We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eli Prachar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Eli, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

I have been working in behavior analysis for five years as a behavior technician. As a person with depression, anxiety, ADHD, and C-PTSD, I have also been the recipient of a significant number of behavioral, medical, and therapeutic interventions ever since the third grade. I remember how frustrated and stuck I felt as a teen and young adult when just taking my medicine and talking about my feelings didn’t seem to help. When I became an RBT, I saw how much behavior supports could benefit not just my clients, but me as well. Whether it was developing color-coded lists for tasks, practicing coping skills for stress, learning how to navigate social interactions, or identifying the links between actions and emotions that make it possible to change a feeling through changing a response, these positive behavior supports helped my clients and I flourish in our day-to-day lives in places that medications and therapy could not. The more closely I worked with kids and teens, the more I learned how to use little behaviors to create the structure for enormous impact. As I learned these skills through experience and gained control of my behavior, actions, and thought patterns, I felt my self-esteem and motivation shoot up. I wanted to make that available to everyone, especially people like me for whom traditional ABA services would be inadequate. I talked on and off for years about wanting to start a life coaching practice where I could provide both emotional and behavioral support in a more flexible, less stringent structure than traditional therapy or ABA. In 2021 I became certified as a Community Health Worker and began attending dozens of classes and trainings to expand my understanding and abilities. In 2022, a therapist I know reached out about a client who had no motivation for therapy, but also no motivation for life, and was looking for someone to help him, “Just do something.” I agreed to talk to him, and within half an hour, he had decided he wanted to make our meetings a weekly thing. Every week, we look back at the emotions, struggles, and achievements of the week before; set measurable, attainable goals for the week ahead, and check in on what I can do to help him find his own strength and motivation. Whether that’s helping him find colleges to apply for and walking him through scholarship applications, identifying sources of anxiety and practicing coping skills, or just being a listening ear, I made sure he never felt like he was doing the work alone. From the beginning, we knew that my success would come on the day when he doesn’t need me anymore. Whatever his goals were, I provided him the resources and taught him how to do it himself, but I also acted as a leg up, doing some of the heavy lifting myself to make it easier for him to start making forward progress. When things started to work for him, I celebrated too, and when he was excited about his accomplishments, so was I. That’s when I knew I was in love with this way of working, and I wanted to make it my career.
I started up Color Wheel Coaching immediately and began working on getting my Mental Health Peer Specialist certification, as well as throwing myself into additional courses and trainings to help me build on my existing skills and experience as I learn new things and develop new ideas. I am completely enthralled with this way of approaching mental health, not strictly behavioral or emotional, not strictly therapy or coaching. It is holistic, adaptable, individualized, fun, and it works. That first meeting with that first client through my private practice was the defining moment that told me this is the pet project I wanted to work on for the rest of my life.

Eli, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a Life Coach with a background in behavior, a formal education in psychology, and multiple certifications related to physical and mental health. I offer Life Coaching services, “plus.” My sessions can take place online, in the client’s home, at their after-school event, at the nearest retro arcade, or anywhere else the client needs me. I set goals and create action plans with my clients that adapt and change as they do. I do a significant amount of the legwork to assist the client in improving their quality of life as well, whether that’s finding colleges, building resumes, habit tracking, or coming up with new coping skills. I help clients push forward, see their progress, and develop the skills they need to not need me. I also help them look back, look in, and develop the skills they need to feel comfortable with not needing me. I help teach emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and interpersonal skills. I offer nontherapeutic advice and emotional support. I make the time to learn about a client’s barriers to success and how that impacts their mood and motivation, look for ways these barriers could be broken down or built over, and check in on these things throughout their time with me. I help my clients develop skills that apply to every area of their life, not just the subjects of our action plan. Everything I do is based in published, peer-reviewed research, and I am constantly attending continuing education courses to make sure what I know is the most recent, relevant science. My approach is evidence-based, person-centered, trauma informed, and holistic. I am accessible, adaptable, affordable, and what I can do is unlike anything else.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

People have to be flexible; whether that’s being willing to be wrong, or actively seeking out new knowledge, when a Life Coach stagnates, so do their clients. A good coach will be willing to adjust their approach to meet the needs of each individual client, not just to be suited for the majority of the population that coach serves. A good coach will also be okay with realizing an approach isn’t working, and constantly works to learn new ways to tackle challenges, and new challenges to tackle. That kind of mental flexibility is what allows them to make each client feel like their sessions are unique to their needs and applicable to their lives.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I am always in the process of unlearning the idea that I am the smartest person in a room. With the experience and education I have, and with being the only life coach I know who also combines techniques and holds certifications in behavior analysis, mental health recovery, and physical health, it can be tempting to think that I know what I’m doing better than someone else could, but working in these fields has introduced me to a world of people who are better at this thing or that, or who have education and experience I could only dream of at this stage, or who display incredible talents that I am still working to develop. I have had to learn to check my ego at the door so I can appreciate the astonishing intelligence of the people around me, and learn from them so I can be better at the thing I love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.colorwheellife.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colorwheelcoaching/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/colorwheelcoaching
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliprachar/

Image Credits
Paul William Engle Photography