Sarah's Story
A look back over the past year
A year ago, I was a Chartered Accountant who worked for a big Life Assurance Company and I knew there was more to life and it was time to move on but to what?
As luck would have it, a friend lent me a book entitled ‘Be Your Own Life Coach’ and as I started to read it I thought, “this is for me – I would really like to be coached by Fiona”. Fiona appeared as if by magic in York within 24 hours to do a talk at Borders bookstore - so of course I went along and asked her some questions. “Can I coach you?” she asked, on seeing that I wanted a life change but was unsure exactly what.
This ‘on the spot’ coaching session confirmed that my priorities were to give up my existing job, have a baby and change my career completely and I quite fancied becoming a life coach myself (I am always reading self development books)!
I took up Fiona’s offer to contact her for some formal coaching and one year down the line things have certainly changed – I have a lovely and vivacious 2 month old son - Sebastian who is healthy and happy (most of the time!) and I am mid way through my training to become a life coach. What also emerged from my coaching with Fiona was that I want to build 2 other areas into my career and run a consultancy type business which will include life coaching but also 2 other loves of my life – one is meditation and the other natural nutrition.
I have been meditating for years and really enjoy teaching other people how to let go and relax so I have been piloting a 4 week ‘Total Relaxation’ course primarily aimed at busy or stressed professionals which restores vitality and well being through relaxing completely and experiencing inner stillness and perspective.
I have been interested in nutrition for as long as I can remember but had never for a moment considered making it part of my career. I am now enrolled on a course in Natural Nutrition and once qualified I’ll be able to add that to my business. To me, nutrition can make a huge difference to quality of life by optimising health and well being and so is an essential part of a happy life. In fact, to me, life coaching, meditation and nutrition are all essentials for a happy, fulfilled life.
In retrospect I thought it would be easy being a mum but I find it just as tough as being a Chartered Accountant! It can be quite hard to fit in anything to do with the business at the moment but things are settling down nicely.
As part of my Life Coaching training we looked at my goals. By this time, my goal for work was not to! In other words never to do anything again that felt like work. Until I looked at Life Coaching, I didn’t realise that this was an option. Somewhere I had got the idea that working was something you had to do, whether you liked it or not and I had equated work with struggle.
One thing which is now clear is that whatever you are doing, if you want to do something different, that need not be just a dream - it is possible and what’s more, you can do something you really enjoy as a job so you never need to ‘work’ again! I found that once I had realised what I really wanted to do, it was as if a door had opened and I couldn’t shut it again so there was no going back! It felt really good to resign from my former job. After working full time for years and years I had a well deserved break and it was great – it was really re-energising.
In the future, it is possible that I will want to run the businesses from abroad e.g. Italy and extend the meditation into retreat style / ‘get away from it all’ weekends along side my husband. If you have the attitude that if you really want to do something you’ve just got to do it or you would only regret it later, then there is no stopping you – I am chatting to Sebastian in Italian regularly just in case!
Saran Olsen
For details of Life Coaching at a reduced fee while she is training or, if you live locally to York, for details of courses in Total Relaxation, please contact Sarah on 01347 878764
