What if finding your purpose is less about discovering one perfect career and more about understanding what makes you feel alive?
People often come to coaching at a crossroads. From the outside, life may look successful: a career is progressing, responsibilities are being met, and there is no obvious reason to change course. Yet there can be a persistent feeling that something is missing. In this episode, we explore why that feeling deserves attention and how coaching can help us make sense of it.
Our own experiences gave us two ways to look at purpose. For Jo, coaching became deeply connected to the contribution she wanted to make. For Zoe, coaching is an expression of a broader purpose: being part of a journey that helps someone feel more fulfilled. That distinction matters. If purpose can take more than one form, we do not have to put pressure on ourselves to find the single job that will make everything fall into place.
We talk about the clues that can help when the answer is unclear. When do we feel most like ourselves? What kind of contribution matters to us? Who do we most enjoy working with, and where in their journey do we want to help? Zoe reflects on exploring other people-focused careers before finding that coaching offered the kind of conversations and relationships she was looking for.
We also reflect on how our needs change through different stages of life. Work that once felt fulfilling may no longer fit around family, freedom or the person we are becoming. That does not make the years we spent doing it a mistake. Those experiences can help us recognise our strengths, values and priorities more clearly. For some people, coach training leads to a new career. For others, it changes how they lead, volunteer, parent or relate to the people around them.
Finding meaningful work does not mean finding work that is always easy. Building our coaching business brought uncertainty alongside the conversations and contribution we loved. Perhaps a more useful question than "What would make me happy all the time?" is "What matters enough to me that I am willing to work through the difficult parts?"
If you are considering a career change, exploring coach training or wondering what purpose means for you, we hope this conversation gives you space to notice what already matters. You may find that coaching is your next step, or that it helps you see another path more clearly.
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Keywords:
Finding your purpose, purpose through coaching, coach training, career change, meaningful work, career crossroads, becoming a coach, coaching skills, personal fulfilment,
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