At the foundation of much of what counts as “self-improvement” are often implicit assumptions about what it means to improve. Self-improvement agendas commonly come with the values cooked in, in the sense that the program will not only teach you how to be a better leader, but inherently what a good leader is, how to be a better spouse, and inherently what a good spouse is. Coaching, alternatively, begins with an assumption that you know what you want the future to look like, and that you have the resources within your body and mind and life to live into that new reality. Furthermore, self-improvement resources, are commonly boiled down to a set of “best practices,” as if the work of transformation can be dictated across contexts, cultures, and situations. If self improvement programs have commonly employed a metaphor of fixed recipes and ingredients, high-quality coaching might be represented by Michelangelo’s description of chipping away at the stone until the masterpiece emerges.