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How I fulfilled my vision to become a Personality Type Coach

January 29, 2019

I have skilled up in personality type to fulfil my vision to become a Personality Type Coach. Read about this journey and what it can offer you.

I spoke on ‘Learned Wisdom: Journeys in Type and Transition‘ at two international conferences in 2019. Firstly, I spoke at the British Association of Psychological Type (BAPT) ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ Conference in the UK in April 2019. Then I shared this information locally at the Australian Association of Psychological Type Conference in November 2019.

This presentation focused on personality type in my transition from corporate employee to life coach, writer and personality type practitioner. I shared how I help women negotiate major change with personality type as a compass.

A central part of my journey has been becoming a Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Type Coach and practitioner. So I share more here about that journey, what it means and the wisdom it can offer.

Learning about my own personality type preferences

Becoming a Personality Type Coach and practitioner has been a key pillar of my professional identity journey. Learning about my INTJ personality preferences made all the difference in the world for me. I realised that I am a rare bird, with people with INTJ preferences making up about 1.5% of the population. INTJ women are even rarer at 0.5% of the female population, one of the rarest gender/type combinations. This helped me to understand I might naturally be and feel different. Learning more about my introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging preferences helped me honour these parts of myself.

I learnt more about my preferred cognitive processes and how I approach the world as an Introverted Intuitive (Ni). And I learnt about how this interacts with my preference for Extraverted Thinking. Strongly logical and structured, I also have intuitive flashes and a sense of knowing what to do. This can be a tricky combination I don’t always understand. I’m not naturally good at explaining my vision to others; I’ve had to work on this. I need to get out of my head more and into the bush or the ocean, swimming with fish. I’ve been able to do this in recent years and I feel more balanced because of it.

personality coach
INTJ Leadership card from Pocket Personality™ Cards

Becoming a Personality Type coach

I wanted to learn more about personality type and share this wisdom with others. So the three pillars of my life transition and identify shifts were becoming:

  1. a life coach
  2. a Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type coach and practitioner
  3. fluent in the intuitive art and symbolism of tarot

I achieved all of these goals and in this piece, I focus on my journey of becoming a Personality Type Coach. You can read about my journey of becoming a life coach here.

Beginning the journey

There are many ways to become a type practitioner with a number of assessment instruments like the MBTI®. Some people begin this journey earlier in their lives, weaving it into careers in psychology, education or human resources areas. It’s often an adjunct to other skills and pathways.

My journey began later in life when I was in my mid 50’s. My passion for Carl Jung and his writings has been a long-term personal interest. I was keen to formalise this passion through learning about type as the heart of my new evolving professional work.

I began by enrolling in a program to build type assessment skill. The coach I worked with had trained with Mary McGuiness, a Sydney-based type practitioner, trainer and author of many years’ experience. So I chose to train with Mary and gained my certification in the Majors Personality Type Inventory™ instrument in 2016.

This journey coincided with becoming a carer and companion for my mother who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. I supported her for many months until she passed away in late 2017. At the same time, I faced redundancy from my job of 30 years in a government organisation. This all happened concurrently with training and practice to become a life coach. So I sought to develop my new skill-set quietly and deeply at the most uncertain and challenging of times.

Gaining a broader perspective

You don’t actually need an indicator instrument to work out personality type I have since discovered. It’s just one source of information and this needs to be checked against other information in a coaching context. But you certainly need a deep knowledge of the theory and practice of type however you develop this rich information. And that was my focus in becoming a type practitioner – deep work and deep knowledge.

Gaining the basic skills in personality type assessment via an instrument is a great place to start. I embarked on my learning with passion and fascination. The preparation, training and follow-up were intense.

I see a parallel between the depth of skills in becoming a personality type coach and practitioner and that of understanding your personality type. Both take an investment of time and money and being open to deep learning.

As a person learning about your own personality type preferences, a free online test without the necessary background or knowledge to interpret and apply the learning is only going to take you so far. And possibly in the wrong direction.

Likewise, I can’t imagine how anyone can do the initial training to become a type practitioner without deepening their practice in an ongoing way to provide quality insights to clients.

As Roger Pearman says:

In the hands of a knowledgeable and artful user the theory and instruments are like a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, and for far too many learners, they tend to be played like a dime store violin.

personality coach

A clear vision and deepening my learning

I wanted to be playing in this personality space with skill. I had a clear vision of my offerings for personality type right from the start. It’s been a long journey to put the pieces in place as I concurrently upskilled as a coach and dealt with challenging life circumstances.

I took my learning about personality type seriously, researching and writing about type, guest-posting in various places. I updated my accreditation to include the Majors Personality Type Elements™ instrument, again with Mary McGuiness. This training and tool provide deep insights into the hierarchy and interaction of cognitive processes at play for individuals.

Looking for community

A priority in launching a new professional identity and becoming a personality type coach was connecting with community. I embarked on a search for this, joining the Australian Association of Psychological Type (AusAPT) and attending their inspiring conferences. The key value I’ve found in AusAPT and international connections like BAPT is a sense of community.

For me, this also means contributing to the community. I offered to help AusAPT with social media/communications and now co-ordinate this in a volunteer capacity. I’m the NSW representative on the AusAPT National Committee. I’ve connected with BAPT, attending webinars at the crack of dawn here in Sydney through the power of technology. It’s been great to connect too with US-based APTi and with CPP, now The Myers-Briggs Company, in Australia.

Learning from experienced type practitioners

I have been privileged to connect with the most generous type practitioners locally and abroad. The professional exchange and opportunities are there if you seek them. The type community has many excellent teachers who want the community to grow in learned wisdom. They invest their time and energy for those who wish to take up the opportunity.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with and learn from experienced type practitioners and mentors. Apart from Mary McGuiness, these include:

  • Dario Nardi – learning about the neuroscience of personality and brain-savvy coaching
  • Susan Nash and Sue Blair – learning about whole type and the three lenses of type
  • Jane Kise and Ann Holm – learning about saboteurs and self-sabotaging patterns based on type preferences
  • Peter Geyer – custodian of the AusAPT Type Research and Practice Collection, advisor and mentor to me and many others

I have worked through a Type Coaching Mastermind with two outstanding type practitioners, Susan Nash and Eve Delunas. This focused on looking at evidence-based ways of identifying type and follow-up coaching strategies.

personality type coach
1. With Susan Nash at AusAPT Conference Brisbane, 2018 2. Undergoing brain EEG with Dario Nardi, AusAPT Conference Sydney, 2017 3. With Dario Nardi working on neuroscience of personality and brain-savvy coaching, AusAPT Conference 2017 4. With Ann Holm and Jane Kise in Brisbane for AusAPT Conference 2018 working on saboteurs

Shaping my vision

I’ve read many books and articles and written and reflected. It’s been a process of evidence-based life learning that includes writing 442,000 words in a year, coaching others and being a gatherer of women’s wholehearted stories. These stories, alongside mine, are about women’s key life transitions with personality intersecting and weaving its way through.

