When have I seen the most impact and the best results with clients?
When they’ve worked with me for more than three coaching sessions. One isn’t really enough. We need to go deep. To the core. We need to find out what you really want help with.
Often after two or three sessions we uncover what is really at the core of your feeling of being stuck. On the surface it’s that you’ve been made redundant, or want to change to another industry. But deep down what’s holding you back and making you feel bad is often lack of confidence or self-belief in your abilities. And it takes time to work on these things, taking small steps to build yourself up.
My coaching isn’t really about helping you with career change. Not really. Deep down, at the core, it always comes down to working on confidence, self-belief, and motivation.
Confidence
If I look at my past three new clients, their issues have been based around: feeling they are not good enough, sabotaging themselves, lacking confidence, knowing what they want but not going for it.
It’s interesting isn’t it? It’s as though everyone’s out there putting on a brave face; we all feel insecure inside but put on a front of everything being ok.
If you are struggling with feeling stuck, have a good think about what you’re feeling and why. Try some journaling, get stuff out of your head. Try to see your experience and current situation with a different perspective. What would you say to a friend in your situation? You’d try to get them to see things differently, as you see them.
Look at the obstacles you’ve overcome and what you’ve achieved, really think about this, in all areas of your life. Think about the positives in your current situation, even if you are struggling. Consider your options. Write out as many as you can, even if they seem silly or outrageous. The more you write the more you’ll see you DO have options.
If you’d like to have some coaching sessions with me, contact me via LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.
I had a coaching session with a client the other day. She felt stuck – ready for a big change but lacking in confidence and lacking in direction. As we spoke, I realised she doesn’t place much value on who she is, on her uniqueness, or on her varied experiences. I gave her an exercise to work on to help her see her true value – I’ll explain what it is later.
This client was was toying between starting up her own business and finding any half-decent job that she might quite enjoy and that would pay the bills. As we chatted, she mentioned a conversation with some friends and the feeling that she had to talk differently to them. She felt that they were so much more successful, more knowledgeable than her, that she wasn’t quite on their level.
It became quite clear to me that she can’t see her own talent or attributes – at all.
She has a sporadic work history, doing lots of different jobs in lots of different places; she worked in a school, in a cafe, in an office. As she’s never really had a ‘career’ – she feels that her experience is trivial, or of no consequence.
Not only that, but listening to her, and knowing her a little, I know that she has so many personal attributes that make her incredibly special. So many things come to her naturally, that others don’t possess. She’s just not aware of them.
Her listening and empathising skills are incredible. She makes people feel comfortable, warm and invited. She is an amazing host; setting a beautiful scene, cooking delicious food, being an entertaining and welcoming host.
She’s organised, a planner, and efficient. She notices details. She’s the kind of person that if something needs doing, she’ll get it done.
Passion
She also worried that she isn’t passionate about anything. She felt that she was lacking some sort of strong feeling towards anything. But as we spoke I realised that she was linking ‘doing’ and ‘not doing’ with what she felt was the right to feel or not feel. She mentioned someone playing a game or creating something and getting really stuck in as evidence of how passionate they are. But she felt that for example, the way live music makes her feel, invigorated, moved, alive; is irrelevant as it’s not her making the music or creating the vibe. I reminded her that passion is all about feeling, whether or not you’re directly creating or doing ‘the thing’.
Doing good work and spending your time well doesn’t have to mean working hard on something you are passionate about. I think this is quite rare and you’re incredibly lucky if you find it. Most of us are replying to emails, making calls, going to meetings. Not necessarily stuff to be passionate about. But – if you are passionate about what this work is aiming to achieve and the effect it will have on the world, that’s something. And if you are passionate about the people you work with, or the environment in which you work, or the lifestyle it lets you lead – that’s important too.
In fact, I think we have to be careful tying in ‘passion’ and ‘work.’ I think it’s perfectly acceptable and normal to do work that’s fine or pretty good, and to find your passions out of work. And that doesn’t have to mean a having particular hobby that you are obsessed with and passionate about. It can just mean having a pretty nice time, enjoying cooking, chatting to friends, walking in nature.
Write a chronology
Back to my client. She doesn’t realise how important her skills, experiences and attributes are and that not everyone has them. She is totally devaluing herself.
As a task I told her to write a chronology of all the things she has achieved since leaving uni up until now. Where has she been, what has she learned, what courses has she done? What interesting experiences has she had, what opportunities has she found or created. Which languages has she learned and spoken, what jobs has she completed. Where has she volunteered. What brave choices has she made.
I want her to go through this process to try and give her an outsider’s view on all that she’s achieved. Writing a cv can seem a little limited and dull, you have to condense things into soundbites. But in writing out a chronology of life events, I wondered if she’ll be able to see a thread running through. Where did she follow her heart? What drew her to volunteer, or move to another country? Is there anything she has been consistently interested in over this time? What did she think she’d enjoy, but found it wasn’t for her?
