How Coaching has helped me - Morgan Nichols

I started Life Coaching because I was confused, confused about how to get out of my dead-end job, confused about my next step to becoming self-employed and financially free and most of all, confused about which of my many interests to focus on. One of the most useful things I learned through being coached was that I didn't have to focus so much.

Focusing is one way people achieve success but it's not the only way. It was only one of my many 'a-ha' moments in my process where I discovered that my way could be just right for me. What a relief! I had spent years trying on various jobs either because I was presented with them, or I saw them as a stepping stone to something else. 

The problem was, I had been working for years and was stuck in debt and a job that didn't inspire me. I was underpaid for my skills and experience. My coach helped me to discover that I had been going about things with an external frame of reference. I needed to re-connect with what made me tick, and investigate what kind of work could satisfy my needs and values. 

During the course of my coaching this changed from having a holistic business to returning to my lifelong love, writing, as well as building on my yoga teaching. I learned how to not only set goals but to engage with them, transforming goals from "shoulds" to "want to's". I learned techniques of neuro-linguistic programming to transform the way that I visualised my life, and to deal with fear of failure. I discovered that I am by nature a multi-tasker and can make that work for me rather than trying to follow others' moulds.

Once I liberated myself from the mentality of "I have to write x pages a day or I won't be a success", I could see opportunities that had been closed to me. My positive projection began to attract people and resources that could help me reach my goals. For example, I was asked to appear on radio shows to perform my poetry, and one of my poems was accepted for publication in an anthology. 

Meanwhile, even at my "dead-end" job I was given an opportunity in line with my broader goals of serving society: I began to supervise less experienced members of staff, thereby getting a chance to apply some of my counselling training. An unexpected pregnancy came just at the time when I was looking for another job. While I had always wanted to be a mother someday, I had ruled out being ready for it at this stage - I wasn't financially well-off enough, I hadn't established my career, and so on. This could have been a serious spanner in the works, but in fact it gave me a welcome break to re-evaluate my career and where it was going.

I realised during my pregnancy that I wanted to create work that fitted around my life, not the other way round. I stopped working two months before my due date and used this time to rest as well as write, plan projects and await the next phase of my life.

Looking back on it, I can hardly believe that I came from such a stuck point; from being unable to sense and trust my own direction, to being motivated and sure of my path (even the many unpredictable twists and turns on that path!).

Within the space of 8 months, I qualified as a yoga teacher, had work published in literary magazines, made radio and live performances as a poet, finished the first draft of my novel, started a successful mother-and-baby yoga class, and started to get back into freelance writing. And the biggest creation of all: giving birth to my beautiful son. The best thing is that all of this was without driving myself on mercilessly, as I used to do. I have enjoyed the process and not just the results.