So in becoming a personality type coach and practitioner, I’ve developed a deep knowledge, a community and skills of writing about this knowledge. I’ve created my personality type offerings along the way. My vision was to offer personality type coaching to women in a deep way so I could share the same insights I experienced. And that’s what I’ve put into practice.

personality coach

Developing the Personality Stories coaching package

Personality Stories, is a unique coaching package I have shaped, using technology and balancing ethical type approaches with modern opportunities. My coaching clients are women all over the world. I work via Zoom video conferencing and other media including blogging, ecourses and social media.

I trialled the coaching package extensively with fellow coaches to ensure it meets women’s needs. In this way, I have continued to grow and apply my deepening knowledge of personality type in practice. This is a process I intend to continue in partnership with my clients, teachers, mentors and community.

As Jane Kise comments in this article about the depth of personality type learning as a practitioner:

Yep, the theory provides that deep of a well—I’ve been working with it for 20 years and am still gaining new insights.

I gain new insights every day. I’ll build on my knowledge for many years to come with this rich community and my clients as partners.

What’s in the coaching package?

The Personality Stories Coaching Package includes:

  • online personality assessment via the Majors Personality Type Inventory™
  • an online ecourse on personality type preferences and whole type, also a tool for self-assessment
  • a copy of ‘You’ve Got Personality’ by Mary McGuiness
  • a 90-minute coaching debrief 1:1 via video-conferencing to look at information and insights about client type preferences.
  • a follow-up summary and reflections workbook on type preferences

My years of teaching and adult education experience, as well as coaching skills concurrently developed, made this possible.

So, true to type, I created the vision and framework. I skilled up over time, applying my preferences and also the concepts of Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work. And I now share this learning in a deep way with other women. You can sign up directly into the Personality Stories Coaching program in the Quiet Writing School here:

Sign up for Personality Stories Coaching here

I’ve been lucky too to work with a global team of fellow coaches through our ‘Creative Hearts’ Mastermind. This co-created group has supported me to apply my personality knowledge practically. Their loving support and time enabled me to enact my vision and road test it with their feedback. Some of my coaching clients have been part of shaping the program too. Their feedback has been encouraging and invaluable. I am so grateful for all of this support.

personality type coach
Creative Hearts Mastermind Group in action via technology

Living my personality in my offerings 

My way of becoming a personality type coach and developing my offerings has been INTJ in orientation. It reflects my strengths: envisioning, creating, scaffolding and structuring. But I also connect, network and road test, taking on feedback, evolving my learned wisdom. My connections are deeper with increasing insight and self-leadership combined with community learning. My professional journey and the products I create embody my personality learning about myself. Importantly, they involve data and others’ input in the process as well as my vision. They will evolve with further deepening learning and practice.

Personality Type Coach
INTJ Leadership card from Pocket Personality™ Cards

Sharing my pearls of wisdom is a valuable part of my journey as a  type practitioner. The networking with other type professionals is inspiring, supportive and a source of further learning.

I look forward to sharing Personality Stories with women interested in diving further into their personality type. You can find out more about Personality Stories Coaching here. I’d love to be a Personality Type Coach working with you to inspire your wisdom and personal learning. You can sign up into the course directly via the Quiet Writing School here:

Sign up for Personality Stories Coaching here

You might also enjoy:

Personality Stories Coaching

Life Coaching – making meaning in times of transition

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

Intuition: how to understand and master it – a review of ‘The Inner Tree’ by Maura McCarley Torkildson

Never too old – finding courage and skill to empower your dream

Personality skills including how to be the best you can be as an introvert in recruitment 

Being a vessel – or working with introverted intuition

coaching transition

Never too old – finding courage and skill to empower your dreams

November 19, 2018

never too old

Never too old + countering the “too old” story

It can be really easy to slip into thinking we are too old to start new things and step into the work of our dreams.

Whether it be writing that book you’ve always wanted to write, becoming a coach, being more visible on social media or getting back to exercise. We need to counter the “too old” story we can tell ourselves.

I’ve learnt that, apart from the most extreme circumstances, you are never too old to find the courage and skill to empower your dreams. I know because I’ve had to overcome many moments of feeling too old as I’ve worked on this journey to become a life coach, learn new skills, start a new business and write a book.

In this post, I share my experiences, resources and the stories of others to help you realise you are never too old to find the courage and skill to live your dreams.

Never too old to start over + become a coach

It’s a great honour to be featured in the inspired COACH Magazine with my piece Starting Over as a Life Coach at age 55. This tells my story of what it’s like to start over later in life as a life coach. I also provide some tips for others embarking on this or similar journeys. Having a beginner’s mind is one of the key messages I cover:

Retain a beginner’s mind, alongside your experience, to keep you grounded, humble, open and growing in wisdom.

My buddy coach, Jeanette Buchanan, is on the cover and I am so thrilled for her. We have been on this journey together as women in our mid 50’s supporting each other, constantly reminding ourselves that we are the perfect age for this journey. As we both share in different ways in our pieces, the myriad life and work experiences and skills we bring helps make us fantastic coaches.  We can relate, we have often “been there” and we’ve built our skills along the way. Bringing our body of work to bear, and being positive and open, we are able to help others along the path of their dreams. Whether it’s becoming a life coach, writing a book or starting a business, we are living examples of how to live your change.

never too old

So read the Wisdom issue of inspired COACH Magazine. It’s a free subscription magazine available at this link. My friend Debbie Fowler is also there with a fabulous piece on The Wisdom of Older Coaches and Hosting Retreats. With pieces also by Melissa Jeffcott, Christine Rose Elle, Ellie Swift and Sas Petherick, it makes inspiring reading. But read on here too for my further thoughts on countering that “too old” thinking!

Never too old to be coached

You might also think you are too old to be coached. Gaining all that life wisdom and experience that getting older brings, there can be a tendency to think we don’t need support. Self-leadership is important and it’s an area I focus on in my coaching. But we can’t do it all ourselves. My learning is that life coaching is an integral support for making major change. Life transitions typically involve big changes in identity and coaching can help us navigate these tender times.

When I decided I needed to shift from my work role of 30 years, the very first thing I did, on day one, was reach out to my friend and coach Victoria Smith. Victoria coached me, via a coaching series over 3 months, through the very vulnerable first phases of this time. So yes, you feel vulnerable, you feel a bit foolish at times and you feel you should know how to do all this. But you also need to honour that it’s tough and deep work changing the way you’ve defined yourself for a long time.

