The Lifestyle Experts - SBS Documentary- Episode 2

The Lifestyle Experts

Episode 2: The Life Coach

Episode 2 of The Lifestyle Experts follows two very different women as they attempt to reshape their lives with a Life Coach.

22 year old new wife and mother Grace Lee is juggling sleepless nights with her month-old baby and a desire to launch a fashion label. How can she possibly do it all?

Dianne Burton, in her ‘40’s, is a team leader for a large corporation. Her work is very demanding and, so she says, her ‘personal life stinks’. Only six months into her third marriage, she’s already worried she’s not devoting enough time to her relationship with husband Jon. Is she about to repeat past mistakes for which she has paid dearly?

Over an intense three month period, we follow both Grace and Di being life coached by Poppy Pavlides, a vivacious and highly focused Greek-Cypriot Australian.

Poppy inspires her clients with her own story: how, against the odds, she has broken away from the traditional path expected of her by her culture, back when she was a ‘fat, ugly, hairy teenager’, and charted her own road to personal success.

Poppy believes life coaching is as much about spiritual and emotional growth as it is financial rewards.

We follow Grace and Di as they undertake their journeys of self-discovery with Poppy, each attempting to set and achieve goals whilst Poppy cracks the whip and ensures there’s no backsliding.

In Grace’s case it is her mother, Christine who first suggests she needs a life coach. Chinese-Malaysian born Christine is worried her daughter lacks focus and direction. Grace’s fashion design dreams are perhaps not what Christine had in mind, but nevertheless Grace sets out, with Poppy’s help, towards her first big fashion show at a suburban nightclub. And at the same time Grace, a committed Christian, gets coaching from Poppy in improving her relationship with God.

Meanwhile, Poppy is trying to get the overworked Di to inject more fun into her relationship with Jon, even setting weekly targets for her sex life! But Di has some personal demons from the past to confront, as we discover the lingering pain behind the reasons she moved interstate from her first husband, severing ties with her three young children.

We are privy to the intimate one-on-one coaching sessions between Poppy and both Di and Grace, and observe Poppy’s probing coaching style, in scenes that explore the boundaries between life coaching and therapy.

As Grace scrambles to get ready for her fashion show, there seems to be glimmer of hope for Jon as Di achieves a breakthrough with Poppy.

In the end, Grace and Di reflect upon their experience of being life coached by Poppy, and the difference they observe in their lives.

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