Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
SOPHIE FELT SHE was at a crossroads in her life. She felt that she was stuck in a rut and needed to shake things up a bit in her personal life. She didn’t mind the work she was doing but at the same time she felt she wanted to do something else but didn’t know what that was.
I find that many people, myself included seem to hit such a point at some stage in our lives where we feel that we need a change. We want to fix something, change it, improve it or shake it up.
The end of a year is a good time to mix things up
For some it is looking to change job, for others it is getting a better work life balance or looking to overcome a particular challenge or finding more meaning or fulfilment in daily life. For Sophie it was feeling stuck and at a crossroads in her life, a sense of feeling that things could be better, that she could be happier but not being sure exactly what it was that she wanted or how to go about it.
Coming to the end of a year this sentiment of looking for change can increase for many. We start reflecting on the year and we wonder what we have actually achieved or realise that something we wanted to work on or change during the year is still the same. Often our reason for not doing anything about it is that our daily life takes over or gets in the way. Sometimes it is fear of the unknown.
Intermittently throughout the year we may think about changing job, losing that weight, starting our own business, enrolling in a course or whatever it may be for us. But as the year draws to a close we resignedly realise that we missed the boat again and the cycle continues.
But we can break that cycle, we can decide that this time we are going to do something about it and stick with it.
Why do most of her clients first get in touch?
Sophie was thinking about coaching on and off for months. She wasn’t sure if she really needed to go to one or what it really involved. What she did know was that she needed to do something, to take a first step at something because feeling the way she was, was bringing her down.
It wasn’t until she was talking with a colleague of hers one day and it came up that he had actually started going to a life coach himself and was really happy with the progress he was making that she made the decision to just go for it and she contacted me.
Sophie has had three coaching sessions so far. She said that the hardest part for her was taking this first step, and making contact with me. Now she is in the middle of the process and is getting the clarity in what she really wants in her life and is taking the steps to make the changes.
How does a life coach help you with all this?
During the first session, one of the exercises Sophie did was the “wheel of life”, where you rate your current level of satisfaction in the key areas of your life (career, family & friends, finances). This exercise shows where there are any imbalances in your life and as a consequence which area and direction you may want to focus on.
While we may be unhappy, unfilled or stressed in our lives and want to do something about it, often as I said before, daily life can “conveniently” get in the way. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” as the saying goes.
We may want things to change but at the same time we are uncomfortable with the unknown and what we may have to do to make the changes. Sophie said that was the case for her but now that she is taking control of her situation, of her life, she wonders why she didn’t get started sooner.
It can also be about making mini changes
For Sophie, her change was about feeling stuck in a rut and being at a crossroads. Your changes can be whatever you want them to be, big and small. Perhaps 2017 isn’t about one big goal but rather a series of mini changes you would like to bring into your life.
The little things can have a big impact on our lives too. Sometimes a starting point can be as simple as just asking yourself: “what one thing could I do today that would make me that bit happier or that bit less stressed?”
Change, any change, starts with taking the first step, whatever that step is for you. The question is, how ready are you to take your first step in 2017?
Derval Chambers Petit is a life and career coach. She recently moved back to Ireland with her one-year-old son and French husband. See: www.dervalchamberspetit.ie
Sadly America is far from Great. The Mexicans need to build that wall fast!
Pity there wasn’t as much coverage of the protests in blanch
@Sparky: Because that was a storm in a teacup in comparison. For the most part those protesters were peaceful with some stopping the more disruptive element from cauaing real harm.
@Conrad Shields: How can something be Mostly peaceful, either it is or isn’t, there’s no middle ground when it comes to violence and/breaking the law, not to mention disregarding covid advice, either they did or did not.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam,Laos, Cambodia Guatemala, Honduras, Chilie, El Salvador, Porto Rico, Panama, Colombia are willing to send troops to restore democracy to the U.S.A. After all what goes around…
@Donal Desmond: Exactly. When you sponsor violent protests in other places you can’t be surprised when it finally comes home.
