Why did I become a coach?

“We have just one life and, even if we had more, each of them would be the most important one”

- my mum.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt I was meant to do something great with my life: make an impact. There was just one problem… I had no idea what that should be.

At 21 I would wake up in the night, anxious, questioning the meaning of life. What would be big enough and important enough to dedicate my time to? And shouldn’t I already know it? And already be doing it? I wanted to find my calling, yet I discovered that everyone else seemed to be really confused about the topic. There were certain key questions the grown-ups around me were avoiding:

What is the most important thing in life?

What is life’s purpose?

What’s the north star I could focus on?

And I badly wanted answers.

Is it God? If yes, then which one?

Is it love? If yes, why?

Is it having amazing and various experiences and a lot of fun?

Is it becoming rich and/or famous?

Is it becoming a doctor and saving lives?

Is it to simply be happy?

Will I ever know?

Following completion of my master’s degree in economic sciences, I concluded that, whatever this most important thing was for me, I would first need to find a job and start making money. This led me into a role at a successful online fashion store in Berlin where I was amazed with everything that surrounded me. Hence, I focused on learning the ropes and postponed my search for deeper meaning. I enjoyed my day-to-day life in the comfortable office overlooking East Side Gallery and Spree River in Berlin, gazing across the shimmering water whenever I could look away from my computer and heading out for lunches with my international colleagues. But I also remember asking myself: Is online analytics what I ended up doing? My most important thing? Is selling fashion online the great purpose I wished to dedicate my time to?

In the meantime, I did a lot of reading. Book after book. Psychology, self-help and self-development, philosophy and novels. Could someone tell me what is this all about? I kept reading and came across the concept of meaning: people seem to be satisfied with their lives as long as they see meaning in it. Fine. But who defines it? Isn’t meaning just a story? How can we be sure it’s real?

One day, my mum gave me The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a beautiful 12-week creativity course where the author teaches you how to nurture your inner artist – that is a child and wants to play. Two main tools that she promotes are an ‘artistic date’ (one hour per week spent alone doing things you always wanted to do) and ‘morning pages’ (three pages of automatic handwriting done first thing in the morning) plus a lot of coaching exercises.

Following Julia Cameron’s course, and particularly doing morning pages, was how I first carved out enough space for myself from my corporate schedule to explore what I really liked and wanted from life.  Some people get up early to go to the gym before work; I would instead spend an hour journaling in one of Berlin’s cafes. I have been building on that for over 5 years and it continually improved my self-awareness.

During my research, I saw signs pointing in the right direction but for a long time I wasn’t ready to accept them. I read a book by Osho which presented a metaphor to describe the journey of life: we are a drop of water and we are meant to dissolve in the ocean. But is it a drop dissolving in the ocean or is it the ocean dissolving in the drop? I didn’t like that idea. Maybe that was a comforting thought for certain Buddhist monks but not for me. I am a very special drop and I want to do great things: me!

Another time I visited a numerologist. She looked at my date of birth and exclaimed: “You are an 11 and you were also born on the 11th, that’s a powerful combination. You are meant to serve.” Me? Serve? I don’t think so, I thought to myself. I will find the most important thing and will then do it. I’m not going to serve anyone.

My growing dissatisfaction was compounded by a toxic personal relationship. It provided the thrill that I was missing in the rest of my life and, as long as I was busy with that, I could avoid the real questions. Luckily, after a year it became unbearable. Hurting, unhappy and with my mind fixed on ‘whose fault was it?’, I needed to take action. So I quit my job, found a new one, and, in the two-month gap between them, I signed up for a Vipassana – a 10-day silent meditation retreat. And it changed everything.

The first three days of the retreat were a shock. Getting up at 4:30am, meditating 10h/day and eating very light, vegan food with the last meal at 5pm. I wasn’t allowed to read, write, nor interact with any people. Alone with my thoughts and feelings, I thought about the events of the previous weeks, then months. My mind was bored and desperately looked for something to do. It would create jokes during meditation to make me laugh. I noticed how the lack of normal stimulation – chatting with people, looking at photos, reading and writing – made me slowly start doubting my interpretation of events, as if these things were necessary to confirm my view of the world. When my mind had nothing new to process and didn’t get its normal content, it felt like it had run out of its usual fuel.

Finally, I started to zoom out and look for patterns. First over the last days and months, then years, and then in my whole life. Memories started to emerge – people and places I hadn’t thought about in years and unsolved traumas that would make me cry right in the middle of a meditation.

Physically, I was making an effort to meditate and observe my breath and sensations on my skin as equanimously as possible. Mentally, I then gradually started to do the same: observe my life without creating interpretations and stories. For the first time, I became aware of my own lenses. Of the one point of view I considered to be the truth… and maybe a view that wasn’t the truth. I started seeing other people’s motivations and reasoning. Their struggles and perspectives.

Giving up my story felt like letting go of a part of my identity. It was painful. I alternated between calmness of meditation, joy of having new insights, annoyance and sadness that came with seeing my own shortcomings and exhaustion from the whole process.

By the evening of the last day of the silent retreat, I couldn’t stand the meditation anymore. I couldn’t listen to the lecture; I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. Before going to bed, I sneaked out for a walk in the garden. The sun was setting and illuminating the clouds piling up before the storm. It was truly beautiful, and I stared at the sky in an awe. And then I saw it. It was all stories. Stories I had created in my head. All my problems, conflicts and resentment. I felt as if for my whole life I had lived in a small apartment with a big box standing in the middle and, in one moment, I looked at it and realized it was there, limiting me and my space. A box with imaginary stories that I could simply get rid of.

