Why I decided to become a coach
Fun fact: When I started writing this blog, I hadn’t actually thought about why I made the decision to get into life and career coaching. However, the process of thinking and writing about it helped me figure out the many reasons I’m now offering this as part of my services to purpose-driven, growth-minded people around the world.
Working for myself is what I’ve always wanted to do
My very first job was running my own business teaching the flute to school kids. It was a brilliant first job: highly flexible, great pay, and not too many hours. I enjoyed the 1:1 aspect, the fact I could own my schedule, and everything I learned along the way about how to budget, relationship building, communication, and of course seeing my students make progress and find joy along the way.
Later in life, after less entrepreneurial jobs, I found myself unemployed for a period of time after moving countries, and found myself drifting towards working for myself again. I started proofreading, editing and writing, but never quite found enough work to make a living out of it full time. Then, I moved to New Zealand and started my first full time writing job and all my own stuff was sidelined.
I seem to always gravitate towards doing my own thing. I love collaborating and working with others, but I love independence and the freedom to get on with things. Recently, I realised that I could combine coaching with my background in writing and digital marketing to work entirely for myself.
I’d been freelancing for the best part of a decade on the side of other part time/full time work, but never actually committed to it 100%.
It was time I committed to myself and took the plunge.
I experienced the benefits of coaching first-hand
For years I’d gone through life highly independent and refusing to ask for help. But in 2020 I reached a point where I realised I needed some guidance with my career. A former colleague of mine was offering some pro bono coaching sessions so I volunteered to participate and while I probably wasn’t at the point of being self-aware enough to understand what I was going through at the time, it did eventually help open up my eyes to things like the fact I had a very loud inner critic.
Since then, I’ve participated in several other programmes as a coachee, including Vibrant Frog’s Action on Purpose programme, which introduced me to goal setting, neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and the power of positive psychology, Powrsuit’s Challenge Cohort that involved group coaching related to leadership, and received coaching from fellow members of my Thought Coach training course cohort.
I love being challenged to approach something differently, what coaching has allowed me to realise about myself, and how it’s helped me manage things like my fear of uncertainty, overcoming my inner critic, building better habits, growing my confidence, making decisions, and fostering closer relationships.
I want to use my experience to help others
Alright, it’s going to get personal here!
Despite having an incredibly privileged life in Australia, the UK and New Zealand, I’ve been through a few tough times in my 34 years.
I lost my dad to cancer when I was 20, which profoundly impacted my life trajectory, values, mental health, and outlook on the world.
About 7 years ago I ended a long-term relationship, quit a job I thought I’d be in for the rest of my life and moved to the other side of the world (the best decision I could have made, as it turned out, but one that rocked my world for a while until I got back on my feet).
I’ve experienced toxic relationships, friendships and workplaces that have severely dented my confidence.
I’ve changed careers twice, moved abroad and started from scratch multiple times, and experienced the loneliness and isolation that can come with expat life.
I was your classic high achiever at school: academic, musical, and a competitive athlete. While on the surface I probably seemed like your model student, in reality I struggled with anxiety that manifested physically for years as a result of feeling the constant pressure to perform and achieve, something that persisted well into adulthood and that I’ve only recently overcome.
I’ve struggled with my mental health generally since I was a teenager - sometimes in crippling ways, and others in more manageable, but ever-present ones.
Yet I keep bouncing back, setting myself new challenges, and changing my life for the better. I choose not to see these things as crutches or let them define me as a person, as hard as they were to go through at the time and as much as they have impacted my life. I prefer to view them as a reminder that I can go through hard things and come out the other side with more wisdom and empathy.
Part of the reason I love coaching is so much is that I have a strong desire to help others get through those tough times as well, and see them as opportunities for growth rather than experiences that define them.
The catalyst
The immediate catalyst for my decision to become a coach was experiencing burnout in 2023.
I spontaneously signed up for a coaching training course. When I ended up leaving my job and taking four months off work to recover, I found the coaching to be something I enjoyed a lot, and began to see it as a possible alternative career path.
Taking time off work gave me time to think about what I really wanted to do. At the time I left my job, I’d been gearing up to level up my career and start going for senior leadership roles as plenty of people were telling me I should do.
But what I really wanted was to go out on my own. If this wasn’t the time, then when was?
In a nutshell, I found my way to coaching because I had experienced how amazing it can be, and I wanted to use my knowledge and life experience to help others dream big, achieve their goals, and navigate their way through tough times.
Note on images: All the images in this blog post are my own, taken from trips around Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia and Hawaii.