I brewed coffee, looked at my watch: it’s 9:00 in the morning in California and 7:00 in the evening at my mom’s in Ukraine, so I can call.
– Hey, ma, what’s up? What are you doing?
– I’ve been doing reports. I’m opening a new facility, they installed it today. Got to watch the new employees work.
I’m thinking.
– Do you have time to do the reports?
– Sure, there’s plenty of time.
A bunch is two days for my mom, she’s never worried about deadlines. And she relies on herself for business. I’ve always wondered how she manages to do everything: be the best friend to me and my sister, be a wife, sister and daughter, and still manage to be a businesswoman.
We talked about my sister and my dad, a little bit about politics. With mom you can talk about anything and everything, as if there is no age difference at all.
Saying goodbye to my mom, I thought how good it is when you have something to occupy your day.
I also occupied my day: the road to the garden and back twice a day, laundry, cleaning, cooking, shopping, somewhere between all this was time to watch the news, hanging out in social networks, which dragged on for a certain amount of time.
It seemed like a nice day, what do you think❓
You could watch TV series, read books, watch your children grow and develop – it’s very important, but I didn’t want to be a housewife. I didn’t like this routine housework since childhood, and I still don’t like it now.
I began to feel like I was stuck in time and all life was passing me by. I realized that it was not my day.
In Ukraine, I worked as an auditor and accountant, which meant meetings, inspections, reports. All my energy was invested in them, and the present life seemed boring. There was no movement, emotions, spontaneity, and no adventurism, damn it, there was none. There was nothing to inspire myself, no personal goals to strive for. It was just an ordinary life.
Maybe I should take up accounting, I thought.
I remember feeling great with numbers. But I would have to retrain as an accountant, and my English wasn’t good enough for college.
So I went to improve my English. But thinking about accounting, more and more often I caught myself thinking that I don’t want to do the routine work of an ordinary bookkeeper/clerk. I had already passed that stage and I didn’t want to start it again.
What is my business? The kind that resonates inside? This question haunted me. I was going to study to be a tester, but I realized that then with my husband-programmer all conversations can be reduced only to work. I studied web-design, but I didn’t go any further: I love people, communication, and I’m not ready to replace it all with a computer.
– Olya, maybe you can take a few coaching sessions with the request “What do I want to do professionally?” – My husband couldn’t stand my floundering
I didn’t understand what coaching was. Coaching? But how and for what?
I met the coach a week later. This is how the work on the way to realizing my future profession began. There were 6 coaching sessions. The introductory session was tense for me, I didn’t understand why I should tell my personal information to a stranger. At the second session, trust appeared, although I am a very cautious person.
During my work with the coach I told a lot of things, I wrote, drew, dreamed, there was laughter, there were also tears. Thanks to coaching, I answered the question “What kind of business do I want to do?”
I realized that some questions I would never ask myself, and I would never answer them, some things I had to confess, although I had never thought about them so deeply, but with coaching it worked. I confirmed my desire not to replace live communication with computer work. I realized that I wanted to help people and work without being tied to a place and country.
We began to study what kind of profession it could be. There were many thoughts. The first thing I thought about was HR, it seemed to me that I could communicate with people and it was interesting, but being an office employee was not my thing, I was repulsed. I thought about psychology, but at that time I was not ready to immerse myself in studying at a medical university. Career counselor? By the end of the sessions, I clearly told myself that I wanted to do coaching.
After all, the work of a coach is a constant communication aimed at achieving the client’s goals by discovering their potential and motivation. This profession requires constant improvement and I am ready for it. So a new stage began with a plan of action in my hand on the way to the set goal.