in life:
- You’re in a painful relationship, and you reach for distraction — when what you actually need is a real conversation.
- You’re overwhelmed at work, and you reach for more hours — when what you actually need is better boundaries.
- You’re hurting from a loss, and you reach for numbness — when what you actually need is space to actually feel it.
In the moment, it feels like the right resource. Because it’s the only one you can see.
The jet spray wasn’t wrong because I was careless.
It was wrong because pain narrows your vision. It puts you in survival mode, not strategy mode.
And survival mode grabs whatever’s closest — not whatever’s best.
This is why we need someone outside our own pain.
Not to fix it for us. Not to take over.
But to say: Here’s a resource you didn’t think of. Here’s a different way to look at this. Here’s what might actually help, instead of just what’s within reach.
That’s coaching, in its simplest form.
Not solving your problem.
Showing you the resources your own pain was too loud to let you see.
To anyone in pain right now, making decisions in the middle of it:
Pause, if you can.
Ask yourself: Am I reaching for what actually helps? Or just for what’s nearest?
And if you can’t tell the difference — that’s exactly when you need someone else’s eyes on the situation.
Not because you’re weak.
But because pain has a way of narrowing the room down to whatever’s right in front of you.
And sometimes, the right resource is standing just outside that room — waiting for you to ask.