The answer to “What stops you from getting a better job?” revealed that she built her long-term career around what she SHOULD do rather than what she WANTED to do. In other words, she never followed her life’s passion [yoga, spirituality, etc.] as a career – only as a ‘hobby’ and she doesn’t have enough time at the end of the day to pursue those interests to the extent that she would like. She now thinks its too late in life to start over.

I followed up with a series of “What would happen if you did change careers? And “Who told you that?” and got to specifics.

My client started to realize that perhaps she had more control over her situation than she realized. She also realized that she spent most of her life trying to please other people rather than herself and only ended up being unhappy in her own life. Her mother did the same thing and my client was always told that she should make the best out of what she had and not want for more.

I used the Re-Parenting Technique to help eliminate my client’s feelings of shame and guilt for wanting more in her life.

After completing this technique my client revealed that she realized that she did have courage that her mother did not have. My client was not as obsequious as she thought. While her mother stay in a bad marriage throughout her life, my client left her bad marriage and supported her two children on her own. She had the guts to make the change. This was the resource she has that she wished her mother had back then. So, when my client went back to the memory of her mother telling her to be happy with what she has she now thinks about that event knowing that her choice of leaving – changing her life for the better – was a better choice than settling for what she had – and perhaps she could build on that positive experience and do the same with her work – have the courage and confidence in herself to take the leap of faith to follow her passion vs. follow her ‘past’.