I found my calling to be a coach in the middle of having tea at The Dorchester with Nicole Kidman in 1998.  I’d been interviewing celebrities for the BBC’s Desert Island Discs for a while and I’d noticed they were often surprisingly willing to open up to me and share feelings, longings and motivations.  Ms Kidman said how easy it was to talk to me and that she was telling me things she didn’t usually reveal – did I coach people professionally? Something clicked, I trained as a counsellor and I’ve been helping others to understand what drives them, what makes them happy and what motivates them ever since.  

 

I’d been a performer myself for ten years, before joining the BBC.  My work in physical theatre, mime and dance, and with deaf sign language, gave me a good understanding of how people express themselves with their bodies. Then my degree in English, my years as a BBC journalist and my sideline in writing had made me knowledgeable about words and how people expressed themselves in language.  The final piece of the puzzle was my counselling training, which showed me how to listen to all the things that aren’t said…those inklings and intuitions that Van Morrison calls the ‘inarticulate speech of the heart.’

 

I think it’s my skills in these three distinct communication modes that gives me what one of my clients called

 

‘an almost uncanny ability to let me see what I really wanted and what’s more, the path I could travel to get it.’

 

Along the way I’ve had the usual human struggles with family, relationships, bereavement, money, depression and the rest.  Some suffering is good for someone in the helping professions: how can we hope to understand others’ dilemmas if we haven’t worked through our own?

 

Crucially it’s meant I’ve spent many hours investigating ways to live a better, happier, more fulfilling life. I’ve developed a deep interest and knowledge of both Western and Eastern philosophy and psychology as well as practical, evidence-based theories of what makes us happy and a nifty tool box of ninja coaching tools with powerful life-changing applications.

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