Coaching has helped me transform my own life. I used to work as a lawyer in financial services, earning good money but feeling empty and burnt out. I became a lawyer because I did not know what else to do and it seemed a reasonable choice at the time. When we don’t know what our own values are, we adopt and live by the values of others.
This was what I did with my career choice and later in other areas of my life too. I chose relationships with partners who had different values and spent my free time joining in social activities that did not inspire me. This left me in a situation where my work burnt me out and my leisure time failed to give me the nurture and recovery I needed.
This way of living left me struggling with energy and mood swings. The mood swings became depression and eventually I became seriously ill with inflammatory bowel disease. I suffered from an extreme flare-up of the inflammation that left me housebound for almost two years. I lost a quarter of my body weight and suffered from constant nausea and fever. For months I could only crawl across the floor. All medication failed; I felt worn out and ready to give up. My doctor had only one option left for me: the removal of my entire colon, which would have left me with a stoma.
The prospect of losing my colon finally woke me up. I revisited what I knew about personal development and realised what I had to do. I believed in a mind-body connection and understood that my mental and emotional states were blocking my physical healing. I was in hospital when I decided to use this knowledge and started to pull myself together. I began to shift my mental focus from misery to wellbeing by meditating on health, love and joy. I created new visions and reasons to live and gave them as much power and emotion as I could. Within days my medical test results started to improve. This showed me that I was on the right track.
After I left hospital, I felt encouraged by seeing the benefits of my meditation and decided to explore what else I could achieve. I hired the best coach I could afford and started a one-year intensive coaching programme. My coach helped me rebuild my life, step by step. We examined the beliefs and world views that were holding me back and replaced them with new, positive turnarounds. Within weeks, my depression was gone. From there I was daring enough to create inspiring visions for a new life. I learnt that personal development was my highest value and that I had navigated myself into a life that did not allow me to grow in the way I yearned to deep inside. From that insight it was an easy decision to leave the corporate world and create a business that allowed me to live and breathe personal development around the clock: life coaching.
Now every day in my life feels fresh and exciting again. I feel inspired and grateful to work with clients who are passionate about taking control of their lives in the same way I did.
We can create transformation in your life too, and it does not need to involve a change of profession. The transformation happens in your mind and everything else will follow with ease and joy – and in your own time.
