A Martha Beck Certified Life Coach
I am a wife, a mom, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a Martha Beck Certified Life Coach, a school volunteer, a business owner and many other things. Just like you, I play a variety of roles, none of which are exclusively me.
Despite all these roles, I never felt true passion about my life. I never felt like I had a special talent or purpose. I had a pretty good life on the outside, but I was pretty miserable on the inside. I was stuck.
Then l quite "accidentally" came to coaching. I had never read a self-help book, been coached, or taken any self-improvement classes. I was a true Self-Help Virgin. I had been a stay-at-home mom, a domestic goddess, to two boys for 8 years and had become so lost in the role that I felt completely unfulfilled. I gained a lot of weight prior to the birth of my first son, but a year later I began to see a glimmer of my true self when I started to take care of myself. I lost 75 pounds and added a new role to my repertoire - exercise enthusiast.
Even so, there I was after 8 years - a domestic goddess without any of the joy a goddess might enjoy. That is when I suffered an achilles injury which hampered my exercise efforts. The injury coincided with the process of grieving a miscarriage. My grief was further compounded when my husband was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It was kind of like being hit over the head with a frying pan - completely disorienting and extremely frightening. My whole world seemed to be crumbling around me.
A few months earlier, a magazine interview with Dr. Martha Beck, Oprah's life coach and "the best known life coach in America" according to USA Today, caught my eye while I waited in a doctor's office. I purchased my own copy immediately after the appointment. I checked out Martha's website and I began to feel an excitement growing deep within me though it took months for me to find the nerve to do something about it.
I had always felt drawn to helping others, but had never found quite the right avenue. I have bachelor's degrees in business and psychology from Arizona State University, but nothing ever felt like "it".
Then suddenly, there I was reading about life coaching, and from what I read, it sounded perfect for me. But it also sounded incredibly not credible. How in the world could I become a life coach? Everybody would think I had lost it. I had always played things safe and taken the "acceptable" and "expected" routes and life coaching seemed neither. Then again, neither of those routes had brought me true happiness.
I signed up for Martha's newsletter and received an ad for Life Coach Training. My heart fluttered and I just knew it was what I was supposed to do, no matter how unexpected and unacceptable it sounded. I secretly enrolled. It took me quite a while to come out of the proverbial "life coaching closet". As I did, however, to my surprise and boundless joy, I found that every friend and family member I entrusted with my secret supported me 100%.
I worked hard, though it never felt like work, to become a Martha Beck Certified Life Coach. But I found more than another role to play. I found an intense joy that was right inside of me all along: The joy of connecting with others and helping them find their own joy.
If you feel stuck, unfulfilled, miserable or just generally unhappy, I would love to help you find your own joy regardless of your life's circumstances. Are you ready to find it?
"Fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured."
~Martha Beck
