One of my favorite hiking partners is also one of my oldest friends, in duration of friendship, not age. We’ve known each other since middle school and bonded in high school and have often marveled, in the decades since, at the durability of such an unlikely pairing.

She’s a born athlete, having done competitive gymnastics as a kid. I firmly believed my body’s sole purpose was to move my head around – both for the sake of my brain and my hair which was notably huge with length and curls in those days – until I was in my late 20s, when I started hiking.

I was trailing her up a mountain, my legs and lungs burning while she seemed to be all spring-in-her-step when she said the thing about “birthing a view,” as in, “Sure it’s painful now, but once we get to the view, it’ll be so spectacular that we’ll forget all the pain!”

That is, indeed, the nature of hiking in the mountains.

Thing is, while the view is the memorable part of the hike (and the snacks I always bring to enjoy at the summit), it’s not the meaningful part of the hike. It’s not the transformative part.

The transformative part happens when you’re on the trail, when your muscles are activated and your mind starts going all over the place during the lulls in conversation. It happens when you start wondering how far it is to the peak and try to seem curious but unconcerned when you ask hikers who are passing you on their way back down. It is during these times that we are building muscle and getting a rawer perspective of our own inner workings.

See where I’m going with this? Yeah, same thing with coaching.

The breakthroughs, the life change, the bigger and the badder – they’re the memorable parts of coaching. They are, indeed, a hell of a view.

The transformative parts happen when you start noticing that something doesn’t feel quite right. You feel stuck or frustrated or just off. It happens when you engage in conversations that challenge your way of thinking about yourself, your life, and possibility. It happens when the cussing, crying, and laughing coexist in one coaching session. It is during these times that we are building a different set of muscles, the ones that aid self-awareness, decision making, and positive change. And oh yeah, are we getting a rawer perspective of our own inner workings!

Every coach will help you navigate the discomfort. Me? I show you how to explore it, learn from it, and even find some playfulness and fun in it.

It is, after all, the rare growth experience that doesn’t come packaged with discomfort. Discovering that you can not only survive the strain but thrive in the midst of it – that you can learn to greet discomfort like a somewhat annoying friend who always brings you the most profound insights – sets you up to embrace all the growth curves ahead.

I always grumble to myself at some point during a hike. “I’m not even athletic. I should be more fit. Why do I keep doing this?” But I know I’m going to think those things and so they don’t slow me down from meeting my friend at another trailhead, and another.