Have you ever found yourself feeling really excited about a new direction in your life, perhaps something you've been thinking about pursuing for a while, only to find that when you return to your everyday reality, it suddenly feels quite a long way from where you are now?
Perhaps you've spent years building a successful career, you've worked hard to establish financial security, and there are people who depend on you. From the outside, everything might look as though it's going well, but increasingly you're becoming aware that the work you're doing, or the life you've created around it, doesn't quite feel right for you anymore.
You might already know what you'd love to do instead, and when you think about that possibility, you feel a sense of excitement and energy that you haven't experienced for some time. But then your practical mind starts reminding you of all the reasons why making that change isn't quite so straightforward, and you find yourself returning to the same familiar routines, wondering how you're ever going to move towards the future you really want.
It's something I've been reflecting on quite a lot recently, particularly after a conversation during one of my advanced coaching supervision sessions about the relationship between our environment and our identity.
When your current identity doesn't quite fit anymore
Alongside building my coaching business, I also work as a Virtual Assistant, supporting business owners with their day-to-day operations and administration. It's work I've been doing for some time, and it's going to remain an important part of my professional life for the foreseeable future.
But what I've started to notice is how differently I experience myself depending on which part of my working day I'm in.
When I'm coaching or spending time developing my coaching business, I feel really connected to the direction I'm moving in. I love the conversations I'm having, the things I'm learning and the opportunity to support people as they explore what's possible for them. It's work that feels incredibly aligned with who I am and the contribution I want to make.
When I return to my VA work, however, I've sometimes noticed myself slipping back into what I think of as my 'VA identity', and there have been moments when that has felt as though I'm moving away from the coach I'm becoming.
I've found this quite challenging because I genuinely value the work I do for my VA clients, and I know that it's going to continue being part of my life. At the same time, coaching is very much the direction I want to grow into, and moving between these two professional identities throughout the day can feel surprisingly draining.
It's made me think about how easily we can become attached to particular versions of ourselves, especially when we've spent years developing our skills, building our careers and establishing roles that other people have come to associate with us.
And I wonder whether this is something you might recognise if you're considering a change in your own working life. Perhaps you've started to identify with a future version of yourself who feels more confident, creative or fulfilled, but you still spend most of your time in an environment that seems to reinforce the person you've always been.
That can be a difficult place to find yourself, particularly when you know you want something different but can't yet see how to make it happen.
A different way of looking at the parts of ourselves
Following my supervision session, I started exploring this tension through an idea from NLP parts work, which involves looking at different parts of ourselves and considering what each one might be trying to achieve.
I imagined my VA identity sitting in one hand and my coaching identity in the other, and rather than continuing to focus on how different they felt, I began asking myself what the highest positive intention was behind each of them. If I looked beyond the actual work I was doing and considered what really mattered to me about each role, was there something that connected them?
What came through was the word transformation, and it felt incredibly clear.
When I'm coaching, I'm supporting people to make meaningful changes in their lives, helping them gain clarity, explore different perspectives and move towards something that feels important to them. That's a huge part of why I love coaching and why I'm so excited about continuing to develop my work in this space.
But when I thought about my VA business, I realised that I'm also supporting my clients to make meaningful changes, just in a different way. I'm helping them develop their businesses, create more time for the things that matter to them and feel better supported in the work they're doing.
As I sat with that realisation, I could see that these two parts of my professional identity actually have far more in common than I'd previously recognised. They both allow me to contribute in ways that feel valuable to me, and many of the strengths I've developed through my VA work are qualities that I also bring into my coaching.
It was such an interesting shift because, although nothing about my practical circumstances had changed, I suddenly felt much less conflicted about the relationship between these two roles.
I still have two businesses to balance, and I'm still working out what that looks like as my coaching business develops, but I no longer feel quite the same sense that one identity is pulling me away from the other.
Instead, I'm beginning to see them as two different expressions of something that's really important to me.
What if there's something worth taking with you?
This experience has got me thinking about how we approach change, particularly when we're moving towards a future that feels quite different from the life we've already established.
I think it's easy to become so focused on everything we want to change that we start looking at our current circumstances, or even parts of ourselves, as things we'd rather leave behind.
Perhaps you're working in an environment where you no longer feel particularly valued, or you've reached a point where the work that once felt fulfilling doesn't give you the same sense of purpose anymore. You might feel frustrated by how much of your time and energy goes into meeting everyone else's needs, especially when there's something you really want to pursue for yourself.
And of course, sometimes our circumstances genuinely do need to change. There may be environments, relationships or professional roles that we've outgrown, and recognising that is an important part of understanding what we want for our future.
But I've been wondering whether, in our desire to move forward, we sometimes overlook the things we've developed along the way that could actually support us in getting there.
If you've spent years building a career, managing responsibilities, navigating challenges and making difficult decisions, you've probably developed an enormous amount of experience and capability, even if you don't always recognise it in yourself.
There may be qualities you've developed through your current role that you'd really like to take into the next chapter of your life, or values that have been important to you all along but that you'd like to express in a different way.
For me, recognising that connection between my two professional identities has helped me appreciate that the work I've done up until now is still part of the person I'm becoming, even though the direction I'm moving in looks different.
And I think there's something quite valuable in being able to acknowledge that, particularly when making a significant change isn't something you can do overnight.
Beginning to connect with the person you want to become
Something else I've been reflecting on is how often we imagine that we'll feel differently about ourselves once our circumstances have changed.
Perhaps you think you'll feel more confident when you've finally made that career move, or that you'll have more freedom and creativity in your life once you've stepped away from your current role. You might even be waiting for the point when you can properly start identifying as the person you want to become.
But I wonder what might happen if you began exploring some of those qualities now, while you're still navigating the practical realities of your current life.
If the woman you want to become feels more confident, purposeful or connected to herself, what might that look like in the decisions you're making today? Are there opportunities to begin expressing more of those qualities, even in small ways, without needing to change everything at once?
Of course, there will still be practical decisions to make, particularly if you're considering leaving a secure salary or moving into something where the outcome feels less certain. Those responsibilities deserve to be taken seriously, and developing a different mindset around change doesn't remove the need for careful planning.
But perhaps you can begin to develop a stronger connection with the future you want while you're working through those decisions, rather than feeling that you have to wait until everything is in place before you can start moving towards it.
Something to reflect on
If you're finding yourself in that uncomfortable space between where you are and where you'd really like to be, perhaps take a little time to think about the different versions of yourself that you're currently navigating.
What is it about your present circumstances that no longer feels right for you, and what is it about the future you're imagining that feels so exciting or meaningful?
As you think about those two versions of yourself, I wonder whether you can recognise any qualities, values or strengths that connect them. Are there things you've learnt or developed through your current experiences that you genuinely want to carry forward, even if the circumstances themselves need to change?
And perhaps most importantly, how might you begin showing up as more of the person you want to become, while still respecting the responsibilities and commitments that are part of your life today?
I'm still exploring what all of this means for me, but recognising the shared intention behind my two professional roles has genuinely changed the way I'm experiencing this stage of my own journey. It's helped me feel more connected to the direction I'm moving in, without feeling that I need to dismiss or distance myself from the work that's brought me here.
And perhaps there's something in that for you to explore, too.
Would you like to explore this further?
If you've been feeling increasingly aware that something needs to change in your work or life, but you're finding it difficult to move forward because of your responsibilities, uncertainty or the doubts that keep coming up, I'd love to invite you to a complimentary 30-minute consultation call.
It's an opportunity for us to have a conversation about where you are now, where you'd really like to be and what might be getting in the way. We can explore what you're experiencing and whether coaching could support you as you navigate this next chapter.