Coaching is a critical bridge to tap into our inner wisdom at such times. We often can’t do it all ourselves, just as we discover at many challenging points in life. As I share in my story about life coaching and making meaning in times of transition, coaches have been critical supports on my journey. So don’t be proud. You can have a beginner’s mind and tons of experience. And together with coaching support, you can go a long way setting a robust and supportive framework for the long haul.

Never too old to learn new skills

Another mantra we can occasionally indulge in is that we are too old to learn new skills. I’m here to tell you from my experience of 30 plus years as an adult educator and life coach that you can learn new skills all through life. I’ve had to learn so many new skills along this journey: blogging, website and social media skills, how to set up a new business, writing a book, becoming a coach, Search Engine Optimisation. And I chose special skills as well such as the intuitive art of tarot and personality skills, becoming a Jung/Myers-Briggs personality practitioner.

Many of the women I’ve coached have embraced learning skills to set them up for a new life or extension of their current one. They’ve taken their body of work forward in new ways. As you can see on my testimonials page, women have taken up new courses like Masters in Creative Writing and coaching programs. They’ve tackled ‘imposter syndrome’ and developed intuitive skills, applied for higher level positions and set up foundations for new ways of working. They have also grappled with  long-standing challenges like finding the right form of exercise and enjoying it! Others have explored social media and blogging and the right personal focus to be more active and productive. Gaining skills in each of these examples was a critical step in moving towards the vision for their life. Moreover, learning new skills is a fantastic way to keep your brain sharp and agile through-out life.

never too old

Never too old to start a business

Starting a new business or becoming an entrepreneur might seem like a job for the young too. But data provides some interesting findings about typical start-up founders:

For one thing, they were more likely to be in their late 30s and 38% of founders were actually over 40.

They also discovered that people who had stayed in a job for a long time were more likely to go on to start their own business.

There is encouragement for people like me who have had a 30 plus year career in one organisation or type of work:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, being ‘stuck’ in the same company or position for a long time, even a decade, does not diminish your likelihood of becoming a business founder,” says Ms Morrill.

Turns out the skills we have already developed in staying the course can also be applied to doing new things. Valuing your body of work over time as it evolves enables you to shape a new career or business. Learning new skills and bringing forward what you’ve already learnt as a basis for negotiating new circumstances is a winning combination.

Never too old to write a book

Writing is my passion and superpower, my authentic heart that makes me shine. So a long-held desire has been to write a book. I’ve had articles, work-related books and poems published. But I really want to write a book, non-fiction first then a novel. For years I’ve been gearing up, listening to podcasts and reading articles on writing and self-publishing from inspiring people a step (or many steps) ahead like The Creative Penn.

This past year, I was excited to get the first draft of my book Wholehearted: Self-leadership Strategies for Women in Transition written, mostly during NaNoWriMo. I finished the first draft in September this year. Those 84,000 words are currently marinating and resting. Soon, I will edit them for the next stage of this work before it finds its way into the world.

Examples of older writers and their first book

In all of this, there has been a constant undercurrent of “you’re too old” coming from some voice inside me with an ideal version of what age is the right one to write and publish a book. It’s been  empowering to see reminders that many famous authors were not young when they first published. In What’s Stopping You, Allison K. Williams reflects on her tweet that went viral:

I love that one of my favourite authors, Annie Proulx, published her first book at 57, the age I am now. That was super inspiring to read. It’s not too late, I told myself. Allison also reflects on how we need to have courage and look at what is stopping us from writing:

Let’s tell it to ourselves, too. Let’s ask, What’s stopping me from writing? and be brave enough to let go.

It’s true. We need courage to let go of what’s not helping us to get that writing done. Whatever age we are!

never too old

Courage, skills and being of service

Beautiful You Coaching Academy CEO Julie Parker says in her editorial to the inspired COACH Magazine Wisdom issue:

I also know that anyone who chooses to train to become a life coach and start a business later in life – has bucket loads of courage…. That’s saying–”I totally back myself. I’ve got this and so much more of my life to live and give. I am here in service.”

I so nodded and held my heart when I read those wise and empathetic words from Julie. It does take courage, new skills and constant self-reminders that we have so much to “live and give“. We also need to remember that’s it’s not all just about us.

If there’s one thought that will help lift us up to a wider vantage point, it is remembering that we are of value in being in service to others. It’s about sharing what we have learnt through experience, supporting others just as we have been supported. Shining a light just as others shine a light for us. Being a wayfinder as my friend Diana Frajman, of Crone Confidence, reminds us:

So if you have already made the shift and are out ahead of the herd, blazing new trails leading towards this change, then you are a Wayfinder. It is not enough to stand on the cusp alone. Use the curiosity that got you to this spot, provide the answers to others for the questions you have already asked, but most of all, clear the trail and light the path so that others can also find their way forward.

What are you never too old to do right now?

So have a think about what you might be telling yourself about being “too old”. Love to know your thoughts so we can all shine a light for each other. Here are a few prompts:

  • What stories are you telling yourself about what you are “too old” to do right now?
  • Who says? And how are you going to counter that?
  • What are you going to find the courage and skill to do right now?
  • What’s stopping you and how can you tackle that?
  • Which skills would you love to hone to take you forward?
  • How can you be more courageous and bold in your work in the world?
  • Where can you shine a light and be of service to others?

And if you are looking for a coach to work with you to light the way, I’d love to be that coach for you!

never too old

Here are some more inspirational reads to light your way:

Crone Quotes from Crone Confidence

5 Reasons to be Glad You’re a Late Bloomer 

Later Bloomer – Creativity Never Gets Old

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story! 

And download the 10 Tips for Creating More Meaning and Purpose in Your Life Personal Action Checklist. Get moving!

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coaching transition

Life Coaching – making meaning in times of transition

October 19, 2018

Light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning.     

Teresa Tsalaky

coach with me

I’m offering a limited number of life coaching opportunities now! Work on creativity and self-leadership to make your dreams and plans come true.

As a Certified Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy and with Certification in Personality Type assessment, I can help you negotiate major transition times. Whatever the change that is happening or that you desire to manifest, we all need support through challenging times. And life coaching is such a valuable investment to support you in major change and transition goals.

I focus on creativity and self-leadership in my life coaching. The women I work with have often put their creative needs and goals aside for others. Or they are working in job roles that are more like a ‘shadow career’, as Steven Pressfield describes it in Turning Pro, rather than the real thing. If you feel like you need support to get back to what you truly desire to be and do in life, I’d love to work with you.

Here’s my story of what I learnt on my transition journey to self-leadership and my creative life goals. And more on how I can support you to make meaning in times of transition to your life desires via life coaching.

