Have you ever felt stuck in life and yet you feel that you can do much more with your life? Have you ever wondered what you are passionate about and what your life’s purpose is? To answer these questions, one needs a deeper level of self-awareness. Unfortunately, most often than not our careers are chosen without taking into account our life purpose and passion and yet it is the basis for having a fulfilled and purposeful life. In his book the Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren asserts that a life without purpose is meaningless. If you don’t know your life purpose or have no idea why you were put on this earth, you are not alone. There are many men and women who wake up every day and go to jobs they hate or spend their days living a life without meaning. Fortunately, there is hope! You can find your purpose in life, and the help you need to navigate this new world of discovery is a “click or dial” away. A professional coach is a saver. Everybody needs one. Sometimes all that is needed is one question to push you out of your comfort zone, stretch you and challenge you to start you on the life path you were created to take. One regular morning, I was at my office doing my job and a senior manager asked me a seemingly random question, “how long are you going to do this job”? As simple as that question seemed, it took me to my subconscious mind, and all of sadden I was aware that there was a lot I wanted to do, there were many deep seated dreams and aspirations for which I did not have a clear plan of action. I immediately started a personal journey of discovery with the goal of finding and pursuing a career path that I would be passionate about. I worked hard, was very ambitious, and I reached where everyone would consider successful- yet I felt like there was still something missing. It was not until I got a professional coach, who walked me through a process of building my life around my natural strength and giftedness, helped me discover my “why” and enabled me to do something that resonates with who I was created to be, that I started serving from my “sweet spot”. While we may not always have such kind of bosses, mentors or friends who can challenge us to do and to want more, we have it in our power to intentionally seek for professional coaching services. What that senior manager did is the typical work of a professional coach. A coach doesn’t give answers; he/she asks questions. Questions that make your unconscious conscious! As Psychiatrist Carl Jung put it, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I personally chose to be a professional coach because I want to help people to discover their untapped potential. It hurts me to see professionals performing at what is less than their capacities. Checking off activities they signed off in their performance plans, doing the minimum to simply get by. I know this because I was once there. Research has shown that 85% of professionals hate their careers. Everyone has remarkable potential and they can do far more than they think. Your current career status is not a true reflection of your full potential. Abraham Maslow came to this conclusion that human potential is unlimited. We all need someone to call out our seeds of greatness and that is what a professional coach does. I want to help put an end to adhoc professional support. Have you realized that most of the interventions we undertake; be it training, workshops or seminars are adhoc events organized to just fix shortcomings in someone’s performance? I believe it should be a process as opposed to an event. The #1 leadership expert John Maxwell maintains that, “If you really want to be motivated you go for an event but if you want to grow you embark on a process”. I am obliged to help my countrymates embark on this process. As a professional coach, I also want to help people discover that personal growth and development is not an option. Over the years I have observed that for most of us, after finishing school and acquiring a job, we tend to settle in our comfort zone, with no further growth plan. We leave our professional growth plan to the employers. If we simply leave our personal growth plans to chance, we will find ourselves stuck in jobs we do not enjoy and therefore will not make meaningful contributions to society. Have you taken a moment to realize that every famous performer or athlete has a coach? Bill Gates said, “Everyone needs a coach”. Someone once made a comment that “people may talk about 20 years of professional experience they have had when in fact it was 2 years of experience repeated 10 times”. We should embrace a culture of professional coaching to avoid stunted growth. The author is an Independent Certified Coach, Trainer and Speaker with the John Maxwell Team. Prior to this, she served as an Operations Manager and Project Specialist at United Nations Population Fund, both in Rwanda and at the UN/HQ, NYC. www.ab-leadership.com
