Why choose a Life Coach?

In 2017, I was diagnosed with Adrenal Fatigue.  I was a working mom, working in a male-dominated corporate industry. I was doing the whole 9 to 5 thing and I thought I was styling…. That is until I ended up in High care, in hospital, connected to all these machines with a nurse to watch over me 24/7. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone!

As part of my recovery, and that’s what I am going to call it, my doctor recommended I go see a psychologist. I duly took the business card she gave me and phoned and made an appointment. A few days later, I went for my appointment and I won’t lie, it was the biggest waste of my time.

Actually, I am being unkind, it wasn’t a waste of my time but it didn’t fit for me. I am not the type of person to list all my problems, have a good cry and leave the psychologist room, feeling better. I am not the kind of person to complain and “unpack” and have a pity party for myself.

I endured a second session, hoping the second would be more fruitful than the first. I think we spent most the session just staring at each other. It wasn’t fruitful.

BUT it did drive me to doing some Googling. And in this I discovered this thing called Life Coaching. I did some research and then phoned my doctor back. I told her the psychologist visits were a disaster and what were her thoughts on Life Coaching. She just giggled at me and said she wasn’t surprised that the psychologist visits weren’t working. She actually hadn’t thought of a Life Coach and recommended I try it as it sounded like it might be a better fit.

And it was!

I knew what was wrong. I just didn’t know how to get myself from point A (adrenal fatigued) to B (the path of recovery). Life Coaching helped me to unpack these huge, daunting tasks and gently break them down into bite-sized, achievable chunks.

Every week, I was held accountable for my weekly goals. I was called out when I was making excuses rather than having legitimate reasons for not doing something. I was also given tools and homework to implement to HELP me.

I begun to understand how I functioned, why I made certain choices, why I reacted in certain ways, under certain conditions. It was like I was meeting myself for the first time.

When my program was complete, I felt I had a whole set of tools, which would help me in the future. I also understood myself better so that I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes I had made in the past. It was a game changer.

In fact, I simply told everyone they had to see a Life Coach, it had that profound an effect on my life. Little did I realise, that just two years later, having given up my corporate job, I would be sitting at my own desk, in my own office, writing this as a Certified Life Coach.

A small side note: I have since seen a different psychologist and had a very different experience. While I did not enjoy my sessions with the first one, I did enjoy my sessions with the second one. But personally, I would take Life Coaching over psychology any day because I felt like I was taking action for my own life.

I was in the driver’s seat, I had control which was possibly the biggest contributing factor to my recovery.