Jay Leno told a life coach joke on his March 21, 2006 show.

Jay Leno:  "According to "Jane" magazine, the latest thing for 20-something women now, is life coaches. They pay them up to $500 a month to talk to them about their careers, self-esteem, and relationships. They had these when we were kids. They were called friends!"

Way to go Jay. You used the inaccurate Hollywood perception of Life Coaching and made a funny joke about it. I laughed too. We encourage any mention of life coaching whether accurate or not.

Friends cannot provide the clear, objective, non-biased trained mirror reflection of others that a true life can. In fact most reputable coach training almost insists that life coaches NOT coach their relatives, loved ones, or close friends, because their preconceived, skewed perceptions will heavily cloud objective observations and cause judgments and evaluations to enter the picture.

True life coaches are trained and experienced to ask the right questions to seek and discover the inner truths about their clients without any preconceived influences. This way a true-life coach will be able to reflect (mirror) back to their clients the clear truths of their passions, priorities and values without judgments or strings. Their clients can use their newly discovered understandings of themselves to achieve their coachable goals on their terms and to the fullest.

Friends, as much as they might mean well, are hampered by many different strings, and misconceptions to be able to provide objective honest reflections to their own friends. For example, a close friend of over 20 years who lives close by and regularly enjoys a person’s personal physical friendship would have a personal stake in whether their friend might want to move away to a new life. Their long time personal friendship would most likely be jeopardized. The friend (acting as a life coach) would have a strong incentive to either discourage the recognition of the truth, that their friend might want to move, or would lobby against the move in favor of keeping the friendship. A true life coach would bring none of those obstacles to the discovery and life improving changes of their clients.

Jay, keep telling life coaching jokes.  Sooner or later you will get it right.