Negotiating major life transitions

Working with life coaches has been a key support helping me to make meaning all the way along my two year transition journey. Even with all the experience I had as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector, I needed support. We all do, especially when trying to make major change. It’s all about our identity; that’s why it’s such hard and vulnerable work. We define ourselves via certain roles in life – mother, partner, teacher, employee, leader, writer, daughter, wife. When in major life transition, we often need to look at these defining roles, reshape them and embody them and new ones new ways.

life coaching

We can feel quite lost at times. In the two years of my transition journey, I have been through some major identity shifts. I worked for an organisation that was the centre of my life for over 30 years. But I knew I had to leave it and get back to my creative desires in life. Then the organisation deleted my job making me redundant anyway so it wasn’t a matter of choice. This was all very painful even if change was what I wanted.

My mother was diagnosed with incurable metastatic breast cancer just as I was embarking on my transition. I spent the majority of my time with my mum supporting her as she faced challenging health and end of life. That was beyond painful. A true journey of love, I learnt so much from my beautiful mother at this most tender of life stages.

Working with life coaches to support us

Through this time, I worked with a series of life coaches as I also became a coach and negotiated these challenges and this major shift in identity.

The first coach helped me with the first very raw part of the journey as I realised I had to make major change. We put steps in place for the broad brush of the transition – shifting to part-time work and making space for change.

A second life coach helped me as we both went on our journey of becoming a life coach. We supported each other on our life coaching and life journey and still do.

And another life coach helped me with making sure my writing was balanced with life coaching as I defined the parameters of my new life in challenging circumstances. There were many other valued life coaching supporters along the way in many shapes and forms.

life coaching

How can life coaching support you?

Life coaching can be an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to the goals in our heart. Especially those long-term goals we have held very close and perhaps put aside.

It’s true that light precedes transition. It might be the light of our ideas, the creative future, the vision of what we want our life to look like. We have a sense of that new beginning to guide us but sometimes we need support as we shape it into reality. A life coach can act as that guiding hand to support us as we bring the light into play in a more grounded way.

Life coaching and the support and community of coaches is simply part of how I make meaning in life now. It’s especially powerful at times of major transition like experiencing redundancy, not wanting to stay where you are, wanting to start a new business around your passions or seeking more creative life options. It is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength to seek support and company as we reshape our identity and structure more self-leadership into our lives.

What is life coaching?

Life coaching provides a goal oriented framework to help you achieve what you want in life. It draws from a variety of disciplines including psychology, sociology, personal development and social development. Life coaching helps you move from where you are to where you want to be through supported and guided goal-setting and action. Importantly, it’s not the same as therapy or counselling; it’s more future focused and action focused.

People who choose to work with life coaches come from a range of backgrounds and work on goals as diverse as:

  • making a positive career transition to a more fulfilling job or way of working
  • driving creative projects such as writing a book or starting a blog
  • becoming healthier, fitter and stronger
  • having positive and meaningful relationships
  • improving self-confidence and self-belief
  • creating energising and nourishing self-care routines
  • living an inspired and balanced life.

Life coaching can take place in person or via technology such as over the phone or via Skype or Zoom. It can take place with individuals, in groups or in workplaces.

What do I bring to coaching and where do I focus?

In the journey to become a life coach, you create a focus that reflects your uniqueness and the rich blend of what you have to offer. No two life coaches are the same!

I focus on creativity and self-leadership coaching and I bring to that: extensive experience in adult and vocational education; certification in personality type assessment; and a passion for creativity, writing and books that drives everything I do. Supporting women seeking meaning and identity through major life transitions such as I have experienced is a key priority.

With my background in leadership and creativity, I am interested in how coaching can be a form of self-leadership. Just as we can lead others and take the lead in situations, the most important form of orchestrating leadership is how we take ourselves forward and bring the pieces of our lives together. I believe everyone can shine in their own way. We just need to find the threads that pull our unique story together.

I’m keen to support you also on your journey to work on goals that bring more heart to what you do and want to do. My coaching and writing work at Quiet Writing will support you to bring the threads together to actively create your story and shine.

life coaching

So how about you?

So if any of these thoughts and experiences about creativity and career, about self-leadership and feeling more wholehearted, about doing the work, are resonating with you, I’d love to work with you.

I especially work with women who:

  • want to be more wholehearted about the work they do or the life they lead; by this I mean, feeling more whole – like all of your important and valued parts are in play and activated, not left at the door or buried somewhere;
  • are trying to find their unique voice and space in their career and creative world;
  • have skills and experience – a body of work – they wish to take as a foundation and recast into a new vision and path;
  • are keen to get moving on creative projects like writing a book, getting a blog or website out into the world with their unique voice or want to craft a new creative life or business; or
  • want to take the steps to create the life they want and to succeed and shine.

I’d love to have a chat with you if you’d like to feel more satisfied with your life and make more informed choices about how to be creative and make a living. Or if you’re keen on getting your creative projects moving and are trying to work out how to combine creativity and career more effectively. These are areas I care so much about and can support you in.

become a life coach

Life Coaching with me – consult + life coaching series 

Here are the Life Coaching options and offerings available to help you make meaning in times of transition.

A free initial consult

If you are considering a life coaching series or combination of options, the best place to start is a free 30-45 minute consultation chat on where you are and where you want to go. This helps to see if we are a good fit and to begin to identify key goals and possible actions.

You can go direct to this link to book a time for your free consult chat via Zoom video-conferencing. You will be asked to fill in a pre-consult questionnaire so I can learn more about you and your needs in advance of our conversation together.

Create Your Story Coaching Series 

With six-sessions over three months, this coaching series helps you identify where you want to be and how to get there. In very practical goal and action-oriented stages, we move one step at a time with wholehearted, grounded support. As always with life coaching, you let me know where you want to focus! It’s your story. I’m there to guide you to help you create your story – the one you desire so deeply.

The investment in your future for this life-changing series is $330AU(around $235US) per month for 3 months. This is payable in advance each month.

Life Coaching with me – other options + offerings

There are other life coaching options and offerings available too. These options don’t need the up-front coaching consult as we get straight into the program! Just contact me via terri@quietwriting.com in the first instance. After an email chat, we might find the free consult chat is a good place to start if you want to combine options or are not sure where to start.

Personality Stories Coaching Package 

Understand your personality and psychological type preferences as a tool for self-leadership! This package includes a personality type assessment, a Jung/Myers-Briggs personality based e-course which includes an introduction to work by Carl Jung, Isabel Myers-Briggs and Katherine Myers. You will also go through identifying your best-fit type through assessment of your type, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, knowing your preferred cognitive functions and less preferred functions.

As a life coach certified in Psychological Type assessment, I take you on a deep-dive journey that will change your self-understanding and potentially, your life. I know, because it radically changed mine! You can read more here on that journey.

