Marianne Cantwell, UK

I spent the first few months of my business feeling like an imposter.  I had retrained as a coach and quit my job full of excitement… but now, on the ground, something was wrong: after every session I was drained, sometimes in tears for no reason, and began to avoid taking on new clients… not the greatest business strategy around, right?  The problem was a bit embarrassing: as a coach, I was supposed to be sitting quietly, speaking very little; my training told me to take myself out of the picture completely.   Problem was, I was bursting with ideas, desperate to inspire and the times I got the best response was when I dared to share my own story. Thinking that was a bad thing I tried to force myself to pipe down, fade out, and be the way I’d been told was ‘right’. That was exhausting.  Then, at the encouragement of a friend I did Wealth Dynamics. The results blew me away. As you have probably guessed, I was a Star.

Naturally, I said the results were wrong. No way was I THAT sort of person, clearly, clearly I was a Creator or a Supporter. No WAY was I the one who did well in the spotlight. I wanted others to shine, not me! The test was wrong, no question.  Then, reality seeped in. I realised that everything I was passionate about was about helping people live bigger, bolder, and shine more brightly. Star like you might say. People kept asking for my story but I’d held myself down so much there wasn’t even a picture of myself on my website.   So, I took a deep breath and changed it up. I started running groups, and every piece of resistance I’d had melted away. Best of all my group clients got wildly better results than my individuals and word started to spread. I changed my role to inspirer and dared to tell my story and speak in front of crowds. My blog took off in popularity, and I didn’t have to look for clients anymore – they came to me. Oh, and I started loving what I did so much I would stay up to 3am just because I didn’t want to stop!

Fastforward to today and I am finishing up a book for a major publisher, about how to escape your career-cage and become a Free Range Human… and a core chapter is where I share how giving myself permission to let go of who I thought I should be let me finally be who I really am. No more hiding.   Turns out what I thought were my weaknesses were actually my biggest strengths in disguise.