Confession: I had a bit of a career-crisis part of the way through last week.

And up until this morning I had no idea why.

It might have been triggered by me spending an awful lot of time in my own head since my Nana passed away, with her funeral last Monday pushing my thoughts and feelings to the limit.

It might have been triggered by a momentary lack of confidence in my abilities as a therapist and a feeling of being out of sync and incongruent with the guidance I’ve been giving people (and not quite following myself).

It might have been triggered by my own blog post a couple of weeks back about doing what’s good for your soul.

I don’t know.

It shook me up a bit though.  A lot, actually.  I mean, I LOVE what I do.  I love helping people change themselves.  I love helping people change their behaviours.  I love helping people let go of things they don’t want to have in their lives any more and become more of the person that they want to be.

My practice in Stafford is busy.  My practice in Harley Street has taken off far more quickly than I anticipated.  I have numerous supervisees on my books with more enquires rapidly coming in.  I’m in the process of designing a training course to enable other hypnotherapists to learn more about my approach to working with eating disorders.   I have a vague outline in my head of the book that I think I want to write (well, the book that people keep on telling me I need to write anyway).  There is the possibility that I may become involved with offering CogHyp to a national charity.  I am planning to apply to become part of the team that helps to deliver the Quest Institute CogHyp training course.

So why did I suddenly have doubts about whether I even wanted to do therapy any more?!

Let’s backtrack a little.  Aside from helping people, one of my other passions is photography.  For as long as I can remember I’ve loved taking photos, loved capturing a moment forever.  Once upon a time I contemplated choosing a job along the lines of travel writer and photographer, or photojournalist, or… you get the idea.  Those ideas faded and eventually disappeared entirely when I returned from Australia, took a job as a professional fundraiser and then trained to become a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and set up my own business whilst raising my little family.

But the more I write on this blog about doing what you love and loving what you do, and the more clients I work with and coach towards helping them create the lives they want for themselves, the more I’m beginning to realise that whilst I’ve chosen one path, and one particular direction to take, there are many other paths out there that I could choose instead.

Thus we get to my little crisis last week.

What if I loved working as a professional photographer more than working as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist?  What if I felt more fulfilled?  What if I enjoyed it more?  What if I had an even better work/life balance?  What if it ticked more of my Signature Strength boxes?

So I wobbled.

I started looking into re-training.  I invented potential business names and website addresses and Googled them to see if there were any available that I could snap up.  I made a list (of course!) of all the different types of photography I could offer to people – weddings, new babies, birthdays, families, boudoir…  And I began to seriously think about stopping doing therapy and starting over as a photographer.

It was a session I had with a supervisee this morning that really made me sit up and think though.  We were discussing a client of his that was stuck between two choices and couldn’t decide which way to go.  We brainstormed different options of how to help this client make the decision that he really needed to make.  And then it occurred to me: why was he limiting himself to only two choices?!  Why does it have to be one thing or another?  Why couldn’t he create a third option (or even a fourth, and a fifth option) that might work better and fulfill both sides of him that he was trying to fulfill?

It wasn’t until later this afternoon that I realised just how much this applied to my own little world right now. Why do I have to limit myself to having to choose between working as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist or as a professional photographer?

Could I think of a way to adjust my world that would enable me to do both?

I’ve got ideas for a couple of things that combine therapy and photography into one package.  And I’ve got ideas as to how I can organise my time, my online presence and my marketing to accommodate both separately as well.

Suddenly I’m feeling a bit better.

I’ve got ideas that I can develop into plans that I can then action.  I’ve thought of a way to connect the two things that I love to do.  I don’t have to pick one thing over another – I can do both.

It’s quite surprising actually, looking back, how many different things over recent months have been pointing me in this direction.  When I went to see Derren Brown’s show ‘Infamous’ at the Regent Theatre in Stoke he talked a lot about ‘forging your own path’.

A month or so earlier than that I’d received an email from someone I subscribe to (JP Morgan, coach and creator of ‘Hero Journeys’) entitled ‘How to choose the right path in life’.  I have to say, when I opened the email and saw this picture:

right in front of me, I did a comedy double take.  I genuinely thought it was me because the resemblance was so strong.  It felt like he had written that email personally to me after climbing inside my head and pulling out my jumbled mess of thoughts.

I now realise that each of these things were leading me to the point that I’m at now.

I also know that I’m not where I’m supposed to be yet.

None of us are.

That’s what makes life exciting, difficult, interesting and wonderful.

So if you happen to be at a point in your life where you have to make a choice between one thing and another, I suggest waiting for a bit and seeing if you can create a different option that can combine the two.

It might just be the thing you’ve been looking for all along.

 

3 Comments for: The thing you’ve been looking for all along

j

Love the post and this response. The limits we impose on ourselves are by far the most effective (and by “effective,” I mean “stupid and destructive.”)

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