The Personality Stories package includes:

  1. Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (Majors PTI™) online assessment. This helps you begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type.
  2. Self-paced online course on personality type: An online course (about 3 hours to complete) on Personality Type so you can understand type and your preferences.
  3. A copy of the book You’ve Got Personality by Mary McGuiness, sent to you wherever you are in the world.
  4. Coaching debrief to work through your results: A 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results and learning from the ecourse. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report in this session. We check whether your assessment result is your best-fit Type through discussing your results and preferences. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward in your life.
  5. Quiet Writing summary: Once your best-fit personality type is identified via theh debrief, you receive a Quiet Writing summary of your type preferences. This includes key points about your personality preferences, further reading, tarot connections, tips for managing stress and how to shine your personal entrepreneurial style in your life. There are also journal prompts to work further with what the learning brings up for you.
  6. Email support for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is $350AU (around $250US) as a special ‘first release’ price. Let me know via email terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited enrolment.

I’m also preparing an exciting group coaching offering in Sydney that covers similar territory. Learning about personality type with others in a group setting can be so much fun. Email me to be the first to know of this program!

Pathfinding one-off Coaching Session

This package aims to help work your way through specific options such as study, courses, becoming a coach or blending your passions into a new business. If you are interested in coaching – either becoming a coach or exploring other specific options, then a pathfinding coaching session might work for you. This involves a brief pre-coaching questionnaire, a 90 minute chat via videoconference or teleconference to explore potential path options  where I can share my experiences with you, email access to me for 2 weeks after, book recommendations/links and customised resources to guide your path (as required). It is targeted to solve specific life path dilemmas.

Cost = $250AU (around $180US)

Certified Coach for Life Coaches in training

Just a reminder too for life coaches in training that as a Certified Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I can help you with your own pathway towards certification as a life coach with the Academy. A six session coaching series with me can count towards your own certification pathway as well.

I can especially help you with:

  • writing + creativity – like getting your book draft done, working on blogging, developing a writing practice, having a more creatively inspired life;
  • enhanced self-leadership for a more wholehearted life – whatever that looks like for you;
  • personality type assessment combined with your coaching series to understand your personality strengths as a coach, entrepreneur and creative.

Praise and where to contact me:

If you’d life to read what others have said from working with me, you can read more about their experiences here.

You can read more about working with me here.

Please contact me:

In practical terms, I’m in Australia but you can be anywhere in the world. We would work via the technology based service Zoom for our sessions. You don’t need any special software or setup!

I would love to work with you now or into the future in Quiet Writing Coaching!

Please feel free to share with anyone who you think might benefit from this opportunity. Download this quote and image to put in front of you or save it to Pinterest!

life coaching

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes life coaching, writing, personality type and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Your body of work: the greatest gift of transition to a bright new life

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

Become a Life Coach + live your change

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave and helpful

Creative practices in my tool-kit

introversion personality and story

Quiet in my life – how learning the value of quiet made all the difference

September 25, 2018

quiet in my life

As part of the #quietwriting hashtag and Instagram Challenge, we shift now to looking at the value of quiet in my life and yours.

Use the #quietwriting hashtag across platforms – for the challenge and beyond – as a way to create, connect and link us together on our ongoing journey to draft, process, create, make space for writing and other creativity and otherwise live a wholehearted creative life. Read on to discover more and connect with creative others about the value of quiet.

Quiet in my life

When I was thinking of prompts for the #quietwriting challenge, it wasn’t long before the word ‘quiet’ popped up.

Why? There’s no surprise that quiet is a value I hold very dear as a writer, an introvert and an INTJ in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type. You only have to look at my business and website name to see that!

For the challenge, I’ve chosen to share an image of two books that made a huge difference in my life:

  • Quiet by Susan Cain
  • Quiet Influence by Jennifer Kahnweiler

I’ve written about both books in more detail in my free e-book, 36 Books that Shaped my Story.

The first time I understood my need for quiet in a deeper way was when I worked on assessing my psychological type with a coach. My coach said to me, asking about work contexts as a leader, “Do you close your door?” It was a light bulb moment that helped me to value my need to close the door occasionally, get quiet and regroup. It was okay to do it and it was something I needed to do.

That insight and conversation was the beginning of a deeper journey into understanding my introverted intuitive nature and its needs. These two books helped me immensely in that journey.

quiet in my life

Quiet in my life as a leader

I read these two books on quiet and introvert strengths when I was a leader in the adult vocational education sector. My role involved leading many people, up to 3,000 staff and with responsibility for tens of thousands of students and their learning environment and programs. I often had to speak to large groups. Tough negotiations and meetings were commonplace. I also worked in the political arena, advising our state Minister for Education in an environment that was mostly anything but quiet or relaxed.

These books, furthering my knowledge of my INTJ personality type, helped me to understand the value and strengths of being a quiet worker and leader. Skills like the ability to listen deeply, read widely, prepare and research well, ask valuable questions and use writing as a strategic skill. You  need to learn how to deploy these skills and use them to effect in different ways. Not comparing yourself to extraverted others helps. Being able to understand and marshal your strengths is a powerhouse of knowledge and skill you can quietly own and use. Jennifer Kahnweiler’s book particularly helped me understand key six skills of quiet influence and recognise my strengths in this space. Writing is one of these and my superpower that I use in many ways to enact quiet in my life and its influence.

quiet in my life

Quiet in your life

How about you? Think about roles you have been in and where you have learnt the value of quiet in your life. As an introvert, you might need to learn to work differently and honour what is natural rather than see it as a weakness. Extraverts might need to learn to carve out space in their lives for quiet because it’s not always a natural preference.

  • Were you a quieter person growing up? How did it make you feel?
  • How do you make space for quiet in your life now?
  • What does quiet look like in your life?
  • How does quiet play out in your relationships, between the extraverts and introverts in your life?
  • Did you feel different if you were a quiet person at home or at work?
  • What did you do about this? Do you understand it?
  • If you were not the quiet person, did you find it challenging to make space for quiet in your life?
  • What helps you quieten?
  • Which practices at work or in your creativity help you to harness the power of quiet?

Love to hear your thoughts and see any images on Instagram – just use the hashtag #quietwriting for the challenge or anytime so we can connect with you. Or share your thoughts in the comments or on Facebook.

quiet in my life

Understanding your personality

If you’d like to work more on understanding our personality, I’ll be rolling out my offerings in the personality space in mid October. It’s not just about introvert and extrovert aspects though these are important. You learn about your preferences around sensing and intuition; thinking and feeling; and perceiving and judging as well.

The Personality Stories package includes:

  • personality type assessment online
  • an online course on personality preferences so you can understand your type
  • a coaching package to work on deep-diving into the wholehearted story of your personality.
  • a Quiet Writing personality type summary, and
  • email support for two weeks after.

