I am a Coach now!
“So what?!”, you may ask.
So, “I am happy” I would reply. “And I wish others to be happy as well”, I might add.
“Why would I care for that?”, you may continue.
“Because now I am ready and happy to help you too, if you want”, I would pursue, opening-up for a conversation with you.
Last month, I slightly changed my headline on LinkedIn, stating that not only I am a COACH focused on Mindset & Career, but that now I am also self-employed within MY OWN COMPANY, called Become Your Power. It was a “ballsy” move from my side, as it opened-up a series of questions and raised eyebrows, of people asking me if I have changed my career all of a sudden. I didn’t (yet 😊 or fully), but it gave me the opportunity to reconnect with friends & aquaintances that I am fond of, with whom I haven’t spoken in a long time. Most of them asked “WHY?!”, as though I am making a mistake, or as though I am giving up years of Corporate experience and struggle to get to the top of my profession, or as though I am just “another one who bites the dust”, doing a career-shift half-way through my professional life (as a sort of “mid-life crisis”).
Whooooaaaah! (Slowing down and taking a deep breath.)
I believe it all happened almost 2 years ago, during one of my regular calls with my client back then, a very thoughtful, kind, hard-working, respectful and experienced operational lead. He was my “proxy product owner”, let’s call it that: the rainmaker close to us, the consulting team. It is a rare bird in consulting to have such a client you work with, so I was and still am, forever grateful to him for the way he conducted business with us. And during that call, me as a Project Manager, had to validate a status for specific action items, which him and his team didn’t quite finish. I did as I always do: I asked why, how can I help and what is the new deadline they can deliver on. And during the conversation it somehow struck me that even though I didn’t make a big fuss about the delay (I rarely do nowadays, in my experienced version of a PM), but him and the team were scared of the impact it had and of what I might say to their boss, of the role and the position I was representing. I wasn’t planning on “rating them out” as to be blamed, oh no, not at all. But I was shocked that the main feeling they had towards me was of FEAR. Not a hard, paralyzing one, but still fear. So, a persistent line of thought popped in my head: “I am tired of people being afraid of me, because I am the PM and I am supposed to chase them all day long. I am tired of being the bad wolf. I am tired of trying to compensate by my way of being for my role in these types of projects. I want to be more like a mountain river, that people come to, to relieve their thirst.”. And my mind instantly asked me “So, what do you want to do differently?”. And the answer came simply “I want to help people. I want people to feel happy after they have interacted with me. Happy, not fearful”.
So, I decided to pursue a Psychology degree and prepare to become a Therapist. It was a long journey to go, with minimum 5 years ahead until I could call myself “ready to serve”. It was far in the future and I knew I also wanted something I can do now, some option that would allow me to start helping people feel happy now. That’s why the thought of starting a coaching school was so appealing. I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking “What if this is not it? What if it’s just another training, another thing I learn, but it doesn’t teach me how to help people? What if it’s just marketing?”. Add that on top to the fact that I was pregnant in 4 months and was about to finish that school around the time I was giving birth. Somehow it was quite “the perfect storm”, as they call it. All the anxiety in the world, the big stakes, the important choices you make in the last mile of the marathon.
I started in February 2022 and finished in July 2022, 6 months later, with the help and guidance of our cohort lead, Ana (@Ana M. Marin), whom I wish to say a humble and simple “Thank you for everything!”. I had tons of hours invested, tons of practical learning and tons of insightful sessions both as a coach and coachee. I understood quite fast that this is what I wanted to do, alongside with therapy. It just clicked for me, I had found “my calling”. And I know it, because ever since finishing school, coaching has entered all parts of my life. It was pervasive, like air. It is hard to turn it off, as it brigs so much meaning to the conversations I now have with all the people in my life. Even with the Uber driver last week, whom I asked “What does that little car hanging on top of your dashboard mean?”, and he started to tell me about his dream of having a Dodge Challenger, a restored version of the car from the 1960s.
So, yes, I am a coach. I help people become and be happy. Discover their dreams and find their inner power to reach those dreams. Choose what they want to experience next.
And even if I always strived to be different, to stand-out, to be authentic and original, I am ok with being “just another one who bites the dust”. Just another one who decides mid-life, that becoming more people oriented and shifting their career perspective towards helping others, is a path of joy and fullfillment.
What is YOUR path nowadays? What is it you are missing? What is it you are willing to do, to get it?
Share your thoughts in the comments, or give me a call, or reach out to me via private message. I am curious what YOU are up to next.
P.S.: I’ll also leave you the song link, so you can enjoy it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIbCvfkO3E.