OK. Lets take a recent client and call her Amanda (not her real name). Amanda is the mother of two children who wanted to return to work. She had been out of the workplace for fours years looking after her children. During this time, her marriage had broken down and she was recovering from the emotional turmoil of a divorce. At our first session, Amanda told me she had applied for several jobs with little or no response. She had yet to be invited to attend an interview.  Amanda had been applying for jobs which required minimum commitment with little in the way of job prospects. This was because she wanted to give her children ‘priority’ attention. Her motivation for returning to work was financial and she had fears around lack of support from her ex-husband in supporting the children in the long term future. 

While these concerns were well founded, they were driving Amanda to apply for jobs which in no way matched her skills, attributes or personal expectations. She was driven by ‘I’m not good enough to apply for anything other than a moderate job’ and blamed the recession, her status as a single mother, lack of time, money, her ex-husband and anything else that was beyond her control.

I then asked Amanda what she would do if money wasn’t an issue. Her voice became lighter; she smiled and looked as though a huge weight had been lifted from her. Then I simply fed that observation back to Amanda. In that moment, her awareness was raised as she realised she had been so tied up by the issue of earning (a moderate) income that she had totally lost sight of what she really had to offer in the workplace. 

Over the next few sessions, we looked at Amanda’s skills, qualities and attributes. Amanda was then able to create a vision for herself and her family. A scenario of how she wanted her life to be. We were then able to draw up an action plan to move Amanda towards her goal. With renewed confidence and a sense of purpose, Amanda started to create opportunities for herself. Shortly afterwards she was recruited to join a local company who were looking for some part time but specialist support. The job worked around her family commitments and more than met her financial demands.

By feeding back Amanda’s self doubt, she was able to acknowledge it in herself. Once Amanda allowed inspiration to take over fear, she had a choice and was able to move forward again.