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I was CEO of a 750-plus-person organization, one of the few growing companies in this economy. While it was exciting at first, it took every breath I had over the past three years to keep my firm afloat while competitors were closing their doors. All of my energy went into the employees, products, partners, financial statements, and public appearances. A previous award winning triathlete, I'd only run twice in the last six months.
I was depleted, agitated, impatient, and not liking what I was seeing in the mirror. This was not me but I had no idea how to change it.
Then a friend told me about this Master Executive Coach, Ann Golden Eglé. He explained that unlike the dime-a-dozen coaches you see everywhere, only around 500 coaches throughout the United States have qualified for the master status. The title executive indicated the caliber of individuals who hired Ann. They were highly successful and often in transition. I wasn't in transition--I was lost.
I trusted my friend, so I gave Ann a call. What did I have to lose?
What attracted me to working with Ann was her energy. Her positive nature was almost electric, yet she had this intuitive spirit that drew me in. During our first meeting I found myself telling her things that I'd never said out loud.
Even over the phone I felt as though she could see right through me in a good way. She heard what I was not saying.
I've always been able to do the impossible, to have success in whatever I touched…on paper I seemed to have it all.
Yet there was an inside story that my friends or employees didn't see. I was miserable on many accounts, self-critical and growing more so year by year. My business was a success story, my life was not.
Until I met Ann I thought that everyone spent hours each day second-guessing their choices, belittling themselves, fearing failure, and holding themselves up to impossibly high expectations.
When I was in my twenties I had energy for this silent self-torture. Now it's exhausting.
Ann noticed that I had no spark in my voice. Her observation brought a tear to my eye, the first genuine emotion I'd felt in some time.
I learned that I was missing a future vision of what I wanted to become. Instead my days were packed with doing, doing, doing—no clear outcome in sight.
It didn't happen overnight but through Ann's insightful questions, patience, and guidance I began to see myself in a new light. It became easy to form my thoughts and actions around my new roadmap. Her humor helped ease the challenge of changes I implemented.
The result: for the first time in years I now feel alive. I get out of bed each morning because I eagerly anticipate the day ahead, not because I dread the heavy burdens that lie before me.
I feel ten years younger than when I placed that first call to Ann. People tell me I look younger as well. I have a spring back in my step.
I'm thrilled that I took this step for me and highly recommend Ann to whomever is ready to come alive again, to revise their own roadmap of what is possible.
She's only a phone call away.
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