A CLIENT TRANSFORMATION STORY

One of my clients, Alice* (*not her real name) has kindly allowed me to share her transformation. Here you can see the real-life benefits of my coaching.

The Annoying Work Colleague

Alice came to me as she was getting very frustrated and irritated at work, which was leaving her feeling down and not wanting to go to work in the mornings.

She told me that her workplace was feeling very tense and negative and that one of her co-workers was particularly critical of her employers and the salary they were being paid. Alice’s irritation was directed at this colleague as she held them responsible for bringing down the mood and energy of her entire team. She saw this person’s negativity and criticism as extremely annoying because, Alice told me, she would much rather be allowed to get on with her job in peace, despite agreeing that her working environment and her salary weren’t really that great. But she didn’t want to leave. She just wanted the mood of her office to change.

Alice went on to tell me that her annoying colleague was so dissatisfied that they had been looking for another job and had been offered a position elsewhere – for a company with amazing benefits and a salary that was 50% higher than they were currently being paid! This also annoyed Alice because someone so negative and critical had progressed so well.

The Reflection

However, this was just Alice’s perception of the situation and we all perceive things differently depending on our moral convictions, previous life experiences, our upbringing, society, culture and family and friends to name just a few.

During the course of our session Alice uncovered that she was in fact pushing away the more discerning and analytical parts of herself, from fear that SHE would be perceived as being negative and critical. This meant that she wasn’t allowing herself to properly look at whether or not she was happy with her job and salary.  I was able to reflect back to her the benefits of being this way and that perhaps this is what had allowed her colleague to find a better job elsewhere. We worked on the emotions attached to her fear of being perceived as negative and critical and Alice found some ways that she could start to integrate this part of herself and accept it by seeing that in fact she would be looking at her needs more honestly and honouring herself.

The Outcome!

A couple of months later, Alice called me to let me know that she was less irritated at work and that she had been able to look at her situation in a more balanced way. This had led to her also now looking for other employment. She was interviewing for jobs that she knew would be more fulfilling to her and that had much better salary and benefits packages and that she had a number of interviews lined up for that week alone!

It is easy to want to bury our head in the sand when it comes to work. To just ‘get on with the job’ and to get annoyed when we hear someone else’s voice saying that it’s not good enough. But if that’s annoying to you then a part of you is listening and most likely agreeing that something needs to change.