Personality Stories coaching package

Here’s the detail of the coaching package. You receive:

  1. Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (MajorsPTI™) online assessment. This helps you to begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs 4-letter personality type.
  2. Self-paced online course on personality type: Working through the self-paced Personality Stories ecourse. It takes about 3 hours (max) to complete this short online course. I hope you will find it fascinating learning about Carl Jung, his followers and their rich work on personality type.
  3. Coaching debrief to work through your results: Once you complete the ecourse, we have a 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report, and the four letter code arrived at, in this session. The coaching debrief focuses on checking that your assessment result is your true or best-fit Type and discussing your results. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward and embed it in your life.
  4. Quiet Writing summary: Once your true personality type is confirmed from the coaching session, you will receive a Quiet Writing summary of the key aspects of your personality type to take forward. This includes links to further reading, tarot connections and suggestions for managing stress and fostering creativity in your life.
  5. Email contact for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is priced at $350AU as a special ‘first release’ price. Just let me know via email at terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited October enrolment.

Quiet connections via #quietwriting

So I welcome your comments here or on social media. I look forward to seeing #quietwriting images that share thoughts and open up dialogue on quiet in your life. Just share an image on Instagram using the tag #quietwriting and follow the prompts each day for ideas. Here are the prompts:

#quietwriting

And the #quietwriting hashtag will continue beyond the week of the challenge, so use it anytime to create and connect. You can learn more here about #quietwriting

Just a reminder of the key points:

  • Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect.
  • Hashtags are such a fabulous way to gather, finding our creative kindred souls and inspiration online.
  • On Instagram, you can now follow hashtags as well as individual profiles. So follow #quietwriting now and into the future to connect around creativity and your quiet work, writing and making art.
  • You can head on over to the #quietwriting hashtag on Instagram or Facebook or other social media anytime and see what’s popping up. 
  • You could also post on your own profile on Facebook as well using the hashtag.
  • Often we write quietly, behind closed doors or in busy cafes, privately. Let’s shine a light behind the scenes and capture the process of writing and creativity in action, wherever we are.

Get on board with #quietwriting + the hashtag challenge!

These are just some ideas and they will evolve as we all contribute. It doesn’t have to be all about writing – it can be any form of creativity. Nor do you need to be an introvert; all of us need quiet writing time to get creative work done.

I’ll feature my favourite images from the tag here and on Instagram and Facebook so share your images for the chance to be featured!

So join the #quietwriting party and let us know what you are up to! Who knows what creative connections you might make to support you on your journey or inspire your next creation?

Welcome your comments and images to inspire and connect our creativity online from the quiet in my life and yours!

quiet in my life

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can work with me to help reset your creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide to help you create with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for an October coaching start!

You can download my free 94-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below.  You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

#quietwriting – growing creative community and connection

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

How to be more aware of cognitive diversity in the workplace

Personality skills including how to be the best you can be as an introvert in recruitment

Introverted and extraverted intuition – how to make intuition a strong practice

coaching transition work life

Become a Life Coach + live your change

September 21, 2018

You must be the change you wish to be in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

become a life coach

I’m excited to share my journey to become a life coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy + opportunities if you also want to become a life coach!

As a certified life coach, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I am truly delighted to share my experiences with you.

My key message is to be the change you wish to be.

Truly live it! And a fabulous pathway to this is to embark on the personal development journey to become a life coach. In this way, you can support the growth of others, as you beautifully enhance your own.

becoming a life coach

My journey to become a coach

It’s hard to believe it’s more than two years since I started on the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Life Coaching course journey. I remember receiving my learning resources with the most gorgeous, handwritten welcome note from lead trainer and CEO, Julie Parker.

I identified becoming a life coach as a key part of my transition from 30-plus years as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector.  For a long time, I’d yearned for more freedom and time for creativity, especially to write the books I desired to write.

I had already started to make a plan to leave and start a new life. But a particular incident at work one day was like a kick in the guts, accelerating my transition journey. A message delivered in a meeting left me stunned, staring at the blue sky outside, unable to participate any further. It left me reeling. In essence, it was saying that after all I had invested in the organisation, I was no longer valued. I cried all the way home and hardly slept for days. Unable to work the following week, I spent days recovering. In that time, I began to plan my new future.

The first thing I did the morning after the incident was reach out to my friend, Victoria, who was a life coach. Feeling very raw, I asked her to help me chart a course to create a new life. Soon after, I started coaching with Victoria, then began part-time job-share arrangements at work to make space for transition. Before too long, it became clear that a new life plan was not a choice, it was a necessity. Redundancy was imminent – the organisation was also headed in different directions and I truly was not valued.

Fast forward to now

Since that time, I completed the Beautiful You Life Coaching course and honed my life coaching skills through a series of deep engagements with clients. Building on my skills as a teacher and leader, I’m now a practising Certified Life Coach focused on creativity and self-leadership, especially for women in transition. Women who are undergoing experiences like I have been through. I am an accredited Personality Type assessor and practitioner, as well as a writer and intuitive tarot reader. These are all skills I chose to learn or deepen as I went on this journey – my passions and loves.

Life coaching is linked to writing and teaching as key aspects of my life. Writing is my creative focus and raison d’être, but teaching and supporting people to reach their potential is also what I have engaged in deeply through-out my work life. I’ve been a coach and mentor in the workplace and worked with coaches in the workplace as a leader. So when the time came to leave my job, my transition plan had writing and coaching as two core elements complementing each other.

Becoming a life coach became a key pillar of this plan for a new life. It’s a skill and personal journey you can integrate with many other life skills and passions as you seek to shape a new life and be of service to others.

Working with life coaches + life transition

I can’t say enough about the value of being a life coach and working with life coaches to support you on key transition journeys. Working with coaches has been a key support along this two-year transition journey, helping me to make meaning. My coach, Victoria, helped me start my journey at that very tender time when I knew I had to make plans to leave. As well, on the coaching journey with Beautiful You, every trainee has the opportunity to buddy coach with a fellow trainee. Below is a picture of me (on the left) with my gorgeous and inspiring coaching buddy, Jeanette. We shared powerful and supportive learning and coaching experiences as we mutually embarked on this adventure.

becoming a life coach
Photo credit Emma Louise Newby @emmalouisenewby

My coaching needs focused on strength and self-care as I was also supporting my mother who was very unwell with cancer. Sadly, she passed away at the end of last year after a very difficult time. I focused on making sure my self-care and wellness strategies were in place when life was tough. When I was caring for another just as I was making a major life transition.

Now, I am much healthier and stronger, swimming in the ocean a few times a week and back to yoga after a break. I also worked with a certified Beautiful You coach on my writing to make sure it was a priority on this journey. I went on a writing and yoga retreat in beautiful Hoi An, Vietnam.

After two years on this journey, working with a number of coaches, studying with Beautiful You, becoming a Personality Type practitioner and establishing both my coaching and writing practice, life looks very different. I’d like to help you make life look different too – so read on!

become a life coach

Why become a life coach?

