Pursuing Passion: Life coach helps turn daily grind to gold

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By Celene Adams

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“[O]ne must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower,” wrote Danish author Hans Christian Anderson─a list to which Sabine Starr might add an Alfa Romeo in Italian Racing Red and a pink patent leather purse.

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The Mission Hills, San Diego, life coach owns and takes great pleasure in both such colorful baubles, because they represent the vitality she’s finally found in life and that she aims to help her clients find, too.

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“Six years ago, I was working 80-plus hours a week in Vienna as a psychologist,” Starr explains. “I loved the work, but it was really draining. Psychological work is very problem oriented. It’s focused on the problem and the symptom, and people are usually really suffering. So pain is the motivation.”

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Starr knew that, although she’d studied and trained for years to earn her credentials, first completing a degree at the University of Vienna, followed by hundreds of internship hours, co-editorship at the Journal of Psychology of the Austrian Association of Psychologists, and a full roster of patients in Vienna, “something was missing.”

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So, determining to take time out, she hiked the Camino de Santiago—a route that runs from France to northwestern Spain through the Pyrennes mountains. It’s a sojourn thousands have undertaken since the beginning of the 10th century—some for religious reasons, others just to clear their heads. And after the five-week, 500-mile trek, Starr found herself looking at life with new perspective.

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“Everything I thought was important before I left just kind of fell away,” she says. “I had new priorities.”

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The first was to take better care of herself. “I knew I couldn’t continue working as I was,” Starr says.

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The second was to focus on the present. Instead of trying to resolve problems by analyzing the past, as her psychological training had oriented her to do, she would help people pursue their passions and turn the daily grind to gold.

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At the time, Starr was herself experiencing just such an alchemical transformation. Because, not only had she found new direction on the Camino de Santiago, she’d also found love.

 

It’s said that love conquers all. But after moving to San Diego to marry, Starr learned her Austrian credentials didn’t qualify her to practice in the U.S. Unable to envision going back to school and re-doing thousands of internship hours, she began to grieve the loss of her profession, and, coupled with the challenge of adjusting to marriage and a foreign culture, her life might easily have lost its nascent luster.

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“Then I heard about life coaching,” she says.

The International Coach Federation, a non-profit credentialing association, defines life coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” Rather than revisiting clients’ past traumas, as psychologists do, however, life coaches are proactive and action-oriented. The process is less about assessment and analysis than about learning practical tools for progress. Consequently, life coaching is “for fully functioning people─never for people dealing with psychological disorders,” Starr says.

The profession isn’t regulated, but Starr wanted to become certified, so she investigated several training institutes and found herself especially drawn to one that uses a “life-fulfillment model”─an approach that emphasizes cultivating empowerment over treating pain.

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“It was what I’d been missing,” she says. “Fixing problems is one thing, but life is meant to be more than [lack of] problems. … How to create a really fabulous life, how to feel alive, how to show up for life and be present and be inspired─that’s [fulfillment].”

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After completing a one-week, in-person training, followed by several months of tele-classes and working with a personal life coach herself─Starr developed the philosophy that now informs her approach with clients.

“[I realized that] the moment I was willing to do something for my life, for me, to better my life, I was highly rewarded. Willingness is all it takes. The only thing clients need is to be willing to look [inside] and to show up for their own life,” she says.

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­­­The concept was new for the self-described “peace keeper.”

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“We all have certain roles in our family,” she explains, reflecting upon why it at first felt so unnatural to pay attention to herself. “[Growing up,] I got really good at sensing people’s moods. My mom was…depressed for a long time. … So I always tried [to cheer her up].”

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Starr had long felt responsible for her mother’s feelings at the expense of her own, and she’d perpetuated such caretaking in her work as a psychologist. But, ultimately, always looking out for others had depleted her energy and rendered her ill-equipped to give herself the same consideration─a habit that required practice to begin to change.

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“It took me over a year before I could meet my own commitments to my own life coach,” she recalls. “So I don’t judge my clients.”

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Instead, she says she encourages listening to one’s own “inner music,” “getting rid of all the musts and shoulds,” and “approaching what we want courageously.”  Then, “one’s whole life philosophy is different, and different things happen.”

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Indeed, “different things” have been happening for Starr ever since she began coaching. Today she offers not only one-on-one coaching but also group sessions, public speaking engagements, a radio show, a blog, a newspaper column, and, as of next year, her first book, A Better Childhood at 40. Yet she says since launching her coaching career she doesn’t feel like she’s worked “a single moment.”

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“That’s one thing I really advocate,” she says. “Often people’s goals are very chore oriented. And we can achieve a lot. But the point is, I don’t want it to be a drag. Everything goes so much more easily if we’re inspired and in charge and okay with who we are.”

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Arriving at this point can be complex or simple, time-consuming or straightforward, depending on the individual, Starr says. But regardless of circumstances, there is always a “magical moment” when the answer reveals itself, and the client “can’t be the same anymore.”

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“The paradox,” she says, “is that [the answer is] inside ourselves, but we have to go on a journey to find it.”

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Luckily, hiking 500 miles through the mountains and moving across the world isn’t always necessary. Starr employs a variety of techniques, both from her training as a psychologist and as a life coach, to empower people. Among others, these include how to: recognize “energy drains,” be they situations, places, or people; stop downward spirals of emotion and thought; free and redirect  preoccupation with the past; establish habits that culminate in reaching goals; learn to listen and hear one’s self; examine recurring unease and underlying dissatisfaction; and relinquish perfectionism for progress.

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“One of my favorite suggestions is to ask people to commit to making one mistake a day,” Starr says. “Many people are such perfectionists, and the price is very high….I take living a fabulous life very seriously, but it doesn’t have to be a drag.”

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As Anderson said, “Just living is not enough.” We also need sunshine, freedom, flowers─and perhaps a little Starr.