I Hired a ‘Strategic Thought Partner’ For a Month. Here’s What I Learned.
The Fluff Merchants and Their Gobbledygook
Right. Let’s have this out.
I’ve stumbled into the online world of Mindset & Mindfulness Coaching, and it’s given me a powerful urge to stick my head in a bucket of cold water. I’m convinced half these people are just fluff merchants, selling scented candles for the soul with words that sound impressive but mean precisely fuck all.
I’m not talking about proper therapists or counselors who’ve trained for years and actually help people with genuine mental health struggles. I mean the weekend-certificate brigade flogging “transformation” to people who mostly just need a job that pays better or a bit of practical support.
The Jargon Dictionary of Drivel
Take “strategic thought partner.” What the fuck does that even mean? It sounds like someone you pay to sit there and nod whilst you think. In my day, that was called a mate in the pub, and he’d at least buy his own pint. Now it’s a job title.
And don’t get me started on “unlock your leadership potential.” It makes you sound like a bloody door. My “leadership potential” was unlocked at age nine, telling my brother Peter which garden shed we were going to break into next. We didn’t need a webinar for it.
Then there’s “boost emotional resilience.” This one really gets my goat. We grew up in Port Tennant with no money and parents who were largely absent. You learned resilience when you got a clout round the ear from a copper for trying to break into a phone box, or when your only guaranteed meal was a free school dinner. You didn’t “boost” it through affirmations and vision boards.
The Difference Between Help and Hokum
I’m not saying everyone should have to grow up hard to develop resilience, and I’m certainly not romanticising poverty. Some people face genuine mental health challenges that aren’t solved by just “getting on with it.” But there’s a difference between needing real psychological help and being sold expensive jargon by someone whose main qualification is a slick website.
This “deep mindset work” they bang on about? When it’s legitimate, it’s called therapy, and it’s done by qualified professionals. When it’s sold by lifestyle coaches, it’s often just repackaged common sense with a £200 price tag. It’s like calling a cup of tea a “hot leaf-based mindset beverage.” It’s pretentious nonsense.
The Pseudoscience Brigade
And God help us all from the “ANLP-registered NLP practice.” Neuro-Linguistic Programming is basically pseudoscience dressed up in science-y jargon, but with a shiny “registered” sticker slapped on to make it look official. They promise to “use NLP tools for real change,” which translates to waving a magic wand of acronyms and hoping you don’t notice the emperor’s got no clothes. It’s all about “rewiring self-talk and confidence,” which means repeating nice phrases to yourself until you half believe them. It’s emotional wallpaper – just paste over the damp and hope it doesn’t peel off.
Then there’s their golden goose: Imposter Syndrome. It’s the perfect, convenient universal hook. Everyone feels like a fraud sometimes, so they’ll all think they need to pay someone to fix it. Never mind that imposter syndrome is often just your brain correctly recognising that you’re still learning – apparently that’s now a condition requiring expensive intervention. It’s a genius racket.
The Bottom Line
These phrases are the linguistic equivalent of a Pot Noodle – all flashy packaging, artificial flavouring, and no real substance. They’re designed to make simple, common-sense ideas sound like complex, proprietary secrets you have to pay to learn, often from someone whose top Life-Coaching credential is a certificate they printed at home after a weekend course.
Life is hard, messy, and often unfair. Sometimes you need genuine professional help to deal with trauma, depression, or anxiety. But you don’t need to “unlock your potential” with a jargon-coated key sold by someone whose main skill is marketing themselves. You need honest work, decent pay, people who give a damn about you, and occasionally the confidence to tell a charlatan to piss off. It’s not that complicated.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do some deep, strategic work on my emotional resilience by shouting at a sparrow on the bird feeder. The little bastard’s hogging all the seed.
This article was first published on my blog, Cats and Birds and Stuff.