Following on from Heather Johnston, TEFL‘s post below, I wanted to add another dimension with my own personal thoughts.
There is no shortage of mental health professionals, coaches and healers in the world. All have a plethora of accolades, certificates, degrees and work experience. However, what makes someone in this space unique, special and a cut above the rest is their life experiences, lessons and how they use that as a fundamental tool to lead their clients.
I will officially be starting therapy next month, something I have contemplated on doing for a very long time. My hesitations, however, have always been on finding the right therapist, which as we are all aware, is as agonising as online dating ! Additionally, having to reiterate your past and present issues time and again to different people will just add to my already excruciating anxiety.
I am well-aware of my triggers and the root of all my challenges, and needed a therapist who not only specialises with relevant past experience with previous clients, but also someone who has ‘been there done that’ first hand. I found her from a list of local South Asian therapists and am looking forward to getting started on my journey.
I was equally intentional and selective when choosing a business coach to be mentored by. I wanted someone who shared similar values and vision as me in the design and implementation of my dream business, ideally has had similar past life experiences as me and is from a similar cultural background as me (which plays a huge part in conformity, conditioning and limiting beliefs that stops us from doing things that are out of the box); the minute I stumbled upon Lydia Lee‘s content on Youtube less than a decade ago, I knew we were a match made in heaven. Undertaking coaching with her reinforced my intuition that we were destined to work together. I just regret not having taken that brave step in 2015 but better late than never 🙂
The bottom line of this post is to develop enough self-awareness about not only your personality, strengths and qualities but values and beliefs. Use them as a compass to connect, collaborate, network and befriend the right people who will be your ride or die, soulmate community and tribe. Fancy accolades and work experience merely polishes the trophy that real humans with real stories, life experiences and conversations bring. In this era with all the noise, facade and cultural of superficiality that social media has created, authenticity and real human connection is a scarce resource. This is what base how I show up for my audience, clients, colleagues, friends and family and I finally feel that my ‘village’ has people who I align brilliantly with.
I will regularly be posting aspects of my lessons in therapy so watch this space
#mentalhealthsupport#therapyjourney#humanconnection#authenticity#lifeexperiences#storytelling#truthmatters#genuineconnections#realpeople#sharedvalues#sharedvision#sharedexperiences#rideordie
