Think Life Coaching

After a long career in the business world of engineering, sales, and supply chain, I arrived at the stage where I wasn’t satisfied with my quality of life and felt unfulfilled with the monotonous and mundane nature of my work.
It took me a few years of self-analysis and introspection to arrive at what I’d like to do as a career for the road ahead.

A career in helping professionals like my former self navigate through the phase that I struggled with appealed to me, primarily because it suited my skills, experience, and personality. I also felt there was a need for such a service because too many people just plod through their careers feeling dissatisfied and bored. Given that work occupies such a large portion of our lives, being unhappy at work automatically translates to being unhappy in life. This was true in my life during my phase of being stuck in a career rut, and I was pretty sure I was not in the minority when it came to this situation. Surely there had to be a method to right the ship and have a process by which people feeling stuck could find a way out, instead of suffering this misery for years.

I started searching for a way to turn this interest of mine into a career. I felt I could leverage all the lessons I had learned the hard way to help other people enjoy a smoother career journey. I discovered coaching through a friend and dived into this area of work by enrolling for a diploma in life coaching. After completion, I set up my own business. It took me some time to find my feet in this new environment, as there were many challenges. Once I started working with a few clients, I started warming to this profession. Supporting others to improve their lives felt uniquely satisfying. Playing a small role in the success of others is a reward difficult to quantify, the kind I had never experienced in my previous career that spanned over three decades!

After five years as a coach, I still feel excited to learn new things and update my skills. Every time a client has an “A-Ha” moment of clarity, it feels extremely gratifying. That’s when I know a life transformation is happening, and I’m a part of it.

One of my strong principles is to provide my clients with the kind of experience that I would love to be at the receiving end of when purchasing a product or service. I want my clients to feel complete satisfaction with the outcome and a sense of conviction that their money was well spent. Buying anything is not so much about the money you hand over; it’s about the value you get.

I build a lot of value into my coaching packages. It begins with building an excellent rapport with the client through empathetic support that goes beyond their expectation. In addition to the laser-focused one-on-one sessions, I ensure that there’s plenty of value in the practical exercises that I customize for each client. No two people are the same, so there cannot be a cookie-cutter approach to coaching. That’s the philosophy behind the way I design coaching packages for my clients. I stand beside them every step of the way to help them build the confidence to take action. I provide them with gentle accountability to keep them on course so that they achieve results in line with what’s been set out. I brainstorm with my clients to help them design a road map for their journey from where they are to where they want to be, broadly covering the following three stages:

THINK – Discover and Clarify through questions such as “What is the goal?”, “What are the options to get there?” etc.
BELIEVE – Develop self-confidence and self-worth through tools, support, and experimenting.
ACHIEVE – Take concrete action steps through accountability, reviewing, and evaluating.

Building resilience and being able to handle failures are two critical attributes that I help my clients inculcate into their lives. Nothing worthwhile can be achieved without being resilient and taking failures in the stride. My own life has taught me these facets, often from the school of hard knocks. My effort with my clients is to alert them to the dangers that lie ahead on their path and help them have a soft landing.

Throughout the coaching journey, we have checkpoints where we review progress and tweak the process as needed. The eye is always on the final prize, which is the outcome desired. My success depends upon my client’s success, so I endeavor to help my clients reach their goals.

Career coaching is not always about helping change career paths. It’s about discovering what will bring greater success, satisfaction, and happiness.

One of my clients was confused about her future. She had spent 15 years in the same company and was earning good money. She was satisfied with her working environment, but she was bored. She felt like she was on autopilot and wasn’t learning anything new or being challenged enough. She didn’t know if she wanted to continue down the same path or make a change. Another 20 years of the same stuff didn’t seem like a great idea!

After we had worked together, she was delighted to discover that her work was actually well aligned with her core values, so all that was needed was a little tweak to her job. That way, she could have a new challenge and feel excited about her work again. When we touched base about a year later, she was still working in the same company, but with a twist that had transformed her mindset toward her career.

Another client of mine was working in the same job for 12 years and was consistently nominated as the top performer in his department. However, he kept turning down offers for promotions because he was fearful of how he would perform at a level above where he was. The next level involved people management and communication with senior management, things that he was nervous about.

By working with him, I helped him develop the confidence he needed to take that step up. Through gentle support, I helped him exorcise the fear of failure and take ownership of his excellent track record in the company. Using bespoke coaching tools to help him recognize his value, he found a new self-awareness that allowed him to understand his own potential. The next time the opportunity to move upward came along, he broke the glass ceiling that he had built for himself and stepped into management.

The above two examples are of clients at different ends of the spectrum. One wanted to get out of the feeling of being stuck and sought growth and change, while the other feared change and wanted to stay put at the cost of his career growth. Both of them benefited from coaching with me because of their effort and commitment to the customized coaching programs that were designed to help them achieve success in their own ways.

Think Life Coaching’s mission is to help people achieve greater fulfillment and satisfaction in their lives through the discovery and attainment of goals, removal of barriers to self-belief, enablement of out-of-the-box thinking, and enhancement of problem-solving capabilities. The company’s vision is to help people realize their full potential, by supporting and motivating them to become the best versions of themselves.