Life coach offers help for all ages

As a life coach, Dru Jackman helps adults correct mistakes they made when they were younger.

Maybe they abused credit cards and are in debt. Maybe they took jobs they weren't interested in but which paid well and are now unhappy or bored. Maybe they're simply trying to figure out their purpose in life.

"I work with adults all day long who are looking for what has meaning for them and purpose for them in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s," Jackman said. "And I love doing that. I love to help them.

"But I just can't help but think, are the tools I'm giving you now tools you could have learned earlier?"

For the last several years, she has wanted to teach life skills to high school juniors and seniors, to help them avoid many of the pitfalls she sees adults struggling to correct.

"There are some tools that we can leave high school with that can make the transition from being a school-aged child to a college-bound or military-bound or career-bound person much easier," she said.

Jackman can't guarantee an error-free future. But she does believe that she might be able to help high school students avoid some blunders.

One of the most common mistakes is filling out the credit card applications stuffed inside bags at college bookstores, she said. At first, they seem great.

"People just want to give you money," she said. "You think, I'll get a job. I'll pay this off someday.

"You don't realize how much more you're going to spend. It makes it easy to get into debt very easily."

Jackman also encounters people who feel trapped in their careers.

"A lot of us, me included, find ourselves in a job where we think, 'God, if I have to do this one more day…' [We end] up in a career that doesn't fit us for a number of different reasons," she said.

Jackman, whose first career was as a television script supervisor, speaks from experience.

"It was the industry that my parents were in, and I didn't know what to do with my life," she said.

Pursuing that career was her mother's suggestion. Jackman was a student at Northwestern University, and she felt like she had to declare a major right away. She thought she was supposed to hurry through college so she could get a job - only she didn't know what job she wanted.

"My mom said, 'Why don't you do what your dad does? It's what you know,'" she said.

Jackman agreed and got into film school. After graduation, she got a job and worked her way up to the top of the field. She was financially stable and had good benefits, but she wasn't interested in what she did.

"For me, I did it because I couldn't think of any other way that I could be financially stable," she said. "It was really the only thing that I knew - or that I thought I knew."

Jackman had developed a reputation among her friends and family as a person who could help when someone was in distress, whether that meant a little frustration or a full-blown disaster. She had always loved helping people solve their own problems.

Those friends approached Jackman and said, "We have a dare for you. Go do what you do for us, and ask people to pay you for it."

She agreed to try it for six months and became an organization consultant. At the end of six months, she was consulting almost full time. She quit her script-supervising job and devoted all of her energy to her new career.

"It was really exciting. I felt really useful," she said.

"I felt really awake. You know when you find something that you love to do? And I wasn't used to feeling like that."

Ultimately, Jackman realized what she was doing was really coaching rather than consulting. She decided to become a certified life coach, and attended the Academy for Coaching Excellence in Sacramento, Calif.

Not everyone will benefit from working one-on-one with a life coach, she said. She would be happy to work with individual high school students, but thinks they would benefit more from group work.

"It's really supportive to work with a group," she said. "They're not just hearing what another adult has to say; they're listening to each other's problems and solutions."

Jackman has done some work with Whitefish High School students. Two years ago, she did an after-school book study there.

Her students read "The Energy of Money," by Maria Nemeth. As a result of that study, one student has since opened a savings account and saved enough money to go on this year's French trip.

Jackman recently met with a handful of Whitefish students and teachers to discuss the possibility of forming a new group. The group could do the book study or could simply discuss issues and decisions students will face after high school.

After graduation, students go from a highly structured life, in which parents and teachers determine what they can and cannot do, to nearly boundless freedom. Suddenly kids have to decide what classes to take, what major to declare, what job to accept, what they want their lives to be.

"I don't think we're as prepared as we could be," she said. "I think the most important thing is letting people know that this kind of support and these kinds of tools are out there, and really all you need to do is ask for them."

Students who are interested in contacting Jackman may reach her at 862-2400. For more information, visit www.solutionsbydru.com.