My Career Crisis: The Coaching Breakthrough

'What am I doing here? This is all stupid! I can't do this until retirement. I'll go crazy if I don't leave soon. I'm wasting my life here!'

These are some of the thoughts that went through my mind every day back when I hit a professional crisis. Every day in the office was torture, every Sunday evening poisoned by the idea of Monday. I was constantly frustrated and didn't see a way out. I knew I had to change something, but I didn't know how or where to start.

The usual thing to do in such a situation is to change the job, right? Well, it's not that straight forward. The common mistake that people do in similar cases is to just change the company or move to another position within the existing one. And they might have the same crisis all over again because the deeper work hasn't been done. Before the change, we need to know what kind of a job are we looking for and why.

In my case, a breakthrough came through coaching. I knew I wanted to change my profession, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. During the very first coaching session, it became clear that it would have to involve working with people. As an introvert, I didn't like that at all. And then came part of the conversation that completely got me out of my comfort zone:

Coach: Why don't you become a coach?

Me: I can't do that!

Coach: Why not?

Me: Because I hate people.

Coach: Why do you hate them?

Me: Because they are not using their brains.

Coach: That's exactly why coaching is perfect. With it, you can make one person at the time use their brain.

I couldn't find a fault in the logic, so we agreed that I would investigate the topic because I knew nothing about it. And the more I investigated, the more it made sense. However, I knew that moving in the new direction will take time and I needed to bridge the interim period where I still needed to pay the bills before finishing the coaching education and getting the necessary experience to start in the new business.

Sometime during my coaching training, I realised that the biggest problem I had with the company was clash of my values with those exhibited by my working environment. Values that are very important to me (like integrity, freedom and trust) were in contrast with the company culture and this was the core reason of my deep dissatisfaction. And then one of my coaches asked: 'How can you live more of your values in the existing environment?' That shook the ground under my feet. Of course I could live them more, I just need to invest my energy in finding ways of doing that instead of complaining and fuming.

And just like that, no more poisoned Sundays, no more frustration. Without anything changing in my environment. The entire transformation was within me and it was amazing. I stayed in the company while doing my training and practice, and fully moved into coaching a few years later.

I know that a lot of you might be going through the similar challenges. According to Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report 62% of employees are not engaged and 15% are actively disengaged. If you're thinking of making a change, first understand your motivation, drive, values, what you identify with. Once you have clarity on that, think about what would you do to change the world for the better. And only then identify industry and/or job you would like to move to.