It can be easy to get caught up in hustle culture. It can be easy to overlook your personal needs in a professional environment. But you’re a whole person, not a machine. Failure to address your emotional needs, and provide for personal satisfaction, can have consequences in all aspects of your life. Increasingly, people are becoming aware of these interdependencies and taking steps to better care for their whole self. This can create new challenges, as you may discover professional goals no longer align with personal goals. You may find that your ambitions lack purpose. Or you may encounter this in the workplace – team members, managers, or direct reports who are suddenly asking for more from you – and more of you.

How you respond to these challenges is just as important as the steps you take to address them. It requires you to be vulnerable, empathetic, honest, and humble. Those qualities are innate to each of us, but sometimes the workplace asks us to ignore that side of ourselves and become The Professional. A personal coach, whether it’s a life coach or an executive coach, can help you identify those qualities in yourself, and re-surface them. If you find yourself floundering, at work or at home, it might be time to stop and assess – have you been living a whole life, with personal and professional fulfillment, or have you been living multiple lives, asking each side to compete for your attention?

No matter where you are on this journey, the support of a life coach can help you get there faster. Whether it’s assessing your own thought process, or creating a plan for change, the positive outside influence of a coach can help you inspire change in yourself. Working together, your life coach will help you identify your objectives, set meaningful goals, and create a realistic plan to achieve them – personally, or professionally.