About Jo Maughan career coach

….influencing and persuading colleagues. I enrolled on a leadership development programme with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales.

As part of that, we did a timeline exercise. I saw a theme running through my life: I’d had a few bosses who I’d found ‘controlling’ and ‘difficult’. I realised this stemmed from my childhood and my mum who had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I started to cry, and even though I was scared, I decided to open what, at that time, I saw as the Pandora’s box of my childhood. I somehow knew that the key to my success in the new role and my overall happiness lay there.

A second ah-ha moment was when I realised that part of me was missing and wasn’t being expressed. I loved developing people, but this was only a small part of my role back then, plus I loved art & craft and colour – I wasn’t doing any of that. I’d lost sight of these parts of me in all the working hard and busyness.

As I worked with my coach, I examined my thoughts and couldn’t believe what I was telling myself. I was so self-critical!

Around the same time, I took an intensive personal development course called the ‘More to Life Weekend’. It was a roller coaster ride but when I got off, wobbly legs and all (literally!), the whole world looked different and I was freed-up. I entered counselling. I did more inner work. I unearthed unconscious beliefs that I was holding about myself. I was telling myself “I’m not good enough”. And to prove to myself that this wasn’t in fact true, I was working very, very hard – pushing myself to achieve, achieve, achieve. This belief (and others) had been the undercurrent to how I’d lived my life for many years. And I’d not even noticed.

I thought about changing careers but I was worried about the money.

It took a major health scare for me to leave the world of tax.

On the way to meet a friend after work, I ended up with what the consultant called a ‘serious brain injury’. I got this when I blacked out, fell backwards and hit my head on a London pavement. I could have died and it was my wake-up call. I spent 10 days in hospital having tests and recovering; 3 months at home resting; and a further 3 months getting over the post-trauma depression. As I look back, I see I’d been pushing myself too hard – doing, doing, doing – and my body finally said ‘no’!

There was moment as I laid in my hospital bed when I had a strange out-of-body experience. I saw all my learned ways of behaving playing out before me and I wondered why I was treating myself so badly. In that moment, I realised I had to change – we only have one life so why spend it doing something you don’t love? I realised it was time to do something about it and change careers.

I was scared as I thought other people wouldn’t like it: my mum & dad would say I was wasting all I’d achieved, and my husband wouldn’t like me earning less. None of these things were so.