Leadership and Professional Coaching
“Change is inevitable. GROWTH is optional.”
-John C. Maxwell
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?”
— Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
With great change comes great opportunity.
“For everything there is a season,” a friend told me as we pushed strollers through the neighborhood. I had just moved back to Washington State with a 6-week-old baby after living in the New York Metro Area for four years. Every single day, I held my daughter, read child development books, and tried to ignore the voice that told me I’d never get a job again. My life had moved fast living on the East Coast; a life that included a demanding job, business school at night, planning a long-distance wedding and constant travel for work and fun. That is until September 11, 2001. I had just returned the night before from a work and family trip to Seattle. It was a before and after for me, as it was for so many. I could have continued climbing the corporate ladder, after all I was a few months away from my graduate degree, but the weeks after that day changed me profoundly and a transition was required. I had to let go of so much of who I was in order to reach for this unknown part of myself. I had to trust my own voice that it was time to make a big change.
Professional coaching is about learning to trust your internal knowing, your intuition, because the boundaries between work life and personal life have become so blurred it’s getting harder to know where one ends and the other begins. It was easy for me, relatively speaking, to be All-in when I was a young corporate professional. The layers of life hadn’t needed to be integrated quite yet. Through all the transitions though, the times where those layers were added and then subtracted, I have come to a place of gratitude for these seasons, but also recognize the value of alignment of both my personal and professional purpose, values, and intentions. One can be very successful by being All-in within one domain of life, and I would argue that it can be a requirement to launch something new like starting your career, family, or business. It can also be true that one can be successful stepping back and prioritizing life’s joys and responsibilities and setting intentions in a way that incorporates many domains of life. The idea that we have a work and personal life is not relevant anymore, we have one life. Coaching can help you identify your passions, values, and purpose in a way that incorporates what is most important to you right now, aligning your increasing or decreasing roles and responsibilities. It is looking at your skills, strengths, and values, and developing a personal strategic plan that is based on your highest life intentions.
When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending.
— Brené Brown
Leadership and Professional Coaching
It would be an understatement to say the pandemic has changed how we work, learn, and connect with each other, in our homes, families, and communities. How will the changes impact our future? The uncertainty can be paralyzing and it can also be a catalyst to transitioning into the personal and professional life you’ve only dreamed it to be. With great change comes great opportunity. Opportunity to reassess what is most important to you, to make a significant change, or even an internal shift that clears the way for realizing your highest intentions. Leadership and professional coaching may help you with the following:
Reentry into the workforce after staying home with children or family
Developing a business plan based on a passion or idea
Taking your career to the next level
Thinking about a career change
Integrating your personal and professional life
Transitioning from a working parent to an engaged professional when your children are grown
Evaluating personal priorities following a new stage of life
Reestablishing yourself after a health diagnosis, treatment, or coming to terms with a chronic condition
Determining what is next in your professional endeavors