I Made Someone Cry Today
I made someone cry today.
No — not in the way you might think.
We were simply sitting together, having a conversation.
Quiet.
No distractions.
Just space to think.
They had been thinking for months about what they wanted to do next in life.
Going round and round in their head.
What should I do?
Where should I go?
What comes next?
So I asked them to imagine something different.
Imagine three years have passed.
We meet by chance on the street.
And I say:
“Holy shit! I haven’t seen you in three years. What have you been up to?”
Then I let them talk.
Not from where they are today.
From three years in the future.
And something happened.
They started describing a life.
They could see where they were living.
They told me they were in Europe.
They had created an animal sanctuary.
They had kept going.
They were doing something that mattered deeply to them.
So I asked:
“Tell me about that.”
And then I asked:
“Are you married?”
She paused.
Then she said:
“Yes.”
And the tears started to flow.
Not tears of sadness.
Something else.
I asked her:
“What are those tears?”
She said:
“I can just feel what it would be like to have my animal sanctuary and be married.”
There it was.
The life she had been searching for wasn’t something she needed to invent.
It was already inside her.
She just hadn’t given herself permission to see it.
So I asked one of my most powerful questions.
And within five minutes of the session, something shifted.
She gave herself permission.
Permission to want it.
Permission to imagine it.
Permission to believe that maybe this life wasn’t some ridiculous fantasy.
Maybe it was a possibility.
And sometimes that’s what coaching really is.
Not telling someone what they should do.
Not giving them the answers.
Not creating a five-year plan.
Sometimes it’s simply creating enough space for someone to hear the answer that’s been inside them all along.
The tears weren’t the problem.
They were the evidence.
She had just met a future version of herself that she desperately wanted to become.
