The Following Article was Published in the Cascade Business News, August 1999.

"What Do Women Really Want?"

By Ann Golden Eglé, PCC , CPCC Of Golden Visions Success Coaching

My work as a certified personal and professional coach has provided fascinating insight on this topic. Through coaching a variety of men and women at all levels of the success ladder, I have found that what women in particular want is ‘balance’ and ‘fulfillment’.

Luckily women entering the new millennium are well beyond the superwoman model of the 70’s. Still, how do we get balance and on a deeper level, how do we know what fulfills us?

Let’s take client Rachel* for example. Rachel, a bright, articulate, successful, loving woman came to coaching for professional reasons. She had a strong, consistent outside sales position and was close to the top of her game. Recently, however, things had fallen apart.

While she had the same strong product and used the same techniques, no one was buying and the sales that she did have were mysteriously being canceled. Her stress level was exceedingly high.

Through a series of weekly coaching sessions, we looked beyond Rachel’s professional world. She was stretched between her husband, children, aging parents needing care, personal health issues and volunteer efforts. There was no balance in or out of work. No time to make sense of it all! No Rachel time, ever.

Key to creating ‘balance’ is learning to say no. Rachel developed a list of what, in reality, she could say no to in order to say yes to what she really wanted. Establishing these boundaries gave her life a new freedom, an increased sense of balance. She did wonderfully creative things with this newly created time. Still, something was missing, ‘fulfillment’.

Rachel had been so busy taking care of business and her loved ones, that she hadn’t taken the time to discover what ‘fulfilled’ her. What was truly important to her and her alone. What were her values?

We discovered fascinating things about Rachel in her fulfillment/values exploration, vital aspects of who she was beyond a wife, mother, daughter and professional, that had been blocked through years of high stress and lack of balance.

Beyond highly cherished values such as honesty and integrity, we discovered how much Rachel loved physical activities, to spend time in nature, to create things, to have fun, to laugh and make others laugh, to love and to explore her spirituality! This is what fulfilled Rachel. Much of this had also been missing in her life.

With this new knowledge of what brought her balance and what fulfilled her on the deepest levels, the rest was easy. It all began to make perfect sense. Rachel’s daily decisions came more easily and she stopped second guessing herself.

She played hooky to spend time with her husband occasionally, wrote love letters to her children, developed deeper relationships with her clients, friends and herself, and she kept symbols around her desk to remind her of who she was in times of stress.

It is no surprise that this newfound balance and fulfillment brought the sales rolling back. In Rachel’s own words, "I feel like I am now a magnet who attracts people. I am amazed at how much I have changed! I am a different person—confident, having fun when I’m working and I love the new way I do business."

‘What do women really want?’ We want to eliminate anything that blocks our coveted balance. We want to step more fully and freely into everything that brings us fulfillment.

We want to smile more. Rachel was courageous enough to discover this, through coaching, for herself. What do you really want?

* The name has been changed to protect confidentiality.

Ann Golden Eglé, CPPC (certified personal and professional coach), owner of Golden Visions Success Coaching, coaches executives, professionals, sales/marketing reps and entrepreneurs throughout the U.S. and Canada. Eglé also produces a free coaching "Thought of the Week", which is distributed via e-mail. Contact Ann at 541-385-8887 or [email protected].

Reprinted with permission from Cascade Business News, August, 1999