Why Our Best Clients Don’t Always Take Our Advice
- Coach Katie
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
It sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it? As coaches and guides, our role is to offer frameworks, insights, and proven strategies designed to help you clarify your path and create lasting change. Naturally, we expect our clients to take this wisdom and apply it.
But here’s a secret truth we hold at Align+Clear: We love it when our best clients choose to ignore us.
It’s usually a moment of victory. When a client, especially one who is deeply engaged and committed to the work, listens to carefully considered guidance and then consciously chooses a different path, we know we’ve succeeded. Because our true mission is to cultivate leaders of their own lives.
The Ultimate Empowerment: Choosing Your Own Way
The core of our work, which blends mental health frameworks with mystical insight, isn’t about prescriptive answers. We don't hand out blueprints for your life. Instead, we provide tools (the compass, the map-reading skills, and the flashlight!) to navigate your own territory.
This commitment to empowerment means that the advice we give is always delivered with the understanding that our clients are the ultimate decision-maker. We are guides, not commanders. A client who feels powerful enough to say, "I hear you, and I see the logic, but my gut is pulling me here instead," is a client who has truly internalized the essence of alignment. They are no longer seeking external validation or direction, they are accessing the unwavering wisdom within.
Is It About Bad Advice?
If our advice is well-researched, compassionate, and based on years of successful coaching, why would it fall flat? The answer is actually pretty simple: We can only see what’s within the scope of the conversation.
Our advice isn't necessarily bad, but it can be misaligned with the client’s current frame of mind or a situation that exists beyond the time we've spent together. Our suggested action might be logically sound, but it fails to account for unexpressed emotional shifts, subtle fears that haven't surfaced yet, or complicated external factors that we simply didn't discuss.
The client, however, holds all the variables. They are the only ones privy to the full, energetic snapshot of their present reality. They know the subtle hesitation in their spirit, the familial obligation weighing on them, or the flicker of inspiration that contradicts the logical next step. Their intuition is a sophisticated algorithm that processes 100% of the data: past, present, emotional, and external. Sometimes, our advice only accounts for 80%. When they reject our suggestion, they're honoring the 20% we missed.
The True Win: Energetic Alignment
We often talk about the power of energetic alignment, and this is where a client’s conscious rejection of our advice becomes a true cause for celebration. Energetic alignment is about syncing your actions with your deepest values, your core truth, and the path that feels expansive, not constrictive. When a client follows their intuition, even if it seems like a risk or a deviation from the plan we co-created, they are prioritizing this alignment above all else. They are staying true to what really matters. They are saying, "The comfort of my own knowing is more important than the certainty of external advice."
That self-trust is the only sustainable engine for long-term growth. If you only succeed by following someone else’s instructions, what happens when the coach leaves? Our goal is to make ourselves redundant: to amplify your inner voice until it’s the loudest, clearest guide you have. When you follow that voice, you are proving that the coaching has worked.
The Gift of Feedback and Deeper Connection
Finally, there is an invaluable learning loop that occurs every time a client explains why they chose a different route.
"I hear you on the boundary-setting script, but I tried it and it felt inauthentic. I decided to tell my boss this instead..." This is a gift. This feedback gives us more insight into the client perspective and their unique emotional landscape than any successful implementation ever could.
It reveals the subtle nuances of their communication style, their core fears, or the exact phrasing that triggers their resistance. It’s personalized data that helps us refine our approach, improve our guidance for future sessions, and, most importantly, deepen the relationship. It transforms the dynamic from teacher-student to true partners in discovery.
At the end of the day, our measure of success is courage over compliance. So if our advice doesn’t land with the force of truth in your soul, thank us, and then ignore us. ♥️ Go with your gut. That's the highest form of success you can achieve, and we’ll be here to cheer you on as you step into your own clear, beautiful alignment.