The view from the other side

A coaching journey

For most of my working life I have sat in one particular chair. The one where I listen, reflect back, and ask the questions. Earlier this year, for reasons that had been building quietly for a while, I found myself wanting the other chair instead.

It started with a feeling. One I had felt before, but couldn't quite put a name to. I have learned, over the years, to sit with feelings like that rather than rush to push them away, to notice them, observe them, and see where they take me.

By May, exams were in full flow in our house. Revision timetables on the kitchen wall and a fully stocked fridge that seemed to be empty as fast as I could fill it. Underneath all that noise, my own feelings were getting louder too. Self doubt. A flicker of imposter syndrome. That familiar habit of comparing myself to others.

I started asking myself the big questions. Did I still want this? Should I just get a job? What was my purpose? Was this even my passion anymore? I had kept showing up for everyone else and quietly stopped showing up for myself, and somewhere in the noise, I already knew what I needed to do.

I spend my working life encouraging women to be curious, to question themselves and trust that the answers are already there underneath it all. And I knew that to get the shift I actually wanted, it was time to find myself a coach.

So I did some research. Spoke to a few coaches. Had a good, thorough, entirely legal stalk of a few websites and Instagram pages. And then I found Sophie. A teacher, studying psychology, working towards her coaching qualification. We clicked on our discovery call, and I booked in.

Coaching, if you've never had it, is not advice and it's not therapy. It is someone holding the space for you to think out loud, ask better questions, and hear yourself properly, maybe for the first time in a while.

Session One: Learning to Say It Out Loud

I had given it some thought beforehand. What did I want my goals to be? How did I want to feel by the end of it? But on the morning itself, I decided the plan mattered less than the feeling. I just wanted to feel heard. To be seen. No judgement, no pressure, no expectations of myself. I just wanted to say it all out loud and see where it took me.

So that is what happened. Messy thoughts. Words that did not always connect or make a great deal of sense strung together in any tidy order. And it turns out that is what I needed. My only real intention had been to say it out loud, and by the end of the session I felt better. Clearer. A little more focused than I had been an hour before.

It gave my coach and I the space to build rapport, to start trusting one another, to get to know each other properly before any of the harder work began. Looking back, I think that first session matters more than we give it credit for. It is not where the breakthroughs happen. It is where the trust begins.

Session Two: Giving Myself Permission

Session two felt different. More practical, in a way. I had reflected since the first session that my need for control was really a symptom of overwhelm. Building a business, supporting clients, and helping two teenage sons through revision and exams all at the same time meant the pressure at home was intense. My strength, being organised, was being overplayed. It had tipped from useful into a pressure of its own, and I recognised the early signs of a burnout I know all too well.

I used this session to test something. A question I had been sitting with but had not quite given myself permission to ask out loud. We talked it through. We talked it under. We talked it over. We turned it round and looked at it backwards. And somewhere in all that talking, the answer became clear. I had not given myself permission. Old beliefs and old behaviours that no longer served me were quietly getting in the way. Take them out of the equation, and I already knew exactly what I needed to do.

The decision was made in the room, and I put it into action not long after.

Session Three: What Happens Between Sessions

By the third session I opened by telling Sophie that the thing I thought I needed to work through had, in fact, already sorted itself out since our last session. Instead, I had a bigger, meatier goal waiting in its place. She laughed. We both knew exactly what had happened.

The thing about coaching is that the result rarely happens in the room. What happens in the room is that thoughts, feelings, patterns and connections start to loosen and unlock. You do most of the talking. You might leave with some notes and a few actions to take away. But you rarely leave holding the actual answer.

The magic happens in between. For me, it happened sitting by the pool watching my boys mess about in the water, laughing at something so small it barely made sense, but it felt so good to laugh. Somewhere in that laughter, without really deciding to, I found myself doing a bit of my own coaching work.

Looking at the situation from my own point of view.  Then from someone else's.  Then stepping right back, as if I was watching a stranger.  I use this with clients all the time. I hadn't thought about using it for myself.

All the thoughts and feelings that had been sitting quietly underneath, half buried, half translated, started surfacing. And this time they felt different. The big questions that had once felt heavy suddenly felt lighter, and the decision that followed felt almost obvious.

I made a big decision that week. Empowering, liberating, and if I am honest, a bit exciting.

Session Four: Coming Full Circle

Going into my last session, I didn't know what I wanted to focus on. I thought about it the night before. Still nothing by the morning, or five minutes before we began. But I knew as a coach there would always be something to focus on, and that my conscious mind just wasn't aware of it yet.

As I talked, I found myself looking back at notes from an earlier session, and noticed they loosely lined up with a sentence I had been quietly ignoring. That became the focus for the rest of the session.

Explaining it out loud, I noticed something else. This feeling was not like this in all aspects of my life. My working self was entirely comfortable with it. My personal self, not so much.

What had I just stumbled on?

There had been times in my life when that was not true though, so we went a little deeper.

What was different then? People? Environment? Age? A better sense of self? I couldn't quite land on one answer, but naming the question mattered.

Saying it out loud, without the usual heaviness, felt like progress. I felt lighter. Then came the reframe, touching on things I had shared across every session so far, now sitting together differently. A new belief had formed. No longer masking. Simply being me. Making different choices. Choosing psychological safety. Saying no thank you, and moving in circles where I actually belonged, as my whole self.

Without realising it, we had come full circle. My subconscious had been quietly making connections in the background the entire time, joining things together I had not consciously linked.

Looking Back

As I write this, what's stayed with me most is psychological safety. Not what you create for other people, which is usually where my head goes first, but where you're allowed to want for yourself. For a long time the line between my work self and my personal self had blurred more than I'd noticed, and somewhere in that blur I'd stopped giving myself permission. Permission to say No. Permission to take up space without earning it first. Permission to simply be myself, rather than the version I'd quietly decided was safer to bring into certain rooms.

This is the real power of coaching. It is not talking to a friend or a partner who is listening in order to respond. It is talking to someone who holds the space, reserves all judgement, and listens in order to ask a question that helps you understand, that helps you make the connection yourself. It does not need to make sense to the coach. It only ever needs to make sense to you.

I spend my working life on the other side of this exact transformation, watching women find their way back to themselves through coaching. It is a wonderful place to be. But being the one living it, rather than watching it, taught me something I thought I already knew and clearly needed to be reminded of how powerful and transformational that feeling is.

If you are reading this and wondering if coaching is for you, get in touch. You can book a discovery call here. https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/booking/cYA7i97GYGnsbQ1bBwRt