Personal Story

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

J.W.Goethe

I have always been passionate about continuous personal growth, learning and self-development, as well as being able to share my knowledge and experience with others. Today, I am living my dream, which to me, means living in alignment and harmony with my true inner values. It means waking up each morning looking forward to the day ahead, and going to bed each night feeling proud and content with the day’s accomplishments. The greatest reward for me today, is being aware that I can help someone make a positive change in their life, and I feel honored to be able to observe this transformation take place.

However, it has not always been this way ...

Expected Path

My life story essentially echoes those of many women of my generation. I have always been a good girl and followed the path that others expected of me:

Was a straight-A student through high school and graduated with an award;
Got admitted to a prestigious university and completed my Bachelor’s in Economics, the most popular field among my peers;
Found a job and supported myself through the Master’s Degree program;
Got selected for a position at a well known multi-national public accounting firm, and within several years I rose up the corporate ladder from an entry-level auditor to senior manager supervising a team of 50.

It seemed that my life was good: I got paid well, could afford to live in comfort, did a lot of traveling and had many friends. However, I had never taken the time to ask myself: What did I really want in life? There was never enough time, other things kept me busy that were way more important and, quite frankly, way more within my comfort zone.

At some point, I considered pursuing another promotion as the logical next career step. At the time, I felt that this was not what I really wanted. I did not have a clear picture of my future. My most dreaded question had been, "Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?" Red flags should have gone up in my mind signaling that something in my life had to change. However, I did not pay much attention to these and many other signals. I became prone to anxiety in communications with my team; I had no personal life and plenty of bad habits (as an example, in those days I smoked more than a pack of cigarettes per day).

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Life Changing Insight

This went on until one ordinary morning of an ordinary day I was getting ready to go to work and somehow, my glance caught a woman in the bathroom mirror. I gasped and stumbled back momentarily. I got startled by my own reflection, a strange woman with a blank stare and dark circles around her eyes. My mind refused to recognize myself in that person; she looked tired, neurotic and overweight, with frown lines around her mouth. I heard my inner voice screaming silently, ‘I can’t take this anymore! What are you doing to me?!’

This was too much... I had been putting in 15-hour days including weekends for the last three months, and that morning became the last straw; I had to put an end to this! I had a ‘now or never’ moment: It was time for me to take full responsibility of my life, to come to my own rescue, to remember who I was and what I wanted in life. It was time to re-evaluate the things I was good at and enjoyed doing.

I recalled a story from my university days, when I tutored a neighbor’s daughter who had been struggling with mathematics during her last year in high school. I remembered how rewarding it felt to learn that my student successfully passed her finals and graduated.

Reflecting on this and other stories from my past helped me find my bearings and see things more clearly. I remembered about my passion for learning and sharing my knowledge with others. I realized that I had never stopped doing that; I had regularly conducted internal trainings for my current employer and took an active part in my team’s professional development. That was when I understood that what I really wanted to do was teaching. Through it, I could help others; help to change their work, and sometimes even lives, for the better.

However, deciding to put an established career away and take on a new specialty was not so easy. It was a tough choice to make, but I overcame the fear of the unknown, took the risk and chose to take the leap. To this day, I have never regretted that decision. I became a business training instructor and facilitator, with a repertoire of more than 20 training programs.

My life got a new meaning. Every day, I learned something new, met many wonderful and extraordinary people, and shared my knowledge and experience with my trainees and colleagues. My job satisfaction skyrocketed; I was living my dream, my passion and was getting paid for it! I was able to delve further into the topics of human nature, human interactions, team effectiveness and personal development. It goes without saying that, as soon as I started doing what I love for a job, success came immediately. Moreover, my overall quality of life improved dramatically, with a better work life balance, physical well-being and a breakthrough in personal life.

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New Beginning

I could have continued on this career path for many years, but life presented me with another dilemma:

To continue the career I loved, or
To follow the development in my personal life and move to a new country.

I took the risk again and chose to follow my personal life, at the cost of having to start everything from scratch.

I went through another phase of significant changes in my environment and within myself, as I had to make some life altering decisions. I took some time to reflect on what I wanted the most at this stage in my life, and I decided to leverage the fresh start in another country to completely ‘reboot’ my entire life.

While working for the multi-national firm, I had been learning and applying fundamental coaching principles in dealing with my peers, junior colleagues and clients, as well as at team building and team effectiveness workshops. I began to realize more and more clearly that coaching was an area of expertise that I wanted to explore further.

Professional coaching played a crucial role in my life throughout this transition and in determining my future career path. Coaching helped me find my true calling, and naturally integrated all my extensive and diverse experience and knowledge into my coaching practice.

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Quick facts about me

My life to date has been rich in events and circumstances that taught me to keep reinventing myself. I had been through many changes, made mistakes and learned my lessons. My path to find my true self was long and bumpy. This is where I can help others; through my practice I help my clients navigate through obstacles on their journey of change towards a more rewarding life.

I have lived in four countries on two different continents.
I am fluent in three languages and plan to learn my fourth.
Several times, I pulled the plug on an established and successful career and started all over again. This was my way of trying to find my true calling.
For 12 years, I have worked 12-hour days on the average, sometimes seven-day weeks for months at a time.
I stopped smoking after more than 20 years of being a chain smoker.
For a number of years, I kept struggling with excess weight. Curious fact: the results of this 21-year long struggle would add up to a total weight loss of over 400 kg. I had tried all the diets in the world, until I realized that those efforts were futile and lead to nothing but more kilos gained subsequently.

Throughout my life, I had to face many doubts, dead ends, struggles and fears; I overcame my fears, fought my fights, made mistakes, regretted the missed opportunities and dealt with self-blame. Coaching has helped me to make drastic changes. Of course, I have not become perfect, and my life is not completely problem-free. Like all of us, I have to face difficulties from time to time, and I sometimes have those days when nothing seems to go right. These things are not in our power to avoid.... and this is not the point. Life is like an ocean - vast, beautiful, boundless and full of colors. Those trouble days are like islands in the ocean. The question is, whether we allow these islands to grow so big that they obscure the horizon. Coaching helped me learn to identify these shallow spots early on and navigate past them, both in my own life and through my coaching sessions with my clients.

Today, I am armed with the right set of tools and skills, and on top of that, with an unquenchable desire to help change the world for the better by contributing to the success and happiness of every person I coach. It has become a very important part of my life.

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Key principles that guide my work

Every person is a distinct and unique universe. And we must treat each universe with care and respect.
Anyone can be successful.
Only you can tell whether you are successful or not. Only you define the criteria of your own success.
Each one of us has an inner genius hidden within; it just needs to be ‘coaxed’ to come out.
Each one of us, deep within, already has the answers to all their questions. This is where I come in: with the right approach, a coach can help you find your answers.

Personal Story

Expected Path

Life Changing Insight

New Beginning

Quick facts about me

Key principles that guide my work

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