Kathy’s Bold Transformation: From 9-5 Routine to Thriving Alcohol-Free with a Coaching Business Fuelled by Confidence!
Meet Kathy Chapman and shift your mindset about 9-5 life.
Step 2 on my 6-Step Checklist to Escape the 9-5 is shifting your mindset. Often, in the context of 9-5 escape, it means thinking about earning income and using our skills differently than we’ve been conditioned to believe is “correct.” In Kathy Chapman’s case, her additional realization at age 45 was about shifting her mindset on the impact of 9-5 life to her overall well-being.
I feel truly honoured Kathy’s taken the time to share her story here on the Free At 50 blog. It includes more than Step 2 on the checklist- it includes all the steps but that’s what grabbed me. Let us know after you read it, what grabs you.
RELATED: Download the 6-Step Checklist to Escape the 9-5.
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I guess you could say I’m actually a little past Midlife at the age of 62.
Though 62, that 35-year-old is still within me, deep inside and screaming out for me to do something to make a change for the better in my life, she feels stifled, mis-aligned, unhappy and remote, in the end stage of a corporate life, undervalued, seen but not heard anymore and feeling the shades drawing in within the corporate arena.
This pretty much sums up how I felt at the end of my corporate career, walking in to the office for the last time with the smell of the old worn office carpet.
- with 10,000 footsteps a day trodding across it thinking the same regurgitated thoughts about winning the next client, and even that had lost its glory by now
- realising that everyone had stopped interacting in any inspired way and feeling the utter misery of yet another day in that office
As I sat at my desk, I allowed my mind to wander back to my drinking days as the last remnants of the afternoon sun faded through the old small windows in my office and wondered how I had managed to stay stopped drinking for the last 17 years.
Photo by Seljan Salimova on Unsplash
I had jumped into the lifeboat of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) age 45.
With the grace of AA and staying within that lifeboat my life had changed from functioning alcoholic to sober alcoholic overnight in February 2007. Although my personal life had become infinitely better, my working life had actually become more intense and more miserable as without the false reward of the alcohol every evening, the full weight of the role engulfed me.
And I knew that I had to break free from its all-consuming grip.
My drinking had been the cause of many an argument, lateness, excuses, personal upsets and lucky escapes from being prosecuted for drink driving, although that may in itself have been enough to send me to AA before I eventually went into the rooms of that wonderful fellowship.
I will be forever grateful that I never physically hurt anyone through my reckless behaviour, although I know I hurt my family, and I am forever thankful that I got to make my amends for the pain that my drinking had caused there.
Although I had not yet lost my job, I was what is termed a ‘functioning alcoholic’, (but an alcoholic all the same,) I had certainly lost any friends that may have been clinging on to my party animal antics, mainly for the entertainment value.
I think that in a way my stopping drinking and my leaving the corporate job are somehow very similar as with both I just came to a sudden and absolute realization that the train was hurtling towards its crash site and although I felt a little bewildered even at my own decisions, I knew it was over and decided it was time I stepped off just before the final smash.
Photo by Bayu Prahara on Unsplash
So that was it, it was over, 40 years in the job and it was gone, just like that.
A few weeks before my final departure from the job role I had heard something. There had been a sliver of a thread running through my mind, the catch of something, that stirred me, from a short podcast on social media. It awoke a spark inside me, in the place where all of my life experience sits and suddenly, I was all attention again.
Lit up and feeling alive for the first time in years, knowing that this thing whatever it was, felt like me, who I am at my core, and gave me the incentive to reach out for the rope of it, to save me from that swirling sea of despair, and help me climb out and into a new life.
A life full of endless possibilities, of encounters with interesting people, of fresh vibrant thoughts and the promise of a new way of living.
My coaching journey was born, and after completing my 6 months training with the Clique Academy, an ICF accredited Academy, and achieving my Life Coaching certification, along with the Clique method of coaching, and becoming certified as an NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) Master Practitioner, I am now working with clients on a one to one basis.
I’m helping them increase their self-belief and become empowered to make changes in their life for the better; achieving their core desires so that they also no longer feel they have to follow the crowd. Instead, they take their own journey and plan their own route, to a more fulfilled, happy and joyous life.
I am also the creator of The Confidence Course which helps people realise their true worth and value themselves for their own unique and natural style of being along with their capabilities and achievements whatever they may be, increasing their confidence and eliminating self-doubt, giving them a fresh internal narrative, based around their own re-awakened desires.
Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash
Reflecting includes conversations with your younger self.
As part of my coaching, I always like to ask clients, if they could have a conversation with their younger self, what they would say? As for me, if I was to have a conversation with my younger self at age 30, which would actually be 32 years ago, I would tell her to:
- stop screaming internally and get off the train she was on at the next stop
- to take a good look around
- to take a deep breath and feel all that is truly hers: the intelligence, the inspirational thoughts, the moments of magic, the excitement and the freedom.
And then shout out to the world this is ME! And here I am!
I am worth more and this is where my real journey begins, my journey-- with no end destination, just an ongoing journey along life’s amazing tracks, and the promise of what lay along them, as I took my own route to joy.
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