Life coaching is an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to achieve our goals. Especially those long term goals we have held very close. Life coaching and the support and community of coaches is simply part of how I make meaning in life now.

It is especially powerful at times of major transition and creativity like: experiencing redundancy, not wanting to stay where you are, starting a business around your passions, writing a book or seeking more creative life options.

I struggled as I wrote this piece to separate out the journey to become a life coach from the fabulous support and experience that life coaching has afforded me. They are in essence all part of the same journey. It becomes a skill you learn but also a mindset you live. My learning to become a coach coincided with other deep life experiences that involved holding space for others at critical times. My skills as a life coach helped me navigate those times with self-leadership and strength.

Some of the reasons to become a life coach are that it is:

  • something you can do from anywhere, a flexible skill that is infinitely portable.
  • work that you can dial up and down, in combination with other life priorities and work streams.
  • a skill that integrates with other life passions: Life coaches work in all kinds of niches reflecting their uniqueness.
  • a rich and ongoing journey of personal development.
  • a way to connect with other like-minded people interested in self-development and deep connection.
  • focused on being in service, using your skills, knowledge and experience to support others.
  • a rich skill-set for all of life: mindfulness, listening, asking questions, holding space, supporting, encouraging and cheering others on.

Why Beautiful You Coaching Academy?

As a graduate, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I wholeheartedly recommend the Academy’s Life Coaching Course. The many positives of the program and experience include:

  • solid theory and practice, well-structured and professionally managed with the ability to study online from across the world;
  • exceptional leadership and teaching via CEO and lead trainer Julie Parker and her team, all skilled, successful and experienced life coaches;
  • a rich, diverse, supportive and welcoming community of coaches within the Beautiful You network;
  • the ability to learn how to build and grow your own coaching business you can operate from anywhere in the world and with a global reach;
  • an academy that supports and promotes the work of its coaches, providing opportunities to shine and extend;
  • the opportunity to pursue a certified coach pathway; and
  • making many new deep friendships and connections across the world via a common interest in personal growth.
become a life coach

Become a life coach with my support

So, I am so excited to be offering a number of coaching opportunities for you to become a coach as an affiliate of the Beautiful You Coaching Academy.

Firstly, if you know you would like to sign up for the first Beautiful You Coaching Course in 2020, don’t delay. It’s 80% full already and places fill quickly.

As an affiliate, I endorse the course and receive an affiliate payment for providing this recommendation. You have no additional costs in enrolling and there is an exciting benefit for you as well!

You can read further below about the opportunity to work with me also for a 6-session coaching series at no cost to you as well.

You can find out more about the course at the Beautiful You Coaching Academy website here.

  • Certified Life Coach
  • Shine Award

Importantly, if you wish to access the 6-session coaching session with me at no cost to you, make sure when you complete the order form to enrol in the course, that you enter MY NAME – TERRI CONNELLAN – (first and last) in the CODE field of the order page. This will link you to me and my offer. So easy!

Important Note: If you enter my name in any other area than the one instructed, (which is the code field at your enrolment stage – please see graphic below), or not at all at the exact time of your enrolment, you will not be able to receive my affiliate offerings. This is not something that can be amended at a later time and so please be careful at your sign up stage to do this as I want to be able to support you on your coaching journey!

become a coach

Thanks to @annamarialocke for this image!

Create Your Deeper Story life coaching series

So more on my offer!

In choosing to become a life coach with Beautiful You, I would love to offer you the opportunity to work with me as your coach! This is via a ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series of 6 sessions over a 3 month period on areas important to you and your life path. Just remember to email Beautiful You with my name BEFORE you enrol.

The value of this investment in your future for this life-changing series is $330AU per month, a total of $990AU over 3 months. But it will provided at no cost to you. You only need to make sure you enter my name at the CODE field in the Course Order/enrolment form (as above) and remain in study to the end of the refund period.

The ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series helps you identify where you want to be and how to get there in very practical goal and action-oriented steps. One step at a time with wholehearted, grounded support and practicality.  I focus on creativity and self-leadership coaching but you let me know exactly where you want to focus! It’s your story. Skilled in personality type assessment, I weave personality type knowledge deep into my coaching and offer special deep-dives into this area as a separate opportunity.

As a Certified Life Coach with Beautiful You, I can help you with your own pathway towards certification as a life coach with the Academy. A six-session coaching series with me can count towards your own certification pathway as well.

Where to contact me:

So I hope you are excited by what all of this means for you!

To become a Life Coach, you can enrol straight away via the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Course Page (make sure you include my name on the form as above!) or you can contact me if you have any questions:

I would love to support you to become a life coach and to work with you!

Please feel free to share with anyone who you think might benefit from this opportunity.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes life coaching, writing, personality type and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Life Coaching – making meaning in times of transition

How I fulfilled my vision to become a Personality Type Coach

Your body of work: the greatest gift of transition to a bright new life

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave and helpful

Creative practices in my tool-kit

transition work life

Your body of work: the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

February 22, 2018

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Leaving an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years, I reflect on this transition and the gift of learning from my body of work over time.


body of work

Leaving a long-term job role

Today marks an auspicious day when I leave an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years. It’s not without sadness. And it’s been a strange conclusion in many ways. I’ve been on leave for some time caring for my mother who recently passed away after a long battle with terminal cancer. So not being in the workplace as I leave, the usual farewells have not been part of the process. It’s as if I have disappeared off into the sunset on another journey.

This is in part very true. I realised about two years ago that I no longer enjoyed my job or working in the organisation. The organisation had changed and so had I. It was time to get back to my long-harboured creative loves and pursuits that lingered in the margins of my days. The books and creative inspiration I craved and hung onto as I made a long commute to work by car and train became key. This liminal time became a passage of transition as I sowed the seeds of my leaving into the stitches and seams of my days. I realised my heart was no longer in it as I applied for jobs I didn’t really want.

In truth, this leaving had been a long time coming and at this stage, I had already started to move on and transition to another life. The one I really wanted to be living. You may know that feeling – your heart has left the building, or relationship or place. And you walk in the door each day feeling so empty dragging yourself through the day until it’s time to leave. So you make a plan to leave for good to create a new life.

transition

The greatest gift

My time in the organisation – a large government department focused on adult vocational education, TAFE NSW – was not without great joy and opportunity. The greatest gift of this transition has been to reflect on my body of work over time to plan a vision for a new life.

It’s so easy when we feel the sadness of moving on to devalue the past, all that we are and all that the organisation and its people have given us. The opportunities, the connections, the people, the learning, the vision, the strategy, the excitement – it can all get snowed over in a narrative of loss. There’s a tendency to risk losing the good and the valuable continuing threads with all of these feelings.

