Maeve's Story
Hi Fiona,
I hope you are well and that you do not mind me calling you by your first name but I feel like I have known you for ages.
I would really like to thank you for your book, Be Your Own Life Coach. It has got to be one of the best books I have read and one of the best presents I have given to my friends who have only just started reading it and already we have all starting discussing it and most importantly "living it".
Since picking it up in Waterstones and signing the contract at the front of your book in April, I feel about ten years younger. I think perhaps I should tell you a little about myself. I am 33, a single mother of a lovely son Connor who is almost 11 and work full time as a Corporate Account Manager for Vodafone. For the past, well I don't know how many years, I have been plodding along letting life kind of happen, although in work I have been ambitious and have managed to get ahead it has been more by chance than by planning.
During reading and after reading your book I realised that I never really step back and congratulate myself on my achievements, since having my son I have taken and passed four A levels and finished my degree last year, brought up my son up single handed (and single salaried), managed to get the job I really wanted and been a really good friend to my friends and family around me.
I also had forgotten to give thanks for what I have and remember how lucky I am. I was constantly critical of my appearance and of myself to others and to myself. With your help and advise I have been able to see as you stated that "the critical things we say to ourselves are not things we would say to our best friend so why do we feel we can say them to ourselves?".
I have stopped beating myself up and started to "coach" and encourage myself instead. I have stopped looking back and blaming my past on how things are now and started planning things for the future. When you stated that your new life can start immediately I was, sorry to admit it, a little cynical, but it was only five weeks ago I started it and signed up and already my life seems to have taken a huge turnaround.
My son, my manager, my colleagues, my friends and family have already started to notice the difference and most importantly I really notice the difference. I feel a lot more confident and so have started to ask for things that I would have previously been apprehensive to do. I have realised that you can really achieve anything all you have to do is know what it is you want and go for it.
I have put together a set of goals and targets both for my career and personal life and have already achieved some of them and I am well on the way to achieve the rest. I have received the promotion I wanted and also that the move to job I really want and thought was years off is much closer than I first thought. I have stopped being critical of myself and started to do something about it and taking more time out to go to the gym and also doing lots more things and spending more time with my son.
The book reminded me of the kind of holiday book that you read and can't put down, you really want to finish it to see what happens at the end but really don't want to finish it, as its story and characters have already become almost friends to you and so you feel you will miss them when it is over. But then I realised that there is no end to it, it is really only the beginning, if you need re-affirmation or a gentle shove back on track you can go back to the closing paragraphs at the end of each chapter or you can simply go to your goals and see how you are doing, or you can simply just read the entire thing again!
I was going to apologise to you for ranting on but I am not; I can't and won't stop going on about how much better I feel, my friends keep making fun of me as everything negative that they say now, I say "in the book I have just read", it says that you really should...
Anyway I really felt that I should write to say many thanks for "the wake up call" and please let me know if you have written any other books or when your seminars take place. I hope that this email finds you well and happy.
Regards and many thanks,
Maeve Domican
15th May 2001
