Watching my Mum die last summer was a tough experience, and the grief that has followed has taught me a lot. Here, I share my thoughts on death and grief, and what it can teach us about life in general, how we choose to live it - and, of course, what any of that has got to do with career change.
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Have you been wondering if it's time for a career change? How do you know when it's really time to move on? This guest post by Liza Griffen, co-founder of Tyler Griffen, will help you identify the signs that it might be time for a career change.
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If you have grand career aspirations outside of your current career path, now may be the time to consider a change. But, how do you know whether making a change is the right thing to do? Here, we take a look at four of the core questions can you ask yourself before you decide upon a career change.
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I’ve been having a lot of conversations about loss recently. It comes up quite a lot for career change clients, in that contemplating a new career comes with unexpected feelings of loss in relation to their current/previous career. Yet, the consequence of any type of change is loss.
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I was recently made aware of new research, which gives an interesting breakdown of where we really get to with our childhood dreams. How many of us are actually following the career path we envisaged as a child? Or did adulthood change our priorities? Have a read to find out.
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It takes a lot to admit that you've made a mistake, and that a decision you made hasn't worked out in the way you'd hoped. Especially when you fear what people will think of you, and how they may judge you. So, here's a story of how I did just that.
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Last month, I did something that was quite far out of my comfort zone - I spent the weekend on a remote island off the coast of South West Ireland at a meditation retreat. Here, I share my experiences, and what I learnt from the experience.
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Last month, I was delighted to take part in the Government's 'Get Into Teaching' campaign. As part of the campaign, research was carried out to assess how students and recent graduates were feeling about making decisions concerning their future careers. Here, I discuss the findings.
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It was my 40th birthday yesterday. In a funny way, I feel a bit embarrassed saying I’m 40. Although, 40 is the new 30 apparently. Either way, turning 40 got me thinking about what I have learnt so far and what advice I would give my 20-30 year old self. So, here are my 4 life lessons so far.
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Over the years, I have seen a patten in which fears often hold people back from making a career change. This article lists 4 common fears I have come across, along with tips to help you manage these fears, so they don't get in the way of you changing into more fulfilling and enjoyable work.
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When it comes to career change, we're told to find and follow our passions. Quotes like, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” are supposed to help. This article explores how the pressure to "find your passion" could be holding you back from making your career change.
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I recently qualified as a Coaching Supervisor, having spent eight months completing a Diploma in Coaching Supervision. It's recommended that every coach has a Supervisor. But what is Coaching Supervision, and what can you expect from working with a coach Supervisor?
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I have recently become aware of a personality trait that I’m not sure I knew existed. I knew I was an introvert, and quite a sensitive one at that, and perhaps someone who struggled a little with anxiety on top of that. Here, I describe my discovery of the 'Highly Sensitive Person' trait.
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This week, as part of my ongoing Career-Changer series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gareth Thomas about his inspiring journey from management in the construction industry to becoming a Football Agent...with clients in the Premier League!
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As part of my ongoing Career-Changer series, I was delighted to reconnect with an old school friend, who I spotted from LinkedIn had changed career and started his own wine business. Here, I share Edd Simpson's journey, from musician, to teacher, to starting his own business in the wine industry.
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Earlier this week, I spoke to Ayesha Murray for her podcast, The Parent Equation. Ayesha coaches working parents looking to progress their careers or improve their work life balance alignment. We discussed our experiences of becoming a parent, and the impact children have on our working lives.
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There’s no denying that 2020 has been a year of uncertainty. This article explores the Change Curve, a model designed to help us understand the array of difficult emotions we all experience during a period of upheaval, whether that be the recent pandemic or your current career change journey.
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As part of my ongoing Career-Changer series, I spoke to recent career-shifter (and friend) Alex Burgess about his courageous journey from infrastructure IT to starting his very own company, inspired by his experiences as a new parent.
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Writing a CV isn’t an easy task for some, and can be challenging at the best of times. But when changing careers, it can be even more difficult. These simple 5 tips from job site Zoek will guide you on how to write a good CV to help you impress potential employers and score your dream job.
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For too long, we’ve relied on internet job boards to find a new career. This might work if you know what you’re looking for. If you don’t, it can feel overwhelming, and a process that often lands you back in a role similar to the one you were trying to move away from. So, what’s the alternative?
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How to change career in your 30s? I spoke to a client last week who said that changing career in her 30s felt like a crazy idea. She felt trapped. She asked me what advice I had for someone changing career in their 30s. So, I thought I’d share my top tips for changing career here.