Pain is a player in this scenario too as we may feel undervalued. In my situation, I’ve been made ‘redundant’, my job ‘deleted’ in a restructure I am no longer a part of. The language itself is a challenge to deal with, not exactly creating the best of feelings. We can tie our self-image to this boatload of emotions and feel ourselves being towed behind it, awash with anger. In this, we can risk losing focus on the valuable gift of the resources of such timing.

But the greatest gift hidden in all of these experiences is what Pamela Slim calls our ‘body of work’ – the thread that ties our story together. This is the story we have been crafting and creating from our desires, our dreams, the opportunities, the interactions, the people we worked with, the projects envisaged, the products created and the services delivered. Therein lies the seeds of so much wisdom.

transition

Your body of work

It took a painful experience for me to realise all of this and to start to move on. A chance gut-wrenching workplace experience one day was the catalyst that made me realise I could no longer stay. I had to make changes. The next day I reached out to my friend, Victoria Smith, a life-coach and inspiration, someone who’s been down this road before me, to help me track a new path.

I’d reached a low point and I knew I could no longer navigate this time by myself. My coaching series with Victoria became the blueprint for a new life. A conversation about Pamela Slim’s ‘Body of Work’ in that coaching series was a pivotal piece that helped to tie my transition journey together.

The trick with a wise transition is to reflect on the driving force and heart of your work over time. What really drives you? Across all the job roles you have done, what are the recurring passions? What makes you come alive? Which themes occur in various ways again and again?

Pamela Slim says that her motivation in writing the book was to:

find a set of “new” skills for the world of work in the twenty-first century that would provide options, flexibility and freedom to workers across every mode, in every industry.

Her work enables us to do just that by identifying these core elements:

  • defining your roots
  • naming your ingredients
  • choosing your work mode
  • creating and innovating
  • surfing the fear
  • collaborating
  • knowing your definition of success
  • sharing your story

transition

My body of work in transition

As I’ve moved through this time of transition, I have worked through all these areas. You will see these themes woven through my blog posts, as I’ve shared my story along the way. I have realised that the key threads that tie my story together are:

  • making a difference (always a motivator for me, sharing skills and knowledge to help others);
  • teaching, coaching, mentoring, blogging (different forms of empowering others and sharing knowledge, skills and experience);
  • creativity (innovating, leading it, fostering it, writing);
  • leadership and self-leadership (leading others means leading yourself first);
  • being a reflective practitioner and knowing myself (a constant search for self-understanding, professional development and reflecting on experiences in work and other life roles);
  • writing (the authentic heart of it all, being a writer, becoming a teacher of writing and weaving it as a strategic and professional superpower in my life);
  • introversion and intuition as key strengths and gifts as an INTJ, the captains of my personality ship I needed to learn to work with; and,
  • in all of this, being wholehearted in how we live and work, not bringing parts of ourselves to the door of any workplace or relationship.

Bringing all this together in a new way into a new life and business is exciting but challenging work. It’s taken consistent work towards my vision sustained over time. And it is about hard work and not luck as Kerstin Pilz reminds us in this beautiful piece, ‘Why luck had nothing to do with my self-directed life.’

Making a path for my transition

So finding myself feeling half-hearted, experiencing a ‘loss of heart’ as Lynn Hanford-Day describes it, a kind of burnout, I shifted to a job-share arrangement 18 months ago to plan a new future. Coaching with Victoria helped me shape this new path and I knew the ingredients for the future, based on the key threads of my past and taking them forward.

I set my goals of:

  • becoming a Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coach (achieved July 2017)
  • becoming a certified Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type practitioner (achieved December 2016)
  • working with my Introverted Intuition preference as a key compass especially via tarot and oracle card tools (achieved via courses, personality work and ongoing practice in 2017)

Setting and achieving these goals has been the backbone of my transition journey, with key learning milestones stepping the way.

authentic heart

Core desired feelings as guides to transition

My core desired feelings are at the heart of everything I do. I want to feel and convey being:

creative, connected, flowing, intuitive, poetic.

Connection especially has been a theme now and finding new kinds of networks. Not being in a traditional workplace can mean a loss of connection. At a time of leaving the workplace, I’ve developed rich connections with a beautiful community of fellow life coaches. We support and inspire each other. I’ve also had the chance to develop deep connections with valued coaching clients who have honoured me through sharing their journey.

Via social media, especially Instagram, I have found the most amazing kindred creative souls. Through Quiet Writing, women have shared wholehearted stories of transition inspiring me and others as we reflect on and initiate change. The hallmarks are startlingly similar across the stories, though they play out in different ways. I am meeting more and more online friends in real life in the most incredible encounters where we share our stories. The personality type community is another tribe of people where I feel a strong connection and source of learning and growth. And I know I will reconnect in different ways over time with many special people from the workplace.

Creating your story

As we move through times of transition, we can create our story, as George Bernard Shaw reminds us. The special ingredients of our body of work, our drivers and passions, are the greatest gifts and teachers on the journey of change. Painful as it might be at times to feel redundant, rejected or no longer belonging to the team, it’s an opportunity to create ourselves anew.

This time can be an opportunity to interrogate what Steven Pressfield calls our ‘shadow careers’, where our lives are an imitation of the real thing we want. He suggests in ‘Turning Pro’:

If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.

That metaphor will point you toward you true calling.

So now I move full steam into a new career focused on being a writer and a personality and life coach supporting women to create their wholehearted story at times of transition. I know the ingredients of my body of work. Writing, creativity, making a difference, coaching, teaching, reflecting, sharing knowledge, leadership, self-leadership, introversion and intuition are the threads taking my story forward in support of others.

Distilling all of this brings me to the focus of this transition and new phase of life:

choosing to journey deeper into your wholehearted story

This is the theme of my journey and body of work. And it is what I offer to you through my writing, this blog, my coaching and personality type work and my intuitive tarot work. My deepest threads weaving together into a new story to inspire yours.

Thank you for your support on this journey. May you find your true calling, bringing together all the elements of your body of work forward into a new life. I look forward to sharing my newly formed self-sustaining creative life with you in all its guises in support of your own.

If you’d like to find out how to work with me, you can find out more here. I’d love to work with you!

transition

Image of me by Lauren of Sol + Co

Thank you

With gratitude and love to my family and all my key influences, special friends, life coaches, teachers, coaching clients and fellow travellers on the journey this past year or so, especially my dear friend Victoria Smith.

Thanks to TAFE NSW and all my colleagues for our time together. It is a time I treasure and one from which the deepest friendships and connections have come. I’ve been blessed with inspiring leaders and mentors who have taught me so much about leadership and self-leadership.

Much love too to my beautiful mum, Shirley, who supported my journey transition generously and with the greatest enthusiasm even as her journey was coming to a close. This truly is the greatest of gifts for which I am forever grateful, her body of work being the deepest love of family.

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