I’ll check in with her next week and find out what, if anything, she’s discovered. The aim of the exercise is to change your perspective, to start to view things slightly differently. What if she can see that she’s a brave, adventurous person, an explorer? Someone who’s not willing to settle for ‘normal’, or safe, or do what everyone else does?
Can she change her narrative from seeing herself as a drifter with no direction to someone who’s experimenting, exploring, working to find her way to what really makes her tick?
If you’d like coaching session with me, find me on LinkedIn or email me at joaopoku@gmail.com.
Lots of things have come up this week (thing’s I’ve read, conversations, social media posts) which make me more and more convinced that having a healthy dollop of self-belief is pretty much all you need to accomplish anything you want in life.
The people who are out there doing what they want – people I know, people I see from afar – all believe in their capabilities and are just getting on and doing it.
I’m also aware that so many of us are holding ourselves back – feeling under confident, confused, stuck, scared. And we could all be out there doing amazing things.
But something’s stopping us. Most likely it’s that little voice in our heads telling us that ‘we’re not enough’. Not experienced enough, not knowledgeable enough, not brave enough, not clever enough, not strong enough.
Because really – we’re all equipped to find a really great new job, we’re all equipped to start a small business. If you can read you can follow a guide, use Google, read a book, do a course, do whatever it takes. Work out what you need to do. The tools are there. It’s just the doing it that’s the hard part. Getting things moving.
How to you gain self-belief? How do you ‘improve’ it? I don’t really have the answer. But I have a sneaky suspicion it’s a muscle that you need to work. It’s something you can practise.
Read a book about confidence/self-belief/resilience and actually do the tasks they set. Listen to empowering speeches. Read the autobiography of someone you admire and learn from them. Practise getting better at making decisions – start small. Trust that you’ll make the right decision without asking everyone you know what they think first.
So start taking small steps towards whatever it is that you want to do. Tell yourself that if someone else has done it before, then you can do it too.
If you’d like help with career change coaching, you can book a 1-hour session here: calendly.com/joannaopokulifecoaching. Or get in touch if you’d like to learn more. Find me on LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.
I’ve been trying out this morning dance challenge called Nobody’s Watching, which I wrote about here. On a zoom call, the host plays us three songs and the rest of us dance around our bedrooms or living rooms, sometimes in dressing gown and pyjamas.
At first I was super awkward, knowing that any of them could see me. But over time I’ve come to love this way of starting the day. I’m relishing just loving the act of dancing.
I’ve felt so free. And it’s reminded me of my little nieces who I so admire when they dance. They move in a way that feels good and that’s it – no care or worry about what they look like. Big grins on their faces, having so much fun.
I’ve been spinning, swirling, waving my arms like Kate Bush. It’s so freeing, swirling, swooping, whatever I feel like.
I realise that so much of my dancing in the past has been about trying to look cool, or look good, painfully aware that I might be being watched. As much as I love dancing I’ve often felt very self-conscious doing so.
And it seems this feeling of trying too hard relates to so much of life. We try so hard to appear a certain way, and care so much about what other people might think.
We think twice before acting, hold our tongue, paint on a mask of being ok.
This little release each morning is helping me to care less. For 15 minutes I don’t care, I’m not trying, I’m gradually letting myself move in exactly the way I feel. If I look stupid, so what. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is how it makes me feel.
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I offer career change coaching – get in touch if you’d like to learn more. Find me on LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.
This week I did something that scared me a little bit. I signed up to an event called Nobody’s Watching. It’s a dance challenge: you dance to three songs each morning, for a period of 3 weeks, with a group of people on Zoom.
A friend, the founder of the event, posted about it on LinkedIn. It sounded like a brilliant concept and I wanted to support her, so signed up on the spot. With literally 5 minutes to go before the 7.45am start.
It was also an impulse to try something new. This past year has all been about the same routine, same four walls, we’ve had very few new or exciting experiences. I felt like this would wake me up.
Through the first song I was nervous, awkward, and didn’t know what to do. I’ve never been comfortable dancing in front of other people – and the thought of dancing on camera was pretty daunting. But at the second song I started loosening up. I realised everyone was just doing their own thing, and really no one was watching. It didn’t matter what I did. Toe tapping, awkwardly swaying my arms, getting into it in my own way. The main thing was to feel the music, sing along and enjoy moving.
I felt quite moved during that attempt, choked up, about to cry. And I have done the past few days too. I guess dancing is a release. I realised on that day that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d danced, even just dancing around my flat. Months ago. And dancing is one of the best things you can do to feel good.
Throughout that first day I was quite dreading having to do it again the next day. But the next morning I woke up and was actually quite looking forward to it! I was curious as to what songs would be selected, how would I feel? Would I feel awkward again, would I get into it more? Would she play songs I know?
There’s something lovely about having a bunch of strangers coming together to have fun, each in their own little bubble, but sharing a moment. I feel touched seeing everyone bopping away in their front rooms. Sometimes it’s good to try something new, something that scares you a little.
I offer career change coaching – get in touch if you’d like to learn more. Find me on LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.
