My Story: How I Found Coaching
Mel (They/Them)
“I found coaching during a period of intense crisis in my life…”
I was in another country about to turn 28 years old and I felt completely lost and empty, not really knowing who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I had lost sight of the confident person I used to be, the person who knew what she wanted and how to get it. I was getting drunk more days in the week than not, working a job that I hated, and dating one toxic person after the other. One positive thing I was doing was traveling a lot and exploring new places but even that didn’t help because each place I went, I realized that I couldn’t run away from the feelings that were overwhelming me. I remember being in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I had ever been and feeling totally empty inside. That is when I realized that I couldn’t keep escaping. I had to do something.
In a moment of sheer desperation and panic, I made a post on facebook about needing help. The post said something like: “I don’t know what I need right now but I know I need help. I’m too broke to afford therapy/coaching so if you know of someone who is training to become a therapist or life coach and needs practice please let me know. I don’t know what else to do.”
About 2 hours after I made the post, a friend in Australia messaged me to tell me that she knew a life coach who was in training and needed someone to practice coaching with. Within another couple of hours, I was chatting on the phone with this coach in training and scheduling our first call together. I felt a little strange about the whole thing but I was desperate for help and this fell directly into my lap. And just like that a couple of days later I was on my first Zoom call with junior coach Candace. Little did I know that this one call was about to change the trajectory of my entire life.
“… and one very strange thing happened, I found my calling in the very thing that saved my life.”
Finding my calling was something I had agonized over for what felt like most of my life and was one of the primary reasons I was so stressed out when I began coaching. I remember the exact moment that I realized that I could become a coach. After exploring tons of different careers, I came back to coaching and it checked every box that I had listed out. At first, I thought, “Oh no... no I can’t just be a life coach.” But then another voice inside of me said “Why not? Of course, you can.” And from that moment on, I pursued it fervently.
I’ve been a natural counselor since a very young age. At the age of 9, I actually remember sitting my friend and her sister down to talk because they were having a fight and I wanted to play mediator. Over the years, I have become an exceptional listener because I am genuinely curious about the way other people think and I always want to deeply understand them, to know the true “essence” of them. I consider this my biggest gift in life.
I always felt that I could make a great therapist so I went to college for philosophy and psychology. After college, I volunteered on a suicide and crisis hotline for several years so I could get some hands-on experience in the mental health field. During this time I was also a bartender and I would wager to say that this also counted as hands-on experience.
After receiving personal coaching, I enrolled into an ICF-certified 7-month intensive coaching program. I have now coached over 50 individuals from all walks of life and I have helped all of these people achieve massive results in their lives. None of this success would have been possible if it weren’t for my own personal coaching that I’ve received throughout this whole process. I still consider coaching to be the single greatest tool in the acceleration of my own growth and that is why I believe in it so intensely. I believe we can all benefit from the guidance of a coach.