How I found my purpose
One of the statements I hear most from friends, acquaintances and potential clients is: “I want to change, but I don’t know what I would like better or care about more” and “I don’t know what my ‘thing’ is.”
The “thing” being their calling, their life’s purpose, the vocation that they’re both wildly passionate about and excellent at. Without conviction about what their ‘thing’ is, they are hesitant to make a move and stay stuck.
I get it. It is really hard to find your “thing.”
In my last newsletter, I introduced you to Daisy and shared how helpful she was in making my full-time role more fulfilling.
What is most important about my work with Daisy was the yearning I felt on calls with her: “I want to do what she’s doing.” It may have been the smallest-biggest thing, as it was a quiet longing that I felt so softly that I could barely feel it. I thought it was so cool that her job was to help people figure out what they cared about and were good at.
When the results of my personality tests showed that I should be a career coach, I remember feeling a hit of excitement. Oo!
The idea of coaching kept percolating at the back of my mind. I got to know a few coaches and felt envious of their work. I now know that jealousy is one of my tried and true ways to hear my intuition.
I kept feeling drawn to coaching.
A year later in the fall of 2019, I enrolled in my first coach training program. I didn’t have a grand plan or much of any plan of how I wanted to use the training. I only knew that I was jazzed about spending three days learning and talking about coaching. I felt that I couldn’t not do it.
My training required us to have a handful of clients as we went through the program so we could put our learnings into practice. I began working with two clients within a few weeks of starting the program. The more I coached, the more I wanted to keep coaching. And, so I did.
Again, I didn’t have a big plan or sense of what it would lead to. I hadn’t even considered creating a side hustle until I started the program. I did not consider myself entrepreneurial.
But the more I coached, the more conviction I built that coaching is “my thing” or my life’s purpose. It comes easily to me and I’m good at it. It gives me energy.
There is no other way to describe how I felt on coaching calls but “lit up.” Being on the phone with clients gives me a surge of energy. My heart feels like it expands every time a client has a breakthrough and realizes something new.
I had no idea that those first conversations with Daisy in 2018 would lead me to today. I never had a big a-ha moment. I just kept following my intuition and curiosity, taking small steps forward. For a long-time, coaching was my hobby or “side hustle.”
In the next few emails, I’ll take you into the juicy details of “how I broke up with my boyfriend and job in four days.” Alt title: “How I found the conviction to quit my comfortable full-time job and pursue my purpose.” Stay tuned.