Are you facing a career dilemma? Rachael Roberts shows how working with a life coach can help.
You may be at a crossroads in your career. You may be suffering or recovering from burnout. You may have big decisions to make. You may just want to get a second opinion on where your life is going. Talking these issues over with a life coach can make a huge difference.
For this post, I invited Rachael Roberts to talk about what working with a life coach involves and how it can help you, whether you are starting your editing/proofreading career or considering your next step. Rachael is a trained psychotherapist and counsellor, a certified life coach and a member of the Association for Counselling. She’s also an ELT textbook writer working from her home office, which means she knows the freelance world inside out.
Rachael:
To be completely frank, I am not a huge fan of the term ‘life coach’. Anyone can call themselves a life coach, and it definitely has a whiff of snake oil. However, while I’ve played around with different titles – mindset coach, psychology-based coaching – this is the term most people recognise. And it’s actually appropriate, because a life coach can help you gain clarity and perspective on your life, and challenge you to take appropriate action, in a way that friends and family generally can’t.
Here are some of the ways in which I have helped clients:
1. Dealing with limiting beliefs
Most of us are carrying around a whole ragbag of self-limiting beliefs that we’ve picked up along the way (especially in childhood) and swallowed whole: that it’s selfish to look after ourselves; that we can’t do certain things; that, in whatever way, we simply aren’t enough. I can help you work through and challenge those beliefs and that nasty naggy little voice in your head.
2. Dealing with stress and anxiety
Freelancing has many advantages, particularly increased autonomy, freedom and flexibility. However, the flip side of this is financial insecurity and sometimes finding ourselves burning the candle at both ends to meet deadlines. I can help you with practical strategies to manage your time, energy and workload, as well as tackling those gremlins that encourage us to say yes when we should really be saying no.
3. Finally achieving your goals
If you could wave a magic wand, how would your life be different? Maybe you’d like to have a healthier lifestyle, or maybe you’ve secretly always wanted to do something different in your career. You may have made some attempts to change things, but somehow you always find yourself back on that hamster wheel. I can help you get focused, deal with the subconscious sabotages holding you back, and keep you accountable until you finally achieve those goals.
My own experience
I’ve known Rachael for a few years in her role as textbook writer, and we served on a committee together. I’m staying in my home town in the UK for two weeks, and Rachael lives in the next town over, so we met for lunch. I am currently struggling with a dilemma of my own: should I continue to base my life and career in Canada, or should I eventually return to my homeland of England? My husband is open to a new experience, my children will be established on their own in a few years’ time, and there is nothing stopping us from making a big move – apart from my own fear.
Rachael and I talked this over. Instead of saying, ‘You should…’, she made me look at it from different perspectives and gave me some things to think about that I really hadn’t considered. I still don’t know what the future holds, but I now have a plan to move forward with making this decision.
Don’t struggle with personal issues on your own. Working with someone like Rachael, ideally over a series of sessions, can be a life-changing experience.
Visit Rachael’s website to find out more.
Tania Pattison is an editor and proofreader specialising in English language teaching, education and related subjects. When not editing, she is an EAP textbook writer, curriculum designer and occasional university/college teacher.
Images by James DeMers from Pixabay, and Rachael Roberts
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