What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken
A running coach ended a long relationship the same week she had three athletes prepping hard for a regional meet, and she kept every single session on schedule, calm and encouraging as always. One evening, a longtime mentee asked how she was doing, really, and she caught herself mid-answer and said, actually, not great, but I am handling it. The mentee did not lose confidence in her at all, if anything the honesty landed better than the usual polish ever did. Later that night she finally called her own former coach and said the harder, truer version out loud for the first time. Holding space for other people had never meant she stopped needing someone to hold space for her too.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Modeling a clean break instead of a coached-around ambiguity
Coaches are skilled at helping people navigate gray areas patiently, a valuable skill with clients that can work against you in your own breakup. Staying in soft contact "to keep it friendly" often just extends uncertainty. A clear, complete break, communicated plainly and held, models the same directness you would want a mentee to bring to their own hard decisions.
Coaching yourself into believing a slow, ambiguous fade is gentler than a clear ending.
Write the one sentence that states the relationship is over, and hold it rather than softening it repeatedly.
Feeling your own feelings instead of only holding space for others'
The instinct to reframe, encourage, and find the lesson can turn inward in ways that skip actually feeling the loss before moving to the takeaway. Grief deserves the same unhurried space you would give a client working through something hard. Let yourself feel sad, angry, or relieved without immediately coaching yourself out of it.
Applying your professional reframing skills to your own pain before you have felt it.
Talk to your own mentor, therapist, or trusted peer this week instead of only coaching yourself through it.
Rebuilding your own routines, not just everyone else's
You likely help others build structure for a living, but your own routines may have quietly depended on the relationship in ways you have not mapped. Rebuilding them deliberately, the way you would design a training plan for a client, is real, necessary work. Give your own life the intentional structure you would insist on for anyone you coach.
Pouring all your structuring skill into clients' lives while your own routine stays neglected.
Design one small weekly routine for yourself and follow it as consistently as you would expect from a client.
Telling real readiness from the coach's instinct to fix it fast
Coaches are trained to move people toward solutions quickly, but a relationship is not a plateau to be broken through on a set timeline. Real readiness for new connection tends to arrive quietly, alongside feeling steady again, not from an urge to have the gap resolved. Give yourself the patience you would give a client who genuinely is not ready for the next phase yet.
The instinct to appear steady for clients can compete with honestly feeling your own grief, since a coach who never looks affected may simply be performing composure rather than processing anything. Both matter, but they can run on separate tracks. Keep your public steadiness reasonable without demanding it be constant, and protect private time where the composed version of you is allowed to rest.
Name one thing, honestly
- Where have you coached yourself past a feeling instead of actually feeling it? - Who holds space for you the way you hold it for others? - What would tell you readiness is real, not just an urge to fix the gap fast?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Design one small weekly routine for yourself and follow it as consistently as you would expect from a client.