How to decide if you're ready for a big life change...

I’m gonna share the single most important thing that’ll help you decide.

But first a little tale…

(I know you wanna scroll to the end to just get the advice but I promise, the tale is the most helpful part 😉)

It’s February 2016, I’m sitting in a London hotel conference space alongside 100 other self help junkies at the Coaching Academy free taster weekend. It was my first full introduction to coaching and we were exploring questions to challenge our self limiting beliefs, become aware of our inner dialogue and set tangible, achievable and inspiring goals for the future.

It was right then that I had one of those sufficiently cheesy moments people tell you about (like I’m doing right now), and you eye them with suspicion ‘cause it seems all too convenient for the story (this is true stuff, honest).

One of those moments where you are asked, or ask yourself, a question that makes the answer so glaringly clear. And being new to coaching, it wasn’t something I’d appreciated before.

A question.

What would you do if you had nothing to fear?

At the time I was almost two years into my career as a teacher, it was a next step I was happy with. I was excited to throw myself into something with purpose and impact and I thought I could grow to be good at.

It was a total baptism of fire and I learned sooo much. I’ve absolutely no regrets about doing it, but by Feb 2016 as my Newly Qualified Teacher year was coming to a close, I was trying to figure out if it was normal or not to spend every hour of the day counting down to the weekend.

I’d been logically thinking through what I wanted and what I should do next… should I resign with nowhere to go? Was that too risky? Should I find something ‘safe’ with good benefits and a better salary? I’d been quizzing everyone I knew on how much they counted down to the weekend. Gathering my research.

Sitting in that conference room and asking myself ‘What would I do if I had nothing to fear?’ it felt like the answer slapped me in the face.

Taking a leap of faith

So returning to work the week after, I let my Head Teacher know that I wouldn’t be coming back in September. I didn’t have a job to go to, or really an idea of what I was going to do but I’d trust that I’d find something else. On balance, I was also comfortable with the risk as I had 5 months to work it out.

That weekend was also the moment I decided that Coaching was my favourite thing ever and that one day I might, possibly, perhaps, have some kind of coaching business of my own.

New beginnings

August 2016 I got a job at Avado as a Community Facilitator and I’ll be honest, it was so different to what I’d done so far, I had absolutely no idea what doing the job would look like. I almost took a role at a University admin department, because it was something I’d done before and it paid £7k a year more.

But Avado felt more like a move forwards. My coaching business goal was loosely knocking about in the back of my mind, and it was the right place to work if I wanted to learn about Digital Marketing. Plus if I’m completely honest, I wanted the uncertainty of not having a job to be over, so I took it.

An insane journey of growth

That was four years ago almost to the day. And I’m sharing this story because I’m now at the next major career defining moment of decision making. Covid-19 has made me redundant in my role.

The last four years have been an insane journey of growth for me, both personally and professionally. I got promoted, I got my first management position. I side-stepped, I had 5 different roles. I learned what I was good at and what I was bad at. I learned what I was actually good at, that I thought I was bad at. And what, on hindsight, I was bad at and thought I was good at. I continued my self help quest to make sense of myself. I had coaching. I built lasting friendships. I built a future with the person I’d spent my adult life with. I went to therapy. I shattered and deconstructed that future in a situation that had me learn more about myself, and life, than a self-help book could ever teach me and form an emotional awareness and resilience I’d never thought was possible.

And so I find myself here, four years later, going all in on my coaching business.

It’s funny because although that was the goal, there were times where I thought I’d lost sight of it completely. Partly ‘cause I didn’t trust or know myself enough to feel I could decide it was the right thing. Partly ‘cause I was too scared to actually tell anyone about it. Partly ‘cause I felt like I was growing enough in what I was doing to not worry about the long term goal too much.

So why the heck am I telling you this?

Because when you find yourself at a life crossroads, whether it’s trying to make a decision about your career, your relationship or anything that creates that sense of ‘where should I go next!?’, my last four years have been a crash course in making sense of myself, as someone who used to have no trust in myself to make a decision.

And I distil it down to one piece of advice…

Learn to trust yourself by getting to know all the pieces of who you are whilst appreciating that life changes and so will you.

We struggle to make decisions when we aren’t in touch with what we really want, when we’re lost under a weight of expectations, when we don’t yet have the confidence or courage to listen and trust ourselves, when we live under fear of failure, or fear of any kind, and when we resist the reality that life, and we, are messy, complicated, incoherent, and imperfect.

It isn’t easy. It’s vulnerable and icky and uncomfortable. But it also brings a sense of clarity, courage, resilience and peace of mind that you’d otherwise be grappling for.

Where will understanding and embracing yourself get you next?

---

Hi, I’m Rachel

I coach women in relationship doubt to understand and embrace who they are so they can find the clarity, courage and trust in themselves to make their right decision.

---