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This month, as part of my ongoing Career-Changer series, I spoke to Elle McCann about her journey from being an Account Manager to starting a whole new career as a Food Stylist and Recipe Developer. These interviews seek to share advice from those who have changed career in order to inspire those wishing to do the same.
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When it comes to our careers, Social Media can make us a feel like a failure because we constantly compare ourselves to the achievements of others. If we’re not achieving the same things, we fail to see ourselves as successful. However, success should be an internal measurement, not an external one.
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This month, as part of my ongoing Career-Changer series, I spoke to Siobhan about her journey from working in Project Management to starting her very own champagne business. These interviews seek to share advice from those who have changed career, in order to inspire those wishing to do the same.
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Last month, I shared the career change story of the amazing Ellie White, as part of my ongoing Career-Changer Series. These interviews seek to share the inspirational stories of people who have made the decision to change career. This month we hear from the newly freelance Producer Amalie Englesson.
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Over the coming months, I will be interviewing and sharing the inspirational stories of people who have made the decision to change career. I ask them about their career shifts and what advice they have for others considering a career change. My first interview is with the amazing Ellie White.
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Short YouTube video explaining the 12-session career change coaching programme I provide. Perfect for those who want to change career but aren’t 100% sure what they want to do instead, or where to start in figuring it all out.
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Many of my career-changer clients decide to start their own business. They are attracted to the flexibility, autonomy, and freedom that such a career path offers. Every big corporation has to start somewhere. The following suggestions should help you on your mission to grow your new business.
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This month, guest author Cloe Matheson (a freelance writer from Dunedin, New Zealand) passes on her advice for why we should try to overcome our fears and make the changes to our career that we’ve been dreaming of.
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Returning to work after the festive season can really suck, especially if you hate your job. The start of the New Year can hit home hard too - yet another year doing work you don’t enjoy. If you’ve promised yourself that 2019 will be the year you finally quit your job and find work you love, then get in touch. There’s 10% off upfront payments made in January to help you on your way to finding a career that you’re passionate about.
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It’s World Mental Health Day today. I’m so pleased that, this year, the focus is on mental health in adolescence and young adulthood. It’s great that mental health is being talked about more and more, and that people are starting to feel more comfortable opening up about how they’re feeling.
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The top five things you can expect from changing career, based on my own early career change and those of my clients.
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Since I get so many aspiring coaches asking for advice on how to be successful I thought it might be helpful to summarise the advice I often give about starting a coaching business and post it here for those of you who are interested in building a successful coaching practice in the future.
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Whenever we’re considering making a change, or doing something new or different, it’s often our fears that get in the way. This post seeks to help you understand where these fears come from, and how to manage them.
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As a Career Change Coach, I hear many reasons for leaving what may appear on the surface to be a perfectly decent job. Whilst these reasons often vary from person to person, what I’ve noticed over the years is a strong pattern in what tends to underpin their motivations for leaving.
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Having a baby is a funny thing. In the eyes of some, you immediately age about 50 years, but, in your head, you feel just as young as you ever did. Here I share my experiences of returning to work after being on maternity leave, and tips for you and your employer to help make it a smooth transition.
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I read this morning that the average person will change career 5-7 times during their working life. If you’ve decided that this is the year that you finally ditch that job you hate, then here are five steps to help you on your way to changing career in 2018.
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Recent research conducted by the Resolution Foundation suggests that Millennials are set to enjoy the biggest inheritance boom of any post-war generation. I was kindly invited on to Andrew Castle’s LBC show this morning to discuss the findings, and what benefits this might bring for millennials
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No I haven’t posted anything new for over a year now and no, I didn’t get lazy or super busy - I have been on Maternity Leave, having given birth to little Magnus in December 2016. I’ve just returned to work and I have some exciting news about a new Career Coaching programme I now offer.
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The Quarter Life Crisis describes the anxious transition those in their 20s and 30s often experience when they start to question who they are and what they want from the rest of their lives. It often prompts the need for a career change but few know what they want to do instead.
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In this blog post, I examine the idea of changing things as a way of finding happiness. I have learnt that perhaps the answer is not to seek happiness from external things. Perhaps the answer is to change the way we see and interpret things within ourselves. I explore this concept within this blog.
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Through experience I now have a pretty clear sense of what frustrates this generation about their jobs, so much so that they’re considering leaving, or even completely changing career, as a result. so, here are 7 key tips for managing Millennials in the workplace.
