Journey to Becoming a Qualified Coach - Jenny Thomas

I started by stopping smoking, after attempt 101 I finally did it and haven’t looked back since! That was 3 years ago.  Some achievement when I was smoking 30-40 a day.​

I went on a health kick having gained some weight from stopping smoking and a netball injury putting me out of action.  I wanted to understand my body better and how I could get fitter.  That’s when I went on a juicing detox and got myself in pretty good shape with hiking, running, kayaking, beach volleyball & yoga.  It wasn’t just my physical health that needed fixing though.

The retreat allowed me to take time out from a very busy and stressful career to think.  I started to focus on what makes me happy:  helping people, listening to people, understanding people and helping them to make their dreams become reality, having fun, living a life that was balanced and had flexibility, not just letting life happen to me.  And I wasn’t getting any of that in my job.

I was coming across more and more people in a similar place with high stress levels, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, lowered self-esteem, lowered confidence, confusion, frustration, the ‘treadmill’ syndrome. I wanted to do something about that.  So I made a decision and jumped off the treadmill and had never been so scared or excited!
I’d already done a foundation course in counselling and knew that wasn’t the route I wanted to go down so I started researching what else I could do.

I found the Free 2 Day Foundation in Life Coaching Course run by The Coaching Academy online and got myself registered for the next event, just a few weeks later.  This was perfect for me as I could go along and get a taste of what coaching was about and see if it was something I wanted to do.  By the end of the first day, it was a big yes from me!!  Not only did I get to practice some coaching skills on the first day, I learnt a lot about myself and started pulling together my own goals to start working on and was really excited about that!

Due to other commitments I had to delay starting my training for a year but with all the support you get from The Coaching Academy it was easy for me to pick up again where I left off and get my training underway early in 2016. 

I did 2 courses and genuinely loved them both; I met lots of people all on varying different journeys, learned tonnes about people, coaching, listening and loads about myself too.  Learning through webinars, the DVDs, audio classes, mentoring and live training days really suited me as it had variety and I could go at my own pace. 

I’m in regular contact with several of my coaching ‘buddies’ I met on the Accelerator Days and we support each other in lots of ways, including business ideas as well as coaching.  They’ve been an invaluable part of my journey and will continue to be over the coming years I’m sure!

I’m now qualified as an NLP Practitioner and Personal Performance Coach and have launched my own business, Revitalise Coaching.  I understand my values and what’s important to me and I now have a rewarding and fulfilling job that I love.