When I was younger, I struggled in high school for a number of reasons. My parents were going through a divorce, I was going through puberty, I got moved down from the A team to the B team on my soccer team, and I was doing poorly in school compared to what I expected. My parents are extremely smart and successful—a doctor and a nurse in the medical field. Why was school so hard for me? Everything that was going on in my life was difficult and had a harmful effect on my confidence. There is so much pressure on a teen, and it is hard to manage and be successful. It can be a negative feedback loop if things aren’t going well.

My mom took me to therapy, but I did not want to admit there was anything wrong with me. There is a stigma with therapy as a teen, and if I didn’t want to be there, it was not going to help me. I would sit in the office and not say a word for the entire hour. I was defiant and did not want to accept that there was anything wrong with me.

My mom asked me if I wanted to try out an academic life coach. I was very hesitant; I did not need a life coach, I could do everything myself. But she convinced me, and I gave it a try.

In the first 10 minutes, I realized that life coaching was not about fixing me but helping me succeed in what I wanted to succeed in. The main myth of life coaching was that there was something wrong with me and I needed to be fixed. John said to me, "Dude, there is nothing wrong with you. I am here to apply sports psychology and give you tools to make life easier for you." I was bought in, and the barriers that I had put up melted away. Our sessions began with curiosity and from a perspective of what works and what didn’t work for me, dropping any judgment of good or bad. My grades went up, and my motivation changed into a completely different form—motivation out of curiosity and enjoyment rather than away from any stress. I was living in a perspective that was not serving me; I was living in a place where I was fighting against myself.

I began to look forward to my sessions with John. I would walk out of each session with a new insight, motivation, and a rising confidence in myself and belief in myself that felt powerful and real. Looking back on this, it was everything for me as a teenager. It changed my life.

John believed in me and held space for me to challenge myself and believe in myself. That was everything. Through curiosity, John helped me tap into my love for bike riding and the bikes themselves. One session, he asked me, "Why don’t you make your own?"—a thought that never occurred to me and something that I would never have dared to have. Through discussion, we designed a project to build a kids’ carbon fiber bicycle. This became my passion and the hardest thing that I did as a teenager. I learned everything about myself and learned everything about carbon fiber and bike manufacturing.

When I applied for college, I had my top schools, my reach schools, and the schools that were my safety nets. My reach and top school was Gonzaga University, specifically for their engineering school. My passion project that I did in high school pushed me over the line and got me into Gonzaga. The coaching work that I had done with John helped me achieve my goal, but it created a space for me to succeed. Through engineering school, I achieved better grades than I did when I was in high school. In one of the hardest programs in the school, I was able to use the growth mindset that I developed.

As I was applying for my first job out of school for an aerospace manufacturing company, during the interview, my passion project of my carbon fiber bike came up. My manager told me that it pushed me over the line and was one of the reasons I was hired.

Safe to say, life coaching when I was a teenager set me on a course that was in line with my values and passions and cultivated a confidence in me that has not been broken. To know where I came from—from an insecure, negative feedback loop mindset—to where I am now, I attribute it all to coaching. I am a firm believer that the energy we put in is what we get out, and over time, those choices, actions, and decisions grow into something unimaginable. I am truly grateful for my experience as a coachee to John Williams and grateful that I have the opportunity to serve others in the same way that I was coached as a teenager.