Your Aha Moments

My aha "moment" has been in process for about 30 years and has darn near killed me--literally.

Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. While I have suffered from depression since adolescence, and have experienced suicidal thoughts and made specific plans on how to end my life, thankfully, I never actually took action upon them. And while my suicidal thoughts may not have been directly caused by my career struggles, there has been a correlation between the length and severity of my depression and the career choices I’ve made. Let me tell you about it.

When I was in college I changed my major from journalism to counseling. I knew then that I wanted to help people and my life experience told me that I had some ability to do it.

The problem is that I was afraid.

I was afraid to do the things that would have made me successful. I didn’t feel prepared to work as a counselor and I was afraid to "mess around" in people's heads and lives. After all, I told myself, if you don't know what you are doing, you could really screw up someone's life—even cause them to commit suicide.

Too much responsibility for me, so I became a security guard. I also worked at a pizza place, in the payroll department of a bank, as a temporary office worker, as a customer service representative at a major communications company, and as a self- (mostly un-) employed freelance writer/editor.

I eventually drifted into becoming a caseworker, a field in which I've managed to somehow— without ever actually making a decision to pursue it—amassed 10 (non-consecutive) years of experience.

I've received treatment for depression (medication and counseling) and missed work for extended periods of time for 6 of those 10 years. At both jobs, the first 2 years were spent working hard to master the skills necessary to do the job and trying to prove myself. After these two years, I began to lose my interest and drive and became depressed to the point I had to take leave from work.

As July 2006 came to a close, so did my most recent job. At the end of January, the depression took control of me and I had to take 5 weeks off. After returning, I was still unable to do the job and continued to use leave intermittently until I exhausted my FMLA. I just literally couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed in the morning and medication didn’t seem to help much. My employer had been incredibly supportive, but this was the second time I’d used FMLA in the last 4 years and between times, I was given special allowances to help me still be able to do the job despite my handicap. When it became obvious that I could no longer do the job and there was no real indication this condition might change, they had no choice but to terminate my employment.

I decided that I had to turn this disaster into an opportunity. I realized it was time to so something meaningful with my life before it became too late (a time that might not be all that far away). I knew I wanted to help people have lives that were more fulfilling than mine had been, but I needed to figure out the best way to do that.

It seemed like the time to open that counseling practice. But regulation has increased in the years since I got my BA and my state now requires a masters degree before you can legally call yourself a counselor, so it seemed the soundest plan would be to work part time and get an MSW (Master of Social Work) degree from the local branch of my state’s leading university. I’ve had two practicing psychologists tell me they wished they had an MSW because insurance will sometimes cover a social worker when it will not pay for a psychologist. Yet I found as I began to look at the specifics of pursuing this degree, there was just no spark. It was the logical way to go and made great rational sense, but it didn’t excite me. It would take 3 years of constant, intense work to get the credential that I had no interest in other than to meet legal requirements, and then I would still be faced with the difficulties of setting myself up in business. I made this the default plan, the one I’d fall back on if nothing else materialized, but began to look for other solutions.

I considered alternative methods to counseling and discovered that some of my ideas were already encompassed in the field of image consulting. But it didn’t feel quite right either. While certain external aspects are important, I found that my interest in them was not as an end result, but as a way of entering into and magnifying the internal work to be done on the mind.

What I wanted to do was work with normal people and teach and motivate them in ways that would lead them to a better quality of life. I wanted to be some sort of life coach. The only problem was that I needed a way to make a living and didn’t see how I could manage that as a life coach. After all, unless you’re Oprah, who has a life coach?

But I decided to look into it anyway. As I researched the field, I found myself becoming more and more excited. In fact, I was just surging. This was even more exciting than the NFL playoffs! So now, I've made the decision to open a coaching business.

I've realized it doesn't even matter if it succeeds or fails! I want, I NEED, to do this. If I grow old and die, I will be miserable if I can't look back and say I gave this a try. It might not seem like the safest or most logical next step—though I have discovered that it might be possible to make better money than anything I’ve tried up to this point!—but it feels right in my heart and mind and soul and I've already felt myself changing because of the decision. The depression remains, but it is receding and I now have a reason to get out of bed every morning. I am no longer without hope or purpose, and that promises results that no pill can.

Yes, I'd like my business to succeed and I think it will. But whether it does or not, I know it is what I want to do and that I will learn and grow and feel better about my life and myself because I have tried.

So now, I am finally going to begin helping others and getting paid for it. What more could life have to offer than that? And it only took me 30 years to figure it out! (I hope to help my clients make the realization a little faster!)