Nobody can tell you what the right things in life are for you. Maybe you’ll want to get married. Maybe not. Maybe you’ll want to have children. Maybe not. And maybe you’ll work the job of your dreams, love every minute, become wealthy and live happily ever after – but likely not.
Some people thrive in marriage while others get quickly divorced. There are those people who seem to have been born to be a parent and others who see their kids as a nuisance and resent having them. And then there are the ones who think they’re in the job of their dreams, the one they worked so hard to achieve, who realize that they’re no longer loving every minute and the wealth they hoped for won’t offset the happiness they no longer have.
We live in a society where, for over 100 years, a coach was somebody who helped you develop athletic skills associated with sports. Very few kids born in the 1960s-1990s didn’t deal with some coach trying to make them better at soccer, basketball, cheerleading or some other activity. The coach was the sports teacher. There weren’t music coaches. There weren’t art coaches…and there certainly weren’t life coaches.
But around 15 years ago, the term “life coach” started to sprout up. Suddenly, there were people who said that they could help you find the balance in your life that you needed. Several years ago, I went to a life coach and while I can understand how that might be beneficial to some, I didn’t need balance with my family or personal life. My finances were in order and I wasn’t feeling confused and depressed about life. I knew the problem.
This life coach was a nice person, but she didn’t know the first thing about being in the medical profession. She knew what doctors and nurses did, but when I explained I was a public health practitioner in the US Navy, she just looked at me kind of confused. I tossed out a few descriptors about what I did, such as instituting new protocols to ensure health standards were met across the base ranging from sanitation to vaccine storage, and she nodded. I could tell I was talking to the wrong person.
It wasn’t until I met my career development coach that I realized I had been seeing the wrong person all along. In our first session, he learned that my family is my life and live at the center of my heart, but I’m also somebody who wants to help others and needs to feel passionate about his job. I no longer loved working for the Navy, so it was time to move on. Ironically, I recognized fairly quickly, he had the exact job description I wanted.
Had I never left the life coach, I probably would still be sitting at my desk, wondering why I wasn’t happy and what my future held. Her guidance was simply a bad match, but thankfully, my career development coach came along.
If you’re currently spending time with a life coach, or even a career development coach and it’s not working out, consider changing things up. Too many people try to find the answer with somebody they just don’t “click” with and that’s a shame because it’s almost impossible to get at the correct answer in that case.
If you’re dragging at work, dreading each morning as you face another day, it’s probably time to do something about it, but if you’re having issues figuring out how, drop me a note. If we don’t mesh well, I’ll suggest a few names of other people, but if we do work well together, imagine turning everything around. That’s the balance you’re looking for.
Need that extra push to convince yourself that you’re not imagining things? Check out https://form.jotform.com/211381778897473 and take the career satisfaction quiz. Don’t tell yourself you’re just having yet another bad day. Maybe it’s time to consider making a change. Take this quiz and we’ll calculate your score and let you know if you’re satisfied where you are of if it’s time to follow your destiny.