We are all doing the best we can. Nobody ever wanted to hurt me. I tried to put that epiphany, that moment of clarity into words. I knew I couldn’t write it down, so I had to remember it. What I memorized was this: at the essence of everything is love. We are one and meant to love one another. The stories we create – about who we are and who are the other people – create the separation. They aren’t real. Conflicts result from ignorance; the separation from love - either yours or of other people. Tears of joy flew down my face. Please, I whispered, I don’t want to ever forget that again. I felt light, I felt free.

Ten days before I had wanted to get answers to questions like ‘whose fault was it?’ and ‘what is the very special thing I should do with my life to be successful?’ But I had since learned that these questions were all wrong. I started to feel love and compassion for myself and for all the people in my life, including the ones who had hurt me. I was that drop that finally started to miss the ocean, that didn’t want to be separated anymore, that accepted that when it dissolves in the ocean, the ocean dissolves in it.

I came back to Berlin changed. But even though I had all these new insights, they didn’t seem to be actionable. I still didn’t know what I should do with my life. How could I pass to others what Vipassana had given me? Anyone can do a silent meditation retreat, but the people who need it the most will most likely not do it.

Another year had passed. With new clarity I reorganized my career. I quit my job again, registered as a freelancer and started working remotely while traveling the world. Life as a digital nomad became damn good. I started spending most of my time next to white beaches, working 30h/week from cafes sipping coconut water, meeting extraordinary people and enjoying every minute of my time. This was possible because of the healing that love and new stories I had started telling myself brought about.

But one thing didn’t change: each time I spent my time writing code the frustration returned. ‘You’re not supposed to do that’ nagged a voice in my head. So, I kept searching. And I kept reading. And one day, on a plane from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to Berlin, reading a book by August Turak, I came across his definition of the purpose of life: “The purpose of every human life is to be transformed from selfish to selfless being”.

It resonated with my heart. It was true. That’s what I discovered in Vipassana. THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. And if it is… then that’s what I have to do. I am here to serve. I will serve God and people by helping them transform.

The feeling of this moment is hard to put into words. It was an overwhelming joy of finding a treasure, of finally knowing. I felt like I had won a lottery. I saw an open road in front of me. A road that I was going to travel. I knew that this time it didn’t matter how much effort will be required or how hard it would be. This time I had wings, this time I wasn’t alone. I had the power of the whole ocean in which I had pleasantly dissolved.

Three days later I enrolled onto a Diploma in Transformational Coaching with Animas. My new life – wholehearted, connected and filled with synchronicities – was about to begin and I couldn’t wait. Finally, I was ready.

This was just the beginning, before the opening credits of my coaching journey, but it created my ‘why’ that motivated me throughout these months. And I later understood that this experience became my personal justification for adapting the positive philosophical choice. It created the place from which I coach.

I first entered the walls of Regent’s University in London on a sunny May morning. “By the end of this weekend you will be ready to start coaching” - said the trainer when the class started. “I know it sounds scary; I was there. But just trust me that it will all be good.” I looked around, taking in this new environment. ‘Space’, ‘client-led exploration’, ‘listening’. I liked it.

During a coffee break I went to the toilet. As I was leaving, a woman passed me in a narrow corridor. I caught a glimpse of her blue eyes. The eyes I knew so well! I’d had her photo on my wall for years! Can that be true?

- “Are you Julia Cameron?”, I asked with a shaking voice.

- “Yes, I am”, answered my superstar, one of the people that influenced me the most, who taught me what it means to live a creative life, how to explore your inner world on the pages of a journal, who packed my backpack for a long way that brought me there.

- “I can’t believe this is happening. I’m doing a coaching course in another room, but... but it’s because of you! It started in 2015 when I started doing morning pages, you changed my life and... I just want to say THANK YOU!”

In such moment is there anything more important to say than just, simply, ‘thank you’?

It took her a second to understand what I said but, when it clicked, she smiled, looked into my eyes intensely and warmly and said: “you are welcome”. As gently and powerfully as only she can be. And then she left. I heard someone asking me, “are you ok?”

- “Yes”, I answered wiping away tears. “I just met my idol, it’s fine.”

A few minutes later I texted my mum:

“I just met Julia Cameron, the universe is showing off”. She answered: “No, it sent you a kiss for the way.”

This is how my training started. It was transformational. I realized that coaching is not a skill you learn, you have to become a coach. With practice, my coaching strengths slowly became visible. Before I became a coach, I worked as an analyst so at the beginning I was insecure about not having any background in psychology. Then I realized that a coaching session is a form of analyzing data, just of a different kind, and my analytical training, diverse work and life experience and understanding of the business world is actually very helpful.

But something else proved to be even more important. The relationships themselves. “I always feel better after talking to you; everything just looks easier”, said one client. Another thanked me for becoming a coach after a session when he shared with me a vision he had during meditation and I was able to explore the metaphor with him.

I learned and used various tools from CBC (Cognitive Behavioral Coaching) and NLP with my clients and explored the events in their lives and strategies for change but looking back at what really created the transformations, it was authenticity and love. Being curious, being focused, being present, always keeping the client in positive regard and being willing to serve. Now, having completed over 120 sessions, I’ve learned what the most important elements of a coaching process are and they form an acronym: HUBL – the client wants to feel Heard, Understood, Believed in… and Loved. With these 4 elements present, transformation is inevitable.