So what's my story
What have been the key moments that have shaped my life’s journey?
There have been a number of key events, both personally and professionally, that I have faced in my life that have shaped me as a person and led to where I am today.
My first was when I went through a divorce in my early 20’s, resulting in a loss of self-confidence and a number of friendships. I had to rebuild my life and try to decide what direction I wanted to go in, both personally and professionally.
My second was when I was widowed at the age of 38, with 2 children under 6 years old. After a bereavement such as this, your perspective on life changes and all the things you deemed important previously get re-evaluated. I found myself reassessing my career, my personal goals and where I wanted me and the children to be long term.
My third was when I came to the realisation that despite a long and successful career in the Finance Sector, I needed more. I started to assess what I wanted from my professional life, but I wasn’t sure what my new career looked like.
It has not been an easy journey through life, but I consider myself blessed to be where I am now, with so many life experiences that have helped shape the person I have become.
Why did I decide to train as a life coach?
After a 30 year career working in the finance sector I felt I had stagnated in my role and was starting to suffer from the pressure I was under. My health was suffering, and I was approaching burnout. I knew I needed to take my career in a new direction for the sake of my own wellbeing.
Over the years I had come to the realisation that I loved developing people and seeing them going on to achieve their career goals. I had the opportunity to be a mentor on a number of occasions and had dabbled in coaching not really understanding what it was truly all about.
I felt a real need to move towards a role that would allow me to support people’s development. I was lucky enough to be offered the option of taking redundancy due to a location strategy change and I saw this as my opportunity to develop my interest in people.
I saw an advert for free introductory Life Coaching training with The Coaching Academy so I went along and I was hooked within the first hour of the course. I knew this was what I wanted to do and enrolled on the Life Coaching Diploma course 2 days later. The rest, as they say, is history!
What motivates me to be a life coach?
There have been times in my personal life and professional career that I have found myself at a crossroads, not sure which direction to take and it was not clear what I actually wanted to achieve. I now wish I’d had a life coach available to me during those pivotal moments to support me, raise my awareness of what I really wanted in life and how to make that positive change to my new future.
I made the changes I wanted to make in life through sheer determination, but I have no doubt that a life coach would have made that process much easier and certainly much quicker!