How and Why I Became a Professional Life Empowerment Coach

By Jennifer L. Tinsman, CEC

Ugly Packages

Like so many of my friends, colleagues, and the clients that I serve, my decision to make a seemingly radical career change in the second part of my life came as a result of a natural progression of life. It happened after many years of learning, and growing, and seeking answers to the many profound questions I had about life, spirituality, the world, and my place in it.

The final catalyst for forcing my career change was a long time in the making. It was prompted by a devastating medical condition, a mysterious onset of Bell's Palsy that slowly claimed the right side of my face and eye. Although not life threatening, the repercussions of this miserable condition turned my life upside down.

As each day, week, and month passed, my face and lower eyelid fell further into the hands of gravity, which inevitably stole yet another piece of my 20/20 vision, self-image and self-esteem. This situation was difficult enough, but then began all of the horrific surgeries that ensued in an attempt to put me back together again. Inevitably, the time required for recovery from these surgeries took me out of my longtime career in the medical world and out of the life that I knew.

In the midst of all of these personal challenges, the sudden discovery of a potentially life threatening cancerous tumor behind my husband's left eye suddenly threw both of our lives into mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial chaos.

I have often heard it said that sometimes life's most precious and treasured gifts come wrapped in ugly packages. In hindsight, I can see that my plight, although delivered on the wings of something powerfully painful and challenging, was indeed the same force that had the power to propel me where I needed to go to find the answers I was seeking about life and myself.

Tools for Self-Liberation

As strange as it may seem, the enormous impact of the mental, emotional, and spiritual grief and confusion, and the subsequent paralyzing fear I suffered due to my husband's and my situation, somehow became my greatest tool for self-liberation. Through some mysterious transfer of power, my despair ultimately became fuel for my determination to find the courage I needed to push me beyond anything that held me back from living my life fully and in total alignment with who I genuinely experienced myself to be.

During this process it suddenly became quite clear that transcending my self-created personal blocks, in order to create a more fulfilling and purposeful life, required me to reevaluate and reshape many of the old self-limiting and conflicting beliefs that I stubbornly clung to. In particular, and of greatest significance, were the incompatible convictions I held surrounding my intuitive/psychic gift and its relevance to my life

Although a few close friends and family members who had experienced my gift over the years knew about it, I had for the most part spent a tremendous amount of energy throughout my life span trying to subdue it and keep its presence hidden. Why? Because it was not compatible with my deep-seated belief that to allow its use would put me in spiritual jeopardy. Not to mention of course, the obvious implications of being viewed as anything other than the intelligent, logical, socially acceptable girl and woman that most people knew me to be.

Looking back, I suppose I should have known that to try to overpower and ignore something of this magnitude was like trying to hold back a tidal wave. But for whatever reason, it was not until I reached this particular juncture of my life that I was ready to succumb to the reality that my attempts at suppression had always come with consequences and a price tag I could no longer afford to pay.

I was tired of trying to overpower it, tired of feeling like I was living a lie, tired of feeling like a spiritual loser, and tired of trying to deny its persistent presence in my life. Mostly, because it was such a natural part of me, I was fed up with trying to find ways to manage it, because it was like trying to find a way not to breathe while at the same time needing oxygen to survive.

As my denial began to crumble, I shuddered at the reality of the impact that this one lone inner conflict had had on the demise of my personal health and the truly horrific ramifications that had come to others because of my reluctance to share information with them from this source. Read the full story 

Choice

This was when I truly began to understand that I had a choice about my beliefs and that resolving this inner conflict once and for all was central to my successfully living an authentic, purposeful, and healthy life.

My decision to take on the process of reexamining my beliefs came with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was terrified of what might happen if I opened up my beliefs for reevaluation, but I was even more terrified of an outcome that would lead me to a decision to modify them and of what that modification might require of me. On the other hand, I began to feel a bit hopeful, because if it was possible for me to resolve this issue, it might also be possible for me to harness and purposely direct it in service to others, to empower them -- but how?

Remarkably, although finally daring to open my well-established beliefs to the possibility of any degree of inaccuracy and change felt as though I were swimming in very deep and dangerous waters, I discovered that my faith in combination with my determination were enough to keep me afloat.

I also discovered that life really does have an amazingly supportive and synchronistic flow. So when I was given the opportunity to use my latent writing skills and publish the story of my search for healing, which included resolving the conflict of my intuitive gifts, I did so. I stood up to my fear of failure, accepted the invitation, and wrote my first book.

By the time my book was published, although it was not easy, I had finally managed to shift my negative perceptions about my intuitive capabilities from curse to gift. Interestingly, within the process of the shift, I had gained a new and profound comprehension of the potential of the too-often latent intuitive mind within all of us.

Redefining My Life

After the publication of my book, I was still in the process of redefining my life. I was profoundly changed by the journey through my perceptual shift, but I still had no idea what rightful place all of this had in my life. As magnificent as it was to have unearthed new knowledge in my quest for sincere answers and change, my patience was wearing thin with the fact that new knowledge typically continues to bring new questions to be answered until the process of transformation is complete.

I was very grateful for the epiphany and my "new-found" understanding of intuition as an extraordinary vehicle, capable of delivering us into the truthful, unclouded awareness of the unimaginable, boundless capacity of our human potential. But I still had no conception of how to integrate my knowledge, past work experience, and authentic gifts and talents into a career format and arena that would support my objective of empowering and benefiting others. Consequently, it took all I had to subdue my urges to return to the comfort of my old job. Again, faith and the power of my determination drove me forward.

Timing, we all know, is crucial to success, and I have always been in awe of the wisdom and timeliness of the mysterious forces that move our lives. After grappling with my lack of clear-cut direction for some time, one timely day, I heard about life empowerment coaching from a friend.

She persistently encouraged me to consider becoming a professional coach, insisting it was a career match made in heaven with my name on it. I resisted for some months, and then for some reason still unknown to me, one morning I just felt prompted to sit at my computer, do an internet search, and investigate what coaching was really all about.

That search led me to Master Coach, Dr. Bruce Schneider, author of Relax, You're Already Perfect, and the founder of the Institute of Professional Empowerment Coaching. My inquiry revealed not only that life empowerment coaching is all about empowering others but also that IPEC's high training standards and technical definition of a professional coach were in full alignment both with my criteria for a meaningful, purposeful career and with my values and spiritual principles. The rest, as they say, is history; I applied, got accepted, studied hard, aced my exams, became certified, and through the process had my heart, soul, and mind stretched to and through the last leg of my journey to transformation. 

Today I live my life in gratitude for the many opportunities that my career as a life empowerment coach has granted me. Coaching has offered me the perfect arena in which to appropriately utilize my personal intuitive gifts for the benefit of others. More significantly, it offers me the opportunity to assist others in utilizing their own natural connection to this rich source of inner wisdom and infinite intelligence, empowering them to access their own untapped, latent possibilities for change.

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How can I help you?

If you would like to:

• Seek the treasure hidden within the ugly packages of your own life
• Discover your own personal tools for self-liberation
• Explore the beliefs that hold you back from creating an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, and satisfying life
• Investigate untapped latent possibilities for change and activate the "power of choice" in your life
• Re-define your life

I invite you to contact me for a free introductory coaching session and to discuss how our working together may benefit
you personally.

Email: Jennifer@quantumtrackcoaching.com

Or

Phone: 843-399-2753

What do you have to lose?

Life at its best is waiting for you!