I remember the day I decided to study Coaching and realign myself with my childhood dream of becoming a psychologist.
Back in 2015, at the age of 33 and with a 3-year-old child, going back to university to study psychology full time for 4 years was practically impossible. So I chose the next best thing; Coaching.

I always knew I wanted to help people. But I wanted to do it right. Trying to help others had backfired many times in the past, and I wanted to learn how to do it effectively and responsibly.

So I searched for the best EMCC-accredited, English-spoken, online training. I reviewed all of them. I read their curricula and was shocked by the lack of substance and depth of the material covered. It seems you can get a coaching certificate in a weekend, for a hefty price.

I refused to believe that you can reach the level of mastery required to responsibly lead others to success within a weekend.

And then I found Coaching Evolution Int'l Academy. I read the curriculum, spoke to Pamela Caravas about the philosophy of her school and her vision about the future of the coaching profession, and decided that it was perfectly aligned to my own philosophy about life and my own professional integrity.

This course was everything I needed it to be; challenging, demanding, thorough, confronting, enriching, transformative.
This is not for the faint of heart, for those who seek a quick fix and an easy way out. This is hard work. It requires dedication and courage to confront your own shortcomings. Because, how will you guide others through the pain of change, if you haven't been through it yourself first?

So here's to me, a brave woman, who decided to reinvent herself and worked her butt off to proudly stand here today and say "I earned this and I am proud of myself".
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Cheers!

A few years ago I made a mistake.

I stopped.

I had always been an inquisitive person, fascinated by evolution, growth, learning, expanding the limits of my mind, stretching my mental abilities to see how far I could go.

Then, around my late 20s, I got tired. I saw no good coming from my constant research and reading. So I stopped. I told myself “if you are not going to use all this knowledge, I won’t waste any more time on this stuff. Find something useful to do.”

Useful.

What a word. It turns out everything I was doing was extremely useful to me and others, but I couldn’t see it, because I had never experienced what it’s like to not be this way.

This unquenchable curiosity was keeping my mind sharp, enriching my creativity, giving me new insights, propelling my thought forward. I could make connections easily, create successful strategies, come up with new ideas. It was giving me a competitive edge at my work as a marketer.

After I stopped, it took me 6 months to see the effects. I lost my edge. I lost my spark. I lost my curiosity. I lost my thirst. My mind became sluggish, slow, lazy, fearful. I saw others race past me with ease, as if I was standing still. I was still working hard, harder than before. But I wasn’t getting the same results.

Life is not a competition

I always believed that competing against others is a complete waste of time and resources. The only person we are ever in competition with is our past self. And my past self was now so far ahead of me I couldn’t even see her. I didn’t even feel like we were the same person. But the thing that hurt even more, was that I felt I had let down, not only myself, but everyone around me.

I don’t know many things, but this I know for certain; I cannot be happy when others are suffering. My calling is in helping others. The first step in helping others is in sharing the jewels in our heads. Our thoughts, ideas, opinions, realizations, experiences, truths, are jewels. They are valuable insights created out of observation, wisdom, analysis. They are the most valuable commodity.

Think, where would you be today if no one had ever written anything, if no one had ever shared their ideas, if there were no books, no knowledge? Where would we all be? Our creativity and our survival depends on communicating our own understanding of the world around us. This is our legacy.

We all have a part to play and we all have something to contribute. It doesn’t have to be big enough to change the world, but it might.