Interview with Kim Moore at Zele Cafe with Michael Conniff with Aspenpost.net 

Kim Moore, Carmela Tafoya, Michael Conniff

Michael Conniff: How did you get started with personal coaching?

Kim Moore: I was a counselor at CMC [Colorado Mountain College], and the climbing professor—the outdoor education director—said: “You need to meet this woman who helps people live the life of their dreams.” I said take me there now. What a great job! It brings together academics, career, professional.

MC: Why is counseling not enough?

KM: Because you have a certain template in school—these are the classes you can take, these are the careers. That wasn’t enough. So much more that goes into it.

MC: Like what?

KM: Action and accountability.

Carmela Tafoya: Our counseling model today isn’t about giving a people a method and strategy for their lives. It’s just talking about the problems. Just more and more problems.

KM: They get to justify their problem. “Every time I start dating something new, they end up taking advantage of me.” They’re re-living it.

CT: They model about what you don’t want and what doesn’t feel good. It’s a psychotherapy model. You have to ignore those things and focus. I’m a proponent of psychotherapy. I mean even Freud. But more Jung. That’s fine for a particular point for particular things, but there’s so much beyond that. They need someone to look at the broad spectrum of their lives.

KM: People are tired of coming up with it themselves.

CT: They need an action plan.

MC: What’s your training for this?

KM: I was trained in counseling with a master’s degree in counselor education. It was mental health counseling. Coaching is more functional. If people really had a psychological problem, I’d ask them to get therapy.

CT: I think it’s borderline—I’d do that if it’s more medically or mentally determined. What coaches do is also borderline—it crosses borders when you feel more comfortable with the individual. I go to a counselor, a psychotherapist. There’s not a stigma around it.

KM: Tiger Woods has a coach.

MC: So where do you start with someone?

KM: I ask them: “Where are you and where do you want to be.” Where have you been that’s less relevant. It’s the idea of “so what?”

CT: The past is past. Leave it there.

MC: Isn’t there a danger in that?

KM: In ignoring the past? The patterns emerge anyway. Where you were is always present. An example of that is myself with Carmela.

MC: Your own personal coach. You’re a coach with a coach.

CT: My specialty is exercise, nutrition, quality of life.

KM: The pattern for me is lack of consistency. I always get great results in a very short time in whatever I’m striving for. Then it just goes away and I don’t notice. I forget all about that. Because I’d rather eat, drink, and be merry. It doesn’t serve me because I end up not as happy as I could be with being in my body—it affects it all. I don’t even want to have sex. I don’t walk in and out of the room the same way. That’s the weird thing.