Getting a personal coach can be the single most important decision in a person's life. For many, it's like having a second chance at growing up -- except they get to choose their teachers this time.

But how do you make such a choice? How do you know who will best serve you as a personal coach? Accreditation? Degrees? Gender? Age? Location?

My suggestion is this: Perspective. Let me give you an example about perspective from the world of psychology.

Somewhere during my undergrad Psychology training, I became acutely aware that my Cognitive Psychology professor thought such and such was due to X, while my Neuro-Psychology professor thought the same such and such was due to Y. Each had good reasons for what they thought. But they both couldn't be right. Could they?

I asked my Cognitive Psych prof about the discrepancies I was noticing from prof to prof, wondering what to think about it as a student of Psychology. He boiled it all down to perspective by saying:

1. Psychologists, like all people, try to make sense of life.

2. Different psychological perspectives make sense of life in different ways (e.g., Cognitive Psych is thought-based, Behavioral Psych is conditioning-based, Social Psych is relationally-based, etc.).

3. When psychology students decide how they'll make sense of life, they look at all the different psychological perspectives available, and then pick whichever one seems to make the most sense to them.

If points #1 and #2 seem solid and practical to you, while point #3 seems kind of weak and impractical (if not downright flimsy), then you're not alone. That's exactly how I felt when I first heard it. You just pick whichever perspective seems to make the most sense? Is that really how you make sense of the world?

But as time passed, and as I took more courses from more profs across different psychological perspectives, I realized my Cognitive Psychology prof was right. Each perspective has its own way of making sense of life. And not only that, I also realized that this