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 My
path to the coaching profession led through the world of
music. I taught piano for over twelve years, beginning at
age sixteen, then studied with a concert pianist for seven
years as an adult. I performed in a variety of venues, including
classical, sacred, and pop. At a turning point in my personal
life, I awoke to the fact that while I loved music, teaching
people to play the piano was not particularly satisfying
to me.
I began a quest for a better career fit. I took every assessment
I could get my hands on and began to piece together the
elements of what I thought would make an ideal career for
me. As the pieces fell into place I created a vision of
a company in which I did speaking, writing, and something
I called "personal development consulting." As I shared
this vision with others, people were not particularly encouraging,
particularly about the "personal development consulting"
piece. "Who would pay for that?" many asked. "Are you sure
there is a market for something like that? I've never heard
of anything like it."
I decided to set an appointment with a career counselor
who was current with trends in the world of work. She took
one look at my vision proposal and informed me that the
job I thought I had invented was known as coaching, a rapidly
growing profession.
She pointed me to the CoachU web site and within a month,
I was enrolled as a student and on a fast track toward building
a coaching practice. Over the next couple of years, as my
coaching practice grew, I often experienced sadness over
the investment of twelve years of my life and many thousands
of dollars in an entirely different career. If only I had
known about coaching earlier, I thought, and invested in
that instead.
Yet surprisingly, I've discovered a large number of parallels
in the two professions. Teaching piano taught me so much
about mastering a skill, about making progress, about reaching
goals and dreams, about discipline and determination and
so many other topics that come to the forefront for me now
as a coach. Not a single year of that experience was wasted.
All of it contributed to my rapid success as a coach and
my skills as a business owner.
Contact Mary at Mary@liveintentionally.com
or visit her website at www.LiveIntentionally.com.
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