Stop Isolating your Career from your Life
I qualified as a Health Coach this month.
After an intensive 12 month program that consisted of 50+ hours of coaching and 90+ live contact hours, I’m now able to add an additional layer to the coaching I already offer.
Why was becoming a Health Coach important to me?
I’m driven by serving others powerfully and I’m sort of obsessed with the idea of becoming continuously better at doing that.
A huge part of that is being able to serve my clients as holistically as possible.
Through 120+ hours of career coaching I've done this year I’ve noticed one striking commonality amongst all of my clients.
And that’s that it’s impossible to separate your career from the rest of your life.
Health Coaching enter stage left.
The relationship between your health and career is symbiotic.
If you aren’t thriving in the core pillars of your health (sleep, diet, movement), I guarantee that you’re not thriving (sustainably) in your career.
A huge plus of embodying this approach is that working from a strong foundation of wellness is one of the most effective ways to make career change happen.
It can be challenging enough to spark change, let alone if you’re not sleeping properly, eating non-nutritional meals and haven’t moved properly since ‘98.
It’s a fact that we are what we continuously do in all aspects of our lives.
The divide and conquer approach to growth and fulfillment is an option, in fact I’ve seen it work well for almost all of my clients this year.
But I deliberately create an environment where we aren’t ever solely talking about career.
Sessions almost always turn into a conversation about barriers to change or lifestyle factors that are getting in the way of making progress.
That’s the nature of a change process.
It's also relevant because it’s not possible to ignore your health and have a lasting career that’s fulfilling.
I’ve got three case study examples of how shifting wellness habits have sparked genuine career change.
[names have been changed for anonymity purposes, but if you’re curious to chat with any of them then give me a shout - they’re all open to conversations]
Tom was a serial career coaster.
Never truly satisfied with his work he used drinking on the weekends to self-medicate.
He was crawling towards Friday evenings and longed for nights where he could go out and party with his friends.
He thought his job misery was causing the drinking habit.
The truth though is that they were fueling each other into existence.
He didn’t like his job so binge drinking was the answer.
Binge drinking was the answer so he stayed in a job he didn’t like.
And so on and so on and so on.
He wanted to change his work so he’d stop binge drinking.
And guess what?
He never had the energy, focus or commitment to do so.
Because he had a short-term, surface level solution to his career woes.
It wasn’t until we worked on reducing his drinking and partying on the weekends that career change became a genuine possibility for him.
He’s since left the corporate world and is training to become a secondary school teacher.
Marie had it all on paper.
The successful one in her friendship group.
Pipped as a top performer with a promising trajectory to director.
She worked hard and got places.
The problem though was that that had become her whole identity.
Even though she worked out and ate relatively well, she was consumed by her work.
She enjoyed what she was doing, but was totally out of balance.
Marie was the first client I encountered that needed help with slowing down rather than speeding up.
She reached out to me because she was falling out of love with her job, she thought that that was the thing that needed to change.
When we met I saw that she she lit up when talking about her work.
I reflected that back to her and she became emotional.
“That’s why I can’t understand why I’m feeling like this, because I do actually love it.”
So, we turned our attention elsewhere.
We looked at her life as a whole.
After much exploration it turned out she had nothing in her world that she did just for fun.
Even her workouts and diet were tied to external metrics (something we also worked on detaching her from)
Now she makes time for painting, going to art galleries and knitting.
All creative and all designed to wake her brain up in a different way.
She landed the promotion into her dream role, after being on the brink of burnout when we met.
All of that came from realising she could prioritise herself and thrive in work.
Mick was your typical director under the age of 30.
Constantly switched on.
Rarely making space for anything else.
He came to me with the goal of changing his career due to feeling overwhelmed and dissatisfied.
It's also worth noting that Mick had worked with two other coaches before me.
As we started talking it turned out that there were other much more obvious areas of his life that needed work first.
He found it impossible to manage his energy levels.
Reliant on caffeine to bring him up and alcohol to slow him down.
He had a high protein diet but was also dependent on large portions of refined carbs.
We tackled the caffeine reliance.
We worked on reducing his alcohol intake.
(Hugely improving his sleep patterns)
We then got into his diet, making small adjustments to reduce the amount of refined carbs he was consuming.
(Immediately increasing his energy levels)
It was only once he’d gotten those things in balance that we could talk about his career effectively.
Those failed attempts at making change previously were nothing to do with his ability to be coached, they weren't even reflections of his desire to make change happen.
They were direct evidence that without balanced energy levels it's infinitely more difficult to create enough time and space for change.
He finally had the energy to think about his career and what he wanted from it.
He's now starting a business with a trusted associate in an area of social impact that really connects with his values.
He would have never reached this realisation without having the other areas of his life in balance, let alone had the energy to take action.
Those are just a few examples of where I've seen the benefit of considering wellness in the same way we consider other areas of our lives.
The truth is that without health we don't have a sustainable career.
Love and other nice stuff,
Han
You'll spend an average of 90,000 hours at work, figure out how best to spend them.
I‘m Hannah Roan
Professional Coach and Career Mentor
I post on The Career Croissant every Friday at 9am. Stay tuned!
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1moHealth is wealth, full stop. Burnout isn’t cute, and self-care isn’t selfish—it’s essential. Congrats on becoming a Health Coach!
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1moYes, yes and yes Hannah Roan I’ve experienced how neglecting health can affect both career and personal life, when I got Sepsis after a minor knee operation, after my best quarter in business. All the money in the world didn't help me when I was hurting then, let me tell you. It’s a hard lesson, but it is powerful to learn. Seeing you using your experience to help others transform their lives is inspiring.