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Maybe you’re feeling frustrated, disillusioned, or just fed up. We all feel like this from time to time but what do you do if you’ve been feeling this way for a while now? In this article, I take you through four key options that can help you determine what your next step might need to be.
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Following on from my last post on how to build your self-confidence, it seemed apt that my next article focus on perhaps the ultimate form of low self-confidence — the feeling that you’re a complete fraud. Here, Imposter Syndrome, and five ways to overcome it, are discussed in more detail.
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We face some form of rejection almost every day, which can impact how confident you feel. How can you build yourself up again, or maintain the self-confidence you may already have? Here are five tips on how to do just that.
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If you're seriously dreading every Monday morning, and find yourself counting down the hours each day, it may be time to reassess. Here are five signs that it's probably time to quit your job.
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I consistently see the fear of rejection as the predominant obstacle holding back my clients from performing at their highest potential. We must not be rejected in any way. Here are 13 ways to overcome your fear of rejection.
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At the end of each year, I like to review what I've achieved over the past 12 months, what's gone well, and what I'd rather forget. It encourages you to think about what you'd like to get out of 2016. So, grab a notebook and get started with planning how you want 2016 to look.
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I started my Life Coaching business five years ago. I’m not going to lie – it’s been, and continues to be, an uphill struggle. In a saturated market, it is hard to get clients. In this post I share the five things I’ve learnt that are fundamental to sustaining a full-time Life Coaching practice.
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There's not much of 2015 left. Where has the year gone? If you've still got business/career/life goals you want to achieve before the end of the year then book a coaching session in for December and you'll get 90 minutes of coaching for the price of 60, potentially saving you over £50!
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Perfectionism, defined as “a refusal to accept any standard short of perfection”, is always something I’ve struggled with. Here are my top tips on how to overcome perfectionism and move forward with your goals.
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This is a short video I made introducing myself and what I do as a Career/Life Coach. Have a watch if you'd like to find out more about coaching and what to expect from working with me.
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In your 20s/early 30s and feeling a bit stuck, anxious, and unhappy? You could be experiencing a Quarter-Life Crisis. Here's a short video of me explaining what that is.
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Last week, I attended a talk on self-discipline. Its a big issue as it’s hard to embed new habits and routines when our old ones are so ingrained. Here I share the five elements of self-discipline that we have to work on if we are to be motivated, productive and achieve the goals we set ourselves.
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When you're thinking of starting your own business, it's incredibly helpful to talk to those who have already done it. This month, I interviewed Claire Thornton, a Registered Associate Nutritionist & Lifestyle Coach, to see what advice she has for those looking to start their own business.
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Yesterday, I sat as part of an expert panel at a Diversity & Inclusion event KPMG put on looking at the challenges ‘Five Generations in the Workplace’ will create for organisations in the near future. In this post, I share the 6 key facts we all need to know about Generation Y.
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Volvic released the results of research they conducted as part of their new campaign, which found that by the early age of 25, Brits have lost the confidence they felt they had in their early 20s. They didn't feel this confidence came back again until the age of 55. This post explores this reseach.
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I was interviewed for the Coventry Radio Plus 'Talk Business' show on what factors I felt contributed to my success. Being interviewed for this radio show helped me reflect on how successful I actually am if I measure myself against what's important to me. Here are the factors I mentioned.
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This month we have a guest post from Reader's Digest, designed to help you follow through on all those great ideas you have. It can be frustrating when you have all these ideas and you just can't seem to make them happen. Here's a few tips to help you through that and make those dreams a reality.
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I'm nearly 30 - I should be married by now. I should have kids by now. I should own a house by now. I should be settled in my career by now. I should not be eating this chocolate! Sound familiar? Sounds like a severe case of the 'shoulds' to me. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have all these things before a certain age. This post explores these high expectations, usually set by others, and how we can manage them.
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Having seen quite a few clients already this year, and heard about their Christmas breaks, it reminded me of the pressure that people in their late 20s and early 30s face from family, friends and society to "settle down and have kids". I experienced the same questions over Christmas - "When are you going to have children? You're not getting any younger. I had three kids at your age." In this post, I explore why it's OK to be single at 30.
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At the end of each year, I like to review what I've achieved that year, what's gone well and what I'd rather forget. This exercise is a great way to do that. It also encourages you to think about what you'd like to get out of 2015. By thinking ahead you gain an idea of what actions you need to put in place to achieve next year's goals.
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We start to think about all the negative reasons for not trying something new, all the things that could wrong, and all the reasons why we're not up to the job. We start to doubt ourselves and our ability to cope with the worst case scenario. Here are two ways to overcome these doubts.
