The day the London Stock Exchange's rules changed on 27 October 1986 was dubbed "Big Bang" because of the increase in market activity expected from Thatcher's changes to the financial infrastructure. I consulted for, and then coached, senior leaders in change all over the world until 2000 enjoying the crazy growth involved. It made London rich and other countries followed. Ironically, stats show that a tiny few countries and new billionaires benefitted most at the expense of the global population.
In 2000, I discovered coaching and saw a different side of the mind-numbing crush and brutal values of corporate KPIs. And it has become much worse in recent years. Even public sector organisations have shifted their emphasis from customers and staff, to balance sheets, with crumbling results.
In 2015, I got off the hamster wheel. I began to coach solo-preneurs and small business owners instead: people living a dream and putting themselves on the line. I loved the work and yet I finally acknowledged that being an artist had always been MY dream. So in my 50s I "retired" to follow it. And I REALLY love the work.
The reasons I enjoyed coaching were people and helping them creatively. I didn't love the corporate world because money is not a good master, but it drives the secular world more than any other force.
How to have the riches without mammon? Is there another force? It's all there in Matthew 6:24. Stay with me thought, because I didn't find it there until afterwards. I found it by following my dream. I love to paint, yes. I don't have the drive of the twenty-something artist I might have been. That drive would probably have destroyed me just as the corporate world did, for it is based on...yes, money. What I found was that all my training in C&C could be put to work in helping people discover the dream written in their DNA.
So I am in my final year of three years' training to help people find spiritual direction. And I am about to launch a new initiative: one-to-one conversations such as I used to have in coaching. I plan to have these seated, on zoom and (I'm excited) walking and talking making parts of Europe's great pilgrimages. Stay tuned!
