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Getting back to business after the school holidays
The beginning of the autumn term has always had me raring to go, with renewed enthusiasm to tackle whatever the rest of the year has in store. I put this down to the many years that I have spent studying and working in education (a new academic year = a new start) and fond memories of moving onto the next stage of my life, catching up with friends again, brand new stationery, and the textbooks that were brimming with information that I had not yet explored. Plus I’m an absolute sucker for crispy golden leaves, brisk walks in the cold, cosy jumpers and a huge steaming mug of hot chocolate…
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Discover what you really want from your career
Review of The Squiggly Career by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis and How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric and The School of Life Losing my job when the first lockdown hit not only made me feel like I had said goodbye to a part of my identity, as an employee of an organisation that I had worked at for just over a decade, it also left me with this lingering feeling of being seriously stuck. Sure, I had home schooling to keep me well and truly occupied but I knew that wouldn’t last forever (thank goodness…) and so my thoughts kept on returning to what I was going…
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Exploring Your Career Timeline
Now that my role as home school teacher is surplus to requirements, and I am edging ever closer to the end of my postgraduate coaching course, I have been contemplating the next step in my career. I like to review and reflect upon my career every now and then, especially when I am at some kind of transition in my life. Looking back over the ups and downs in my career provides me with a clearer idea of what I do and do not want in my next role. Reminding myself of the strengths and skills I have developed, my key achievements and proudest moments, my core values, my personality…
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Life after coach training…
Business planning, credentialing and exploring creative approaches to coaching! I can happily announce that I have completed the taught element of my Postgraduate Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching after months of attending tutorials that have kept me well and truly enthused about entering the coaching profession and having spent many hours practising my coaching with willing volunteers. So, as this part of my journey comes to an end, what is next? Well…the work continues! I am currently spending most of my days flitting between the roles of mum/home school teacher, blogger, coach and student. In between teaching, keeping two energetic boys entertained all day, and dishing out snack after…
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Coach Training Update (The Journey Continues!)
Since my last post, which outlined my steps to becoming a coach, I have completed the second module of my coaching course (yay!) and thought it was about time that I shared what I have been learning about coaching over the past month. I will also provide some more useful tips for new coaches that I have picked up during my training and give you some simple coaching tools that will help you to: Unearth the limiting beliefs that are holding you back and create new empowering beliefs that will move you forward Challenge your inner critic and tune into your inner compassionate voice instead. What have I been learning?…
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Steps to becoming a coach…
If you have heard about coaching and are curious about what it can do for you, or if you are interested in training to be a coach, then read on to find out about my experience of coaching so far and why I decided to become a coach. I will share how I chose my training course, the top tips I would give to new coaches, and the resources that I have found to be particularly useful. On top of all that, I have included some coaching tools that will enable you to: review where you are in your life right now contemplate how you want your life to be…
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Pause, Reflect, and Discover… What can you learn from lockdown?
As we take tentative steps towards opening up our businesses and communities, as well as making our own personal emergence from lockdown, there will undoubtedly be a mixed bag of feelings and a whole range of different experiences. Maybe you have actually relished the time to pause or perhaps there was no time to pause at all and you were busier than ever. You might have had to spend time recovering from the virus or have endured a long period of isolation to shield yourself and other family members from it. Maybe you have been going through immense heartache and have been grieving over the loss of loved ones, or…
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Beat procrastination and start accomplishing your goals
Just a few thoughts that run through my mind when I am tackling my task list for the week: I’ll do that tomorrow… Hmm, that’s going to be a bit difficult, I’ll move that task to next week… I’ll just check [insert social media platform of choice] first and then I’ll make a start on my ‘To Do’ list… I can’t do that because [insert poor excuse…] I don’t mean to boast but I have become quite skilful in the art of putting things off! At times my goals just don’t seem like a big enough priority (I just know I want to achieve them someday…) or they are taking…
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Ten Tips For Maintaining Progress Towards Your Goals
The beginning of a new year is typically a time when we start setting out our very best intentions for the year ahead (and beyond). You may have even set some challenging, life altering goals and are on your journey to accomplishing them. You really want to keep up the good work but then…life happens! Those routine tasks or chores get in the way, other things seem to take a greater priority or, at the end of a hard day’s graft, you just want to put your feet up and lose yourself in a bingeing session of TV and tasty snacks (you are only human after all and those TV…
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Keeping track of your goals: A step by step plan
Hands up if you ever made a meticulous and well-thought-out list of goals or a personal development plan that you really really wanted to pursue and then months (or even years) down the line you come across it again having not done very much at all…hopefully this is not just me?! Note: This post contains no sponsored material or affiliate links and is based on my own opinions, views and experiences of carrying out the personal development activities described below. Unfortunately, this was a pattern I fell into all too easily: producing wonderful plans at the end of various development activities I had undertaken and then putting the plans away…