How everything changed
As a grad student and postdoc, I had assumed that uncomfortable feelings like these would subside once I landed a stable job. Once this actually happened, I found myself at my lowest. I was juggling developing new courses, writing lectures, applying for research funding, fulfilling departmental service commitments, and in the middle of it all trying (and often failing) to squeeze in time to finish my book.
My anxiety about accomplishing everything I set out for myself led me to work most evenings and weekends, and took time away from parenting my toddler and finding community in the college town that I had relocated to for work.
I would tell myself that the way that I was living was temporary, and that it would all get better once I’d gotten a handle on my new job, once I’d prepared a reliable roster of courses, once my book was done, once I’d won a research fellowship to start developing my next book, once I’d gotten tenure.
I thought that lasting happiness might become accessible at a future moment when everything that I needed to do to achieve job security and professional success had been checked off my sprawling to-do list.
After coming very close to burning out three years ago, I hired my first coach and began to consistently practice life-changing cognitive and emotional coaching techniques that gave me a radically new sense of perspective and control. My productivity increased, my mental health vastly improved, and my capacity to be present in and enjoy my life expanded beyond anything I could have expected. The transformation was so profound that I felt compelled to deepen my understanding of mindset coaching and help other academics apply this work to their own lives. I completed an intensive training course with the Life Coach School and also trained in a few additional complementary modalities (mindfulness meditation, intuition coaching, and methods for nervous system regulation).
If any of my earlier struggles resonate with your own experiences, I would love the opportunity to work with you. I am regularly taking on new 1:1 coaching clients. My waitlist ranges from two to six weeks.
