My Coach Showed me the Light

By Peter Luckey

January 7, 2026

Have you ever had an “aha” moment when you’ve wondered, “why didn’t I see this before?”

It’s that second when, lost in the dark, your coach shows you the light.

I was freaking out. A three-hour qualifying exam to become a  Professional Certified Coach loomed before me. At night, I tossed. I turned.

Sleep evaded me. Memories of test taking in my youth buzzed through my brain, like annoying mosquitoes. The more I swatted them away the more they got under my skin.

“Peter, what do you want to work on?” my coach asked me.

“I am anxious about the exam. When I try to stomp out my worry, it keeps coming back like whack a mole.”

While I groped in the dark, my coach held my hand. She placed my fingers on the light switch, labeled with two words: What If?

Cue John Lennon’s song, Imagine, what if there is no more war? What if we all lived together in peace and harmony? What if….

Lennon’s point: you have to imagine something before you can have it.

When my coach finished the “What if?” sentence scales fell from my eyes. I saw what was hiding in plain sight. It was one word: curiosity.

What if I approached the exam with a spirit of curiosity? What if I read  the seventy-eight coaching scenarios with this thought: “won’t it be interesting to guess what the exam creators---The international Coaching Federation---think are the best (and worse) choices” to the question of “what should the coach do?

“Tell me about a time in your life, Peter, when you were completely absorbed in curiosity?” the coach asked.

Without missing a beat, I said, “When I am casting a fly rod on a clear mountain stream. I can think of nothing else, but what could be hiding under the pink quartz rock.”

“What if you searched for the answers on this exam the way you search for trout?” she asked.

I paused. I saw the uncovered truth.

On the morning of the test, I emptied my pockets in front of the proctor---handing over my comb, unbuckling my watch. After one last trip to the bathroom, I walked into my moment of reckoning as if I were wading into a gin clear trout stream. “Stay curious.” I whispered to myself.

Three hours later the ordeal was over, watch and comb returned. The proctor placed a folded over---and fretted over---paper fresh off the printer into my hands.

“Pass” it read. I was giddy. I yelled and screamed in the test center parking lot.

However, I knew that the real victory occurred the week before with my coach. It was my “aha” moment, the moment I realized I could banish my anxiety by replacing it with my curiosity.

My coach showed me the light. Now it’s my turn to shine the light for others.