Next Wednesday, June 10th, I start life coach training with Martha Beck. I am crazy excited and nervous and a total bundle of energy. I was just reading through an old journal, and found an entry from last year on June 9th and the crazy serendipity of it just blew me away. This was before I knew that Martha trained prospective life coaches. I am basically speechless at this hypothetical letter, and even more shocked that I had forgotten writing it.
“Dear Martha Beck
I hope you’ll read this letter as two parts fan mail, one part request for your sage advice.
Some background – I’m 27 and having what I’d consider a quarter life crisis. I’m writing to you from my cubicle in corporate America which often feels like a mime’s “invisible box” routine.
I started college pre-med, majoring in psychology (still my favorite subject) but something in me panicked and jumped ship. I guess my craving for excitement ultimately won out and I switched my major to…drum roll here…accounting!
Oh, holy yawn. Here I am, 5 years in, essential self suffocating, but not before I trudged through my masters degree in business taxation and earned my CPA license. Said CPA license languishes in its shipping tube under a pile of shoes in my cubicle coat closet. I take this as a teeny hint that its value to my true life’s work is similar to the way my famished wild child feels about collard greens.
I’m currently reading Finding Your Own North Star, Steering by Starlight, and The Four Day Win simultaneously. This is probably not your intended sequence, but it gives me time to do the exercises and soak up the fundamentals little by little from each, while gobbling up the knowledge like an IV drip.
Today I was reading the Hear, Here chapter from Starlight, and something in my mindset suddenly shifted perceptibly from “Gosh, this will be useful in my career discovery” to “Holy freaking cow, this is so captivating I want it to BE my career.”
So my question to you: where do I go from here? Graduate school? Life coach school (is there such a thing)?”
Here I am, exactly one year later, eager protégé, and I think it’s safe to say I’m on the right track.
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Holy Cow! This just freaked me out- I wrote a letter to Martha Beck a few days ago on the oprah site and ended up not sending it. I’m 27 right now and smack in the middle of my quarter life crisis. What freaks me out may not sound all that impressive to you but it is to me. I just discovered recently, but after the almost-letter that I have the quarter life crisis, after horrendous months of grinding pain and depression that had me convinced I was crazy and totally screwed.
I’m a lawyer. In my country, we go to a central school of law after we get our degree in law to train for a year to practice law before sitting bar exams and doing pupillage at a law firm for half a year. I quit last year and started on a series of experiments to find my career, the last one of which ended quite disgracefully as I was fired. I feel the same way about an Advocate’s (Attorney’s) practicing certificate as you feel about the CPA license. Plus my letter started exactly like yours, “Dear Martha Beck” you know, not dear Martha and had a paragraph beginning, “Now a little background” I know that’s cheesy, but seriously, even the feel of your letter is me. I had googled Martha Beck and quarter life crisis to see if she has offered some advice somewhere. When I saw the results I thought I had accidentally sent the letter and that it had gotten published!
I love this coincidence.