kis coach me: christine jull

Over the past couple of months, I have been really struggling with life.  Normally, I enjoy exercising but as I mentioned in my post about procrastination, it has been a real struggle to get through my daily workouts, even with the help of my personal trainer Alice who I see once a week.  While I’ve continued to write about Anita’s Garden and develop In the Circle, I have felt despondent about whether either of these projects are really going anywhere.  It’s winter and seasonal affective disorder affects a lot of people, including myself.  I often feel depressed at this time of the year.  It’s cold, grey and wet. Growth in the garden slows considerably and there isn’t much colour outside to cheer me up.

The other thing on my mind is finances.  I’m still learning how – and whether it is indeed possible – to earn a living year round as a blogger and gardener.  Gardening is seasonal.  Revenue only flows in during spring and summer when my plant nursery is open and I sell seedlings to the public.  I’m still looking for ways to extend this so I can support myself year round without recourse to state funds.  As some of you may be aware from previous posts on my blog, I suffer from schizophrenia, which is regarded as a disability.  I’m therefore entitled to be on the sickness benefit, or welfare.  However, this doesn’t make me comfortable with receiving money from the state for doing nothing and I hate having to admit that I have a disability.  I want to work and earn my own money, without being dependent on the state.  I had to look for alternatives to law because the Law Society in New Zealand makes it very difficult to obtain a practising certificate if you have a mental illness. 

Against this background, I have sought external help. One of our family friends, Christine Jull, recently became a life coach and has been helping me tremendously through her business KIS Coach Me in a relatively short space of time.  Christine is very smart and, like me, has a corporate background.  She has a Bachelor of Business Studies and an MBA, with over 25 years of experience in leadership, technology, audit and projects with organisations around the world.  I know Christine because she used to work at the Inland Revenue Department, where she was my father’s boss.  Christine is also a qualified Yoga teacher with an impressive 500 hours of experience. After going through a few health problems herself, Christine moved out of Auckland to the beautiful Matakana coast and started life coaching.  So far, we have had two sessions over the phone.   Christine has helped me in the following ways:

•          To clarify the issues I need to work through in order to address some of the challenges I am currently facing;
•          By giving me a very good list of ways I might be able to develop a business as a freelance blogger;
•          To encourage me to develop a plan of action going forwards (I managed to do this on my own, but could not have done so without her support),
•          To remain positive and keep going
•          By staying in close contact and following up with me regarding progress
  
  

As I have explored in the mind section of my blog, mindset is really important and according to Christine, this is what coaching is all about. Developing a positive attitude and rising above challenging conditions such as schizophrenia isn’t easy.  You do need to be realistic about what a life coach can do to help you and be prepared to put in a lot of hard work yourself.  Just like I’ve often told my personal trainer Alice, she can only do so much and a lot of it is up to me.

If you’re looking for a way forward to work through career, health and life issues, I highly recommend talking to Christine.  She offers a free discovery call and can use this time to help you with goal setting, like she did with me. She works remotely via video calls and it doesn’t matter where in the world you are.  For more information, you can reach Christine at christine@kiscoachme.co.nz