Inner Intelligence Blog

Becoming Self Employed ..  Doctor’s Orders!  by Victoria Armstrong

Over the last few years when coaching, I have heard so many people on a regular basis saying how much they hate their job but they can’t leave and there are no other jobs out there.  I was one of those people too in 2001.  I had a great job with a software company marketing their products.   It paid all my bills with plenty of money left over to spend how I like.  However, it wasn’t fulfilling me.  I knew I was missing something and I started applying for other jobs.

That was quite draining, I was getting down to the last 2 or 3 applicants and then miss out on the job offer.  Something had to give but I didn’t know what.

It was a trip to the doctor with a leg injury that was the turning point.  I broke down in floods of tears and the doctor told me ‘No job or money was worth the stress that I was currently under. He told me I needed 2 weeks off to get my head straight and think about the cost it would have on my long term health.’  I was surprised, I thought people who took time out for stress or emotional issues were weak and unreliable.  That was actually a belief I held and here I was being labelled the same by a medical professional.   I told him I wanted to start my own business but I didn’t see how I could do it.  He told me that was the problem.  He told me  ‘If you don’t do what you love to do in life your health will suffer.  You spend so much of your life working, you need to feel happy and enjoy it’

I ended up going home and made a decision that changed my life .. for the better.  I decided to take a month off work and handed in my resignation at the same time.  It was literally do or die for me.  It was the way out I needed.    My family thought I had gone mad but a few close friends were very supportive.  They said I could do it and once the decision was made, everything started to fall in place, one step at a time.  That was  November 2001 and I got my first client in January 2002.

I learnt so much at that time and some of my clients ask me if I was to do it again, would have I handled it any differently and I realise if I had known what I know now, yes I would have done things so much differently.  I took a huge risk when I could have put support measures in place and approached it with more financial security.  So that’s what I teach my coaching clients now.

So how can you get started …. the first step is to find out what area of expertise you can offer.  It took me 14 months before I left my job to figure this out but thankfully I can help you do it in just 20 mins.

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