He’s still using fighting rhetoric ffs
Spoiled Brats the lot of them. Extremists on both Red and Blue sides are nearly as bad as each other. Absolute disaster of a place.
The internet has created these clowns and their leader IMO.
@Lotus: This is an utterly rid!culous fålse equivalency.
Does any person who follows US politics really believe this “both sides” nønsense?
@Lotus: Bulls h1t. Are you unable to criticise Trump without saying but but themuns? Irish people are well able to spot this false equivalence having witnessed the DUP at it for decades.
@Seán Óg: fun fact there’s actually a historic link between the DUP and US conservatives.
@Tricia G:
I don’t follow US politics. Couldn’t really care less what happens over there. Just commenting on what I have been seeing over last few years. Place is descending into an awful place more so than other countries. Its seems that way at least.
@Seán Óg:
I’m criticising both camps in equal measure. Irish people would be well able to spot that, or at least most of them.
@Lotus: So you accept you don’t actually know that both sides are as bad. And yet you made that claim?
As someone who has lived in the US and subsequently kept a close eye on events, its my opinion that one side is, very clearly, worse than the other.
@Tricia G: Is that an unbiased opinion?
@Lotus: how have you come to “both sides are as bad” if you don’t follow US politics? What are you basing your opinion on?
@Blue Avians: Doubtful, as we all have biases.
It’s certainly an educated one.
@Tricia G:
@Tricia G: both sides are as bad as each other you dont need to live over there or be as “educated” as you to also have an opinion on the situation tricia.
@Blue Avians: interesting question from the guy claiming that becaise antifa weren’t visible yesterday that they were in MAGA hats leading the failed coup
@Tricia G: Well he is not wrong about extremists on both sides, while those on the left can sometimes look to deny the same freedoms they espouse to those with opposing views, but they are looking equality for poorer & marginalised. It is those on the right that carry guns and are willing to use violence to get what they want.
@Blue Avians: unbiased opinion politics?
@Tricia G: Are you unable to criticize the so called “left” for some reason, maybe because you identify more with their politics than you do with the so called “right”
Yes they are as bad as each other, BLM, Antifa, Proud Boys, the people at Capitol Hill represent extremists on both sides. Why can’t you see that or acknowledge it, during the “peaceful” protests with BLM? Are you saying the supposed BLM protesters that executed someone for being white, physically assaulted people for being white or not giving them their salute, demanding people give their homes away, looted, burned cities, cause 1 billion in damage, will cost insurance companies upwards of 2 billion are not comparable to the thugs from yesterday, very blinkered view there, considering during the blm protests a total of 19 people died, some of them black but apparently their lives didn’t matter, some of them were only protect ting their homes or lively hood and were killed by the same kind of thugs you say are not comparable to the thugs from yesterday? That’s some serious bias alright, explains a lot.
@Simon Carroll: lol, this is your reply to her saying we all have biases. It’s shameful that people still pretend that the violence and looting of the summer were not condemned. Worse that they’re now using it to normalise the actions of yesterday
Trump gave a long meandering speech at the “Save America March” directly before the attack on the capitol bldg. He said “we will never give up, we will never concede, we have had enough” plus he talked about “taking back our country…it cannot be done with weakness, but with strength”. He even said he would walk with them to the capitol. He really whipped up his mob, now there are four dead and he will walk off with $200 mil from recent donations. I wonder why he is being so tolerated?
@Aire Dezamba: It’s a cult
If only they had antifa flags and chanted Black Lives Matter.
Then it would be remembered as a ‘largely peaceful protest’.
@NotaWarder: A BLM Protest wouldn’t have gotten within an asses roar of the Capitol building, mad how unprepared the Security of the building was considering MAGA / Q followers been planning this whole thing for awhile on Parler
@NotaWarder: senseless comment.
@Joe Healy: he’s a senseless person I suspect.
Just hand over the keys donald ya sap inauguration will be very funny when joe swear in cant wait see Donald’s face haha
At least Hitler did the right thing taking a sinanide pill..
have your say