A favorite coaching client sent me an email: “I’ve just been fired.” I emailed her right back and the email bounced. I called her and listened to the shock and hurt at the other end of the line.
I wondered what our next coaching session would be like.
It wasn’t what I expected.
My client looked radiant when I next saw her. There was a lightness to her step I’d never seen before. She laughed and was spectacular. “I don’t feel that anxiety anymore,” she explained. “I feel free.”
Something was nagging at her, though. She told me that as she was updating her resume, she saw a pattern of conflict throughout her career. Authority issues. Feeling disrespected. She wondered what was wrong with her.
I offered a different perspective. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with her. Perhaps she’s not a square peg or a round peg, but something else entirely. That she’s been forcing herself into the wrong-shaped hole and no wonder it hasn’t been easy.
So what if she doesn’t go back into that hole? What would she do?
“Visual arts,” she said promptly. Visual arts is at the opposite end of some spectrum from what she had been doing.
Her homework: To not update her resume and not look for another of the same, old job. She’s got other things that need doing.
