From Couch to Coach: Reupholstering My Career
What is a life coach?
A life coach is a professional who helps clients to identify their strengths and core values to make meaningful changes towards specific goals and life choices.
What is a couch?
A couch is a symbol of comfort and solace, a place to unwind and recline after a long (or short) day. It is the “peace” we gravitate to in our most sacred spaces.
So how are these two unrelated terms symbolic in my life and career?
When designing and imagining people’s homes as an interior decorator, the emphasis was not always about the couch. Oftentimes, it was about anything but the couch; it was about the space that embodies us all. I often asked my clients: how do you envision and want to feel in this space? This dialogue would start the coaching contract of what the client really wanted.
I’ve always had a passion for helping people--not only in designing their personal space but also for designing their lives. I often made myself available, creating a safe space for friends and family to help them think through their ideas and life goals. I was inadvertently reinventing a new career path for myself while helping others envision theirs. So, what got me off the couch and into life coaching?
Well, like most, I find solace on my couch and, oftentimes, my most unexpected ideas appear when I’m most relaxed. When COVID hit, I spent countless days on my couch trying to navigate an uncertain world, and what that would look like. I started to re-evaluate my career path and began visualizing a new skill that I could put into practice to fulfill my passion of helping others. I decided to go back to school.
Being in my mid-fifties, I had some reservations about re-entering school; I really struggled with self-doubt and getting out of my comfort zone. These barriers were holding me back. I made a step-by-step plan for myself and started to trust the process of taking one day at a time, while embracing the unknown. Although this was very scary, it started to unlock my fears and opened a new world that introduced me to a fresh environment of people who I could connect and share my journey with. This took courage, commitment, and resilience, to learn a new language and apply it to this new career choice as a Professional Life Coach.
It’s been almost three years and I have created a brand, ‘Design Your Life’, a coaching practice that helps clients design a path that is unique to them and facilitating change and growth through any transition in life, including divorce and other life transitions. The process entails a focus on value-mining and strength building, and the power to reinvent themselves. Creating that canvas can be quite empowering. Through curiosity and wonder, one’s vision can be rendered right before their eyes. Taking charge of your life and showing up for yourself is the essence of being whole.
You are the artist of your own life. Don’t hand the paintbrush to anyone else.