Today I wanted to share with you how I quit my full-time job, became a coach and started my own business.
I shared it recently with the women on the Healthy + Powerfully Feminine course and it made me realize what an amazing story it is!
It’s also a great example of how we can, not know all the answers, but be guided when we follow our intuition, tap into our desires and make decisions that feel right in our bodies.
So many people today are feeling the call and the yearning to truly share our talents and gifts with the world, to be of greater service, be paid well and to truly know and be living out our purpose.
We want more than money! We desire freedom! We want to be lit up by what we do.
We want money and freedom! And passion!
Right?
We want to jump out of bed with excitement in the morning!
Or have the luxury to lay and dream a bit longer before we ease into our day…
This story starts when I was young young. A teenager dreaming of marrying Peekay from The Power of One – my favourite book when I was 14 and in itself a story of how a boy grows up to learn “the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one”. I was also an 8 year-old whose ambition was to be a pilot, travel the world and have a lover in Paris who’d wait for me in my apartment (my 12 year-old fantasy).
I wanted to live deeply.
You too I’m sure.
And I did grow up to have lots of incredible adventures and experiences.
Working as an English as a Second Language teacher allowed me to meet people from all over the world and travel as much as I wanted. I’d go away for months and years at a time.
I had many passions outside of my work too – writing and personal-development being two major ones.
So it was three years ago when I was moving to Switzerland with my husband that I read a book that led me to a podcast that led me to a website that led me to another website that led me to an online course – the Feminine Art of Manifesting.
The course was created and run by two successful coaches – Rose Cole and Gina DeVee. It was through Rose that I found the course but it was Gina’s wit and directness that I really loved. So I started listening to her weekly radio show.
Around this time I started writing a blog and coming out of the closet with my interest in personal development. I used the blog to share what I was learning and how I related it to my life.
About 9 month’s later I had decided to quit my full-time teaching job because of the stress it was causing me to not be truly following my desires. I had gone against my intuition to take that job and after a year of emotional turmoil I decided enough was enough!
If they would not let me go part-time I would simply quit. I had $12, 000 saved but no plan other than to travel France by train for 5 weeks and to finish writing my novel.
People often think that breast cancer was the catalyst for my major life and career changes but to me it was the left over symptom of living out of alignment. I had already made these changes when 4 months later I was diagnosed.
So back to France… I knew that Gina DeVee was staying in Paris when I arrived there near the end of my trip because she spoke of it on her radio show.
What I didn’t expect was that I would meet her unexpectedly one day and it would be the catalyst for becoming a coach.
My husband and I had been at the Eiffel Tower sitting on the grass having a real and honest conversation about what wasn’t working and how we could make it better. When we left to find a nearby cafe to have a late afternoon drink, the tension had eased, I felt clear, grounded and in my feminine.
There were two almost identical cafes next to each other and he suggested we go to the first but I felt to go to the second and actually spoke up about it… not trying to pretend I wasn’t ‘fussy’ = sensitive = intuitive.
So we’d been there more than an hour when a group of American women walked in. They were glammed up and I couldn’t help but turn and not-so-secretly try to listen in on what they were saying.
I’m happy I did that because a short while later Gina DeVee walked in!
Of course I couldn’t contain my excitement! After listening to her weekly for 9 months I felt like I knew her but there really is nothing like meeting someone in person, feeling their warmth and their energy and looking them in their eyes to truly feel you can trust someone.
That’s how I felt after meeting Gina that day.
The other women with her were her apprentices and they had been creating the Coaching Academy that I joined 4 months later when it was released (and her photographer Wendy K. Yalom in the picture above).
I joined the Academy around the same time as I went for the test on my lump.
That’s a pretty big sign to the universe that you have a lot of life left to live!
And so I did the training to become a coach and set up my business during my year of healing, learned a hell of a lot more on personal transformation, health and now business and continue on this journey of learning today.
These are 5 of the lessons I’ve learned :
Follow your passions. You don’t know how they may all eventually intersect one day. Follow your joy + trust in the flow of life. Deepen your learning and your skill as you become a master. With consistency you will become it.
Follow your desires. You desires have been implanted in you for a reason. Allow them to grow and flourish.I’ve found that when you follow your true desires the money does show up.
I was able to fund a year and a half of not having a regular job myself while paying my rent, bills and daily expenses in Switzerland, paying for health treatment, private coaching programmes, my business set up and trips to L.A. and Paris for the Academy events. It’s actually quite incredible! Neither my husband nor my parents paid for what I’ve just mentioned. The money showed up in the most practical and miraculous of places because I was open to it and had transformed my mindset about what was possible.
Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or end. This is brilliant advice I got from my coach and then again on the Feminine Power Mastery programme. Look at how the people you admire and want to emulate began. Take the first step towards it. Be happy on your journey.
This is not always easy. That’s why you need to…
Invest in support + your development. I spent money! I invested in the Academy training and in mentors and coaches to guide me through the process. This helped me to transform my mindset around money and what I was capable of or ‘allowed’ to do.
Find a mentor who is further down the path than you are in the area you desire to create change. Look for someone you connect with, who will listen + ask questions more than talk (if it’s a private coach) and help you find your truth. A good coach will also hold you to the highest vision of yourself and keep you in a higher vibration just by being in their energy.
Follow your intuition. Be in your feminine. See the signs. Make decisions that are aligned and feel right in your body. In the Healthy + Powerfully Feminine workshop on Saturday in Fremantle I am teaching exactly what this means and how to be more intuitive.
For all the details and to register go to : www.healthyandpowerfullyfeminine.com/workshop
It’s my hope that this story has inspired you to follow your desires and intuition. If you have something to share I’d love to hear from you in the comments below or in a private message to admin@mireilleparker.com
Lots of love to you,
Mireille xxx
