The surprising link between personal coaching, and public safety and security

My coaching practice is part of the bigger idea to make self-actualisation, as Maslow described it, a lifestyle. After spending years on researching people’s online security and trying to find better ways to protect them from cyberattacks, I realised that the mainstream approach to cybersecurity awareness and training programs is not that effective. Simultaneously, as I got interested in life coaching, it suddenly clicked for me that we need to improve people’s psychological skills and wellbeing to create safer and more secure organisations, long-term.

The fact there are thousands of cyberattacks carried out around the globe every second is because

of two reasons. One, neoliberalist thinking has permeated most corners of the world by now,

incentivising monetary profit as the sole objective. Thanks to modern computing technologies such

as artificial intelligence, breaking into computer systems and scamming people online has become a stupendously lucrative business. The UK has been losing over a billion pounds annually since recent years to unauthorised frauds and scams, which mostly happen online. Second, entitled attitudes and lack of emotional intelligence have been fuelling geopolitical conflicts for centuries, with cyberspace as an attractive new medium to commit an offence. Common to these phenomena is they depend on people justifying nefarious actions through their beliefs. With modern psychological science and professional coaching practices, however, we are better equipped than ever before at understanding and preventing such transgressions from, in the worst case, culminating into international conflicts. Academic studies show what methods help people process traumatic life events, how to reflect on one’s beliefs and discover our true potential. Just not everyone has access to this knowledge or fully explored these methods yet.

Given this context, I have a low-key dream to build a venture that creates coaching and psychology-based lifestyle products that train people in self-reflection, defining and (re-)evaluating their life goals and values, holding oneself accountable and emotion management. In-person coaching and other therapeutic activities are then offered as part of a premium wellbeing members club in popular urban spaces. I believe life coaching and other mental therapeutic practices with real human specialists will be regarded as crafts and therefore survive as premium services in our technology-ridden future. Organisations seeking to protect their people better will realise that investing in human resilience this way will be essential. This is what my company Inzenity will be about.