Musicians, athletes, actors and top CEO’s all have coaches. In fact, it would be weird if we heard of a gold medal athlete at the Olympics who got to the podium without a coach.

And yet, in the world of life, they’re seen as the exception.

Part of the reason is that our lives feel like something ordinary and we only seek help for extraordinary things. Only the high achievers need coaches, and all the rest of us just figure it out on our own.

It turns out that the people with the potential to benefit the most from a coach are often the most hesitant precisely, because of what coaching involves.

• Talking about our challenges.

• Setting goals.

• Acknowledging that we can get better.

• Seeking to take responsibility for ourselves.

And yet we often make excuses and hesitate. It might be because having a coach could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And what if we acknowledge our challenges but wonder is we can succeed at overcoming them? Or maybe we feel we are just not quite ready yet, or the time is not quite right.

And so, the barriers to hiring a coach become overwhelming for many people.

Combine that with a hesitancy to ask for help and you arrive at the paradox that the very things that hold us back are the reasons we would benefit from having a coach in the first place.