One of the few downsides of my coaching practice is not always knowing how things turn out for a client.
People come to coaching when they want to make a major change - and that’s not easy. In an ideal world, we’d continue the coaching until the client successfully made all the changes they wanted. But that’s not always feasible.
So occasionally, the coaching programme ends and despite lots of progress, we still lack a tangible result. It’s not surprising - it took me 8 YEARS from first investigating coaching as a career to actually go for it. As they say, sometimes it takes more than one bite at the cherry.
My coaching sessions with Ann, a creative and very funny Brit living in Istanbul, were a case in point. Ann was fed up with teaching English and looking for a new career. Unfortunately, when her sessions finished at the beginning of this year, she’d had lots of ideas but not yet settled on a way forward.
You can imagine how happy I was therefore when two months later I received Ann’s email below. I hope you find her story of refusal to give in as heartening as I did.
Hello Sarah,
I thought I would get in touch and let you know what happened after the coaching sessions finished.
I think the last time we spoke, I felt like I’d come round in a huge circle and ended up back at square one.
I didn’t do anything for a couple of months as I refused to teach and decided to go back to England for 3 weeks to think things over. While I was there, I just happened to look on Craigslist to see if there were any jobs in Istanbul.
That very day a job had been posted for a copy editor, so taking my courage in both hands, I applied for it on the spot. I didn’t get it - they gave it to someone with more experience (or actual experience rather than none!) but I did get possibly the most encouraging rejection email I’ve ever received.
Amazingly, they contacted me again and asked if I was still interested as the person they’d recruited buckled under the pressure and didn’t like living in Istanbul. So I started as a copy editor for one of the English-language daily newspapers a month ago.
The actual job is great - it’s 6 days a week with a very long Friday and only every 3rd weekend off - but I really enjoy it; the time just flies and I’m learning things all the time. Who’d have thought, eh?
I certainly learnt from you not to give up even when things are not going well and the other valuable lesson was to trust that things will happen when the time is right, because they do.
Thanks Sarah and best wishes,
Ann
