What brought you to coaching? A question that is often asked of clients but I have always been fascinated by what brought coaches to coaching?
My own coaching journey started when I gave up my teaching job due to a breakdown brought about by bullying in the workplace. Formerely a confident person with a positive attitude, I turned into the total reverse. Friends and family found it difficult to relate to this new pessimistic person with low self-esteem and self-worth who sat in the house all of the time for fear of having to talk to people!
So how did I become a life coach helping other teachers live the life they deserve?
Well, a series of events which took place over a period of a week led me to sign up for the free 2 day coaching course in London.
1. I listened to Radio 4 and there was an interview with a life coach
2. I opened my magazine and there was an article about life coaching
3. I opened up my emails and a message from the coaching academy flashed up
Someone was trying to tell me something!
So, I enrolled as a student of The Coaching Academy and discovered that I could take control of my life and stop being a victim. One of the sentences I remember the most from one of the coaches was ‘You cannot choose what life throws at you but you can choose how you react to them’.
From that moment on I was determined to change my life around. I enrolled on the Life Coaching Diploma Diploma and started the process of moving towards living the life I wanted to live instead of burying myself away and hiding from life.
That poignant sentence turned my way of thinking and set me on a more positive route. I started to believe that I would get through this awful period in my life and be able to achieve a much better life.
I completed my diploma in November 2012 and decided that I would use my experience in teaching to set up my coaching business Teacher Life Coaching. I go into schools and deliver short group coaching sessions to the teachers to give them the awareness of what Life Coaching is all about.
Many of my clients have come to coaching by this route as well as reading the blogs I write on teacher forums.
Since setting up my business I have gained an enormous amount of satisfaction from helping members of the teaching profession cope with the pressures and demands made upon them. To support staff to continue to offer their best to their pupils and gain satisfaction from their chosen career or to plan an alternative path to take has rewarded me enormously and allowed me to realise that there is always a way forward.
One of the highlights of this transformational period in my life has been when my daughter recommended me to several of her friends as a coach and meeting them at her wedding this year. Seeing their happy smiling faces was a joy and a privilege.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
