About Karolina
Karolina Frydrych is a certified life coach on a mission to help people courageously create the creative lives that they truly want to live. She completed her diploma with Animas Centre for Coaching, the world's leading school of Transformational Coaching, accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Karolina holds a master’s degree in economics and, before becoming a coach, enjoyed a successful career as a business and marketing intelligence analyst and computer developer. Her journey started in a fashion e-commerce company in Berlin before becoming a location-independent freelancer, working remotely from 4 continents, and travelling the world as a digital nomad, which she continues doing to this day, supporting her clients through online coaching sessions.
My story
As a daughter of an entrepreneur and a writer, I watched my mum spend her days reading and writing movie scripts while my dad built a ski center from scratch. They showed me that it’s possible to live creatively on your own terms but… there was one problem. They didn’t give me a blueprint for it that I could apply to my own life. I take after both of them: I’m an analytical problem solver, like my dad, and a creative empath, like my mum, so choosing who I wanted to be was a huge problem. I was interested in, and wanted to be… everything!
So, when following graduation, I found myself working a traditional 9-5 corporate office job as an analyst, I felt a painful mismatch between my expectations of how life would look and the reality. I liked solving problems and being productive but was upset by the lack of control over my schedule. I was interested in more topics than my narrow corporate specialization and longed for interacting with more people than the same colleagues from my department. And finally, for a few years, I completely abandoned my creative side.
“That’s the adult life” and “it’s not that bad” were the messages from everyone around me. But, for me, it was bad. I was frustrated.
Then, in a coaching retreat held in Sahara Desert (long story), at a campfire surrounded by sand dunes, I was asked a simple question: “What do you REALLY want from life?”. It woke me up. I understood that, as an old Chinese proverb goes, “If I don’t change the direction I am headed, I will end up where I am going”! And this would be celebrating my 35th and maybe 40th birthdays in the same office building, possibly in the same chair! I would never write my books! I would be leading a team and earning more money, but it did not sound appealing at all. I had enough money. What I needed was meaning. Self-expression. Pursuing something I would truly care about. And time! I felt stuck, scared and lonely.
I wish I had hired a coach back then. But I hadn’t. So, I had to discover everything by myself. “One step at a time” I thought and started teaching myself the skills I needed to offer my work as a freelancer. I read myriad self-development books to work through the fear, unhelpful thoughts and beliefs. My world slowly expanded. I journaled, learned meditation and convinced my anxious, overthinking mind to start working with me rather than against me to enable execution of my escape plan.
Without any guidance, I got stuck several times and cried through countless nights of fear and anxiety before things eventually came together. I quit my job, found remote clients, started traveling and, one day, when spending my lunch break in a pool in Kenya, I realized I was finally living my dream life.
At last, I had it figured out.
Except… I hadn’t.
The meaning piece was still missing. I was still doing the same job, that didn’t engage my empathy and creativity, just while traveling.
The gifts we get are a funny thing. Using them isn’t optional. If, focused on one side of us, we ignore another, it causes suffering. The stories I wanted to write, and never did, were painfully hanging over my head.
So, I decided to start writing.
I tried… and I couldn’t. It turned out that what was blocking my creativity wasn’t only the lack of time. It wasn’t laziness. It was something deeper. It was what Julia Cameron calls ‘the artist’s block’.
So, I embarked on one more journey to freedom, this time inwards. Learning about creativity and what blocks it, I understood that the desire to create is like a natural force in all of us. Some of us want to create art, some invent new technologies, some build businesses, some bake cakes, but it is universal. Provided the right conditions people start creating and it is what makes them feel most joyful and alive.
And the greatest creation is... our own life.
I became unceasingly fascinated by this idea. So much so that, once I overcame my own artist’s block, I decided to dedicate my career to helping others fulfil their potential. In a coaching session I’m creatively using all my gifts and what I learned in order to unlock the gifts in my clients. It often feels like magic.
Every day, when I see them succeeding in building their lives of freedom, daring to do things they couldn’t do for years, and witnessing the energy released in the process, I feel like I’m finally doing, and being, ”everything”.