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Telephone and Skype job interviews are used by employers more and more to shorten the recruitment process, overcome location barriers and bring down costs. In this post, guest authors The Carling Partnership have prepared tips for you to successfully tackle both types of remote job interviews.
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I'd say about 90% of clients come to coaching when they're in their late 20s, regularly commenting that it was their looming 30th birthday that had triggered their anxiety about where their life was heading. There's something about turning 30 that shakes us awake and gets us questioning ourselves.
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Although coaching has been around for many years, the majority of people still don't know what it is or what's involved. Here, the most common myths about Life Coaching are dispelled and an accurate picture painted of what coaching really is.
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In a survey carried out by the World of Difference programme in 2010, 73% of Britons between 26 and 30 agreed they were experiencing a 'quarter-life' crisis, Generation Y's version of a mid-life crisis.
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A Life Coach can help you get back on track with your goals, rather than rushing through life with little thought or self-awareness of whether the path you're going down is the right one for you. I offer face to face sessions to clients all across London, and further afield by telephone or Skype.
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This article is about exploring the negative characteristics of those within generation Y, those in their 20s and early 30s are being labeled with in the workplace.
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When we’re contemplating change, there are always decisions to be made. We can stay in decision making mode for a long time, going backwards and forwards as we think about all the pros and cons of the options we have before us. It can feel quite paralysing, so much so that sometimes we opt to just do nothing.
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Bear with me here, I do have a point! Having got in to road cycling about a year ago, my passion for the sport has had its ups and downs. At first, I just wanted to give up. It was so hard (because I was unfit and didn’t know how to cycle efficiently) and everyone was so much faster than me. I couldn’t keep up and felt like a failure.
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The other week I went to a seminar on the use of Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques in coaching. Many coaches I know are trained in NLP but it’s not something I've looked too much in to in the past as my background is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy so I was keen to find out a bit more about it.
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I’ve been working with a budding writer recently and he sent me this great take on a well known parable.
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Short interview for AskimoTV on the quarter-life crisis, what it is and how coaching can support individuals in their 20s and early 30s going through this confusing and frustrating period of their life.
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Short interview for AskimoTV on Positive Thinking, what it is, the importance of thinking positively and how you can train yourself to view things from a more optimistic viewpoint.
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The School of Life recently ran an interesting talk on the fear of change. Dr Chris Irons, Clinical Psychologist, suggests that its the stress linked to change that we fear, rather than the actual change itself. With no frame of reference for the change, we fear the unknown.
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The research that I completed recently was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, which I was obviously delighted with. It is a short summary of the research, as the word limit was very strict, but it gives a good overview.
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Last week, I was interview by David Barry who publishes a small online magazine. He contacted me and asked if I would be happy to discuss my recent research on the Quarter-Life Crisis and what I did as a Life Coach. Of course I was delighted to take part and here is the interview.
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Today’s sermon comes from that of Catherine Cardinal (appropriate name hey!), author of The Ten Commandments of Self-Esteem (1998). I love this short book because it is so simple and straightforward.
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During our 20s and 30s we seem to struggle for several years, trying to figure out who we are, what we like and dislike and what we want to do with our lives. We want to establish our own unique identity more than anything but the current climate frustrates this process
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This post seeks to explain what I do as a Life Coach and dispel some of the myths out there.
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It has struck me lately that the more and more technology develops, the less and less people are going to talk to each other. Not a good thing in my opinion.
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So I’ve started to hear people mutter those wonderful seasonal words, “My New Year’s resolution for this year is going to be...”. If you’re anything like me, you can’t even remember what you said your resolution for this year was.
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We often interpret situations inaccurately. We add two and two together and get five. We wrongly piece together information about what has happened and what has been said.
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When we know we aren’t at our happiest, it can be hard work trying to figure out which bit of our lives to focus on first. We end up losing sight of the bigger picture because we spend all our time worrying about and focusing on all the different thoughts racing around in our heads.
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"When are you free next?" I dread it when a friend asks me this question. The answer usually involves me flicking through the pages in my diary, freaking out at all the commitments I’ve penciled in and then having to suggest a date in about six weeks time.
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We could learn a lot from Mr Luhrmann. I was listening to the lyrics of ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’ on the tube this morning and a few of his lines seemed to offer good guidance to life I thought.
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A few days ago, I attended a talk held at The School of Life in association with Psychologies Magazine (both are great resources for those interested in self-development by the way).
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