Coaches, What’s Your Why?

What possessed you to become a coach or a consultant/ entrepreneur?

When I was growing up, my mother would constantly ask … “Bronwyn, what possessed you to do that?”

Nit-picking was a thing in my family and no matter how you dress it up, it always felt like judgement with an unhealthy dose of criticism, rather than a genuine question founded in curiosity.

But that experience taught me, and I realised much later in life, that there will always be people who get their gratification from putting people down and openly judging and criticising. I’m sure that at various times you have felt the unnecessary obligation to justify your choice of profession, decisions, actions etc to others. But at the end of the day that is their problem, not yours and you should never apologise for being you and following your dreams.

I’ve worked very hard over the last few decades to remove such toxic behaviours from my life, so when I ask that question of you – it is genuinely based on curiosity and discovery.

So …

What possessed you to become a coach or a consultant/entrepreneur?

Were you like me?

I knew from an early age that I wanted my own business. The word “entrepreneur” didn’t really exist, but that was me – right from a very young age I was an entrepreneur!

From the age of 5-6, I wanted to:

Make a difference in the world, but on my terms;
Discover new and better ways of doing things;
Help others;
Make a lot of money a result of the above endeavours; and
I wanted the freedom to be me – to do what I wanted when I wanted! (Although this one came much later – about 3 decades later to be clear.)!

Looking back, it surprises me that I had those goals from such a young age, I mean what 5-6 year old thinks like that, especially back in the mid-’70s. – It was no wonder my friends and family didn’t understand me!

It Didn’t Happen Overnight

Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” and he was right.

I did other things, all seemingly random and out of my control … When I was in high school, I wanted to be a doctor, but I spent half of my senior year sick with Glandular Fever and didn’t meet the tertiary entry score to be admitted to the course. I got my second choice so, I studied computers and technology and made a career out of programming, consulting, and becoming a tech trainer.

I later studied law for practical reasons and that took me on a slightly different for a little while, but I came back to consulting and training in the tech industry. I always kept coming back.

When I look back and connect the dots, everything I tried, learned, failed, and mastered led me to be a coach/consultant and trainer/teacher in the tech and training industry. It’s where I feel at home and where I feel that my purpose exists.

How did I know?

I’ve been asked this dozens of times by different people. I used to just shrug and say I don’t know, it just worked out that way. But diving deeper on that question time and time again, I can now say with confidence – my gut told me so!

If I’m honest, the only time I have a “less than ideal learning experience”, is when I allow my head to overrule my gut. It’s those times when I had to learn the lesson, and then get back on track and head towards or follow my purpose.

For example, when I look back to high school, I wanted to be a doctor – I was driven, I was focused, I believed it was what I was meant to do, or so I thought. I now recognise that was largely to please my parents, but that would have been ridiculous because, I’m extremely needle phobic – I mean, what sort of a doctor would I have been if I freaked out every time, I saw a loaded syringe? It’s just crazy pants!

My gut knew that medicine was not for me, that it was not my purpose for being on this planet, but my head and ego kept getting in the way until circumstances forced my hand. When I let it go and firmly told my ego to “step down”, I felt better, and opportunities came from nowhere to carry me to my purpose.