What is the next chapter in your life?

Before I became an Ollie Coach, I had at one time been a successful teacher, then a fairly successful business owner, trainer and speaker, helping people with good nutrition and lifestyle choices. Finally – still pursuing a dream that I hadn’t yet found, I gave up both those things and became a foster carer. Which I am and love.

But I was still looking for something to help turn my life around. I wanted to find satisfaction and gain fulfilment in my life. I wanted to help people, especially children, in every way I could. I wanted to take control of the things, not feel frustrated in my work or relationships anymore. But I didn’t know how or where to start.

Then I was diagnosed with Cancer.

This was a huge setback, but also a turning point for me.

During my treatment my family were super supportive. I began to realise the things that were important to me. I had to overcome my own fears to enable those around me to have hope and to believe that I had hope too. And I did. I came through and my treatment was a success.

It did however leave me feeling like a rabbit stunned in the headlights. Due to the treatment, there were now things that I could no longer do – things that changed my life drastically and this had a huge knock-on effect to my confidence and self-belief. And I kept re-reading the chapter in my life that I was in. I kept doubting my abilities or that I would be able to become whole again. Be like others. Fit back in. I felt like hiding away. But at the same time, I also wanted to help the foster children in my care who were struggling with their emotions too. I stumbled across a quote that said,

“You can’t start the next chapter in your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”

They say you look at things differently when faced with life changing or life challenging events. I still wanted to make the most of the rest of my life and was looking for change. I didn’t want to be defined by the differences this illness and treatment had made to me.

Reading Psychologies magazine one day I came across an advert for the opportunity to train and become an Emotional Wellbeing Coach. An ‘Ollie’ Coach.

Some time ago, a young foster child we were caring for had become very upset one day, when things weren’t going her way and stamping her foot she exclaimed, “Oh! I just don’t know how to BE in this house!”

I remembered this as I turned up tentatively to my first Ollie Coach training week-end, having not been out of my house for anything at all, for some months after my treatment ended and as I recovered. I was feeling nervous and not sure how to ‘be’. I was conscious that I had become a very different person to the one I used to know. It was a huge personal challenge, to overcome what I had just been through and the hidden limitations it had left me with. I didn’t know how to re-enter the world as the new me.

Whilst training I realised that although I had come onto this course to be able to help children with their emotions, this was really helping me just as much! I had found a course, coaches and therapists who were helping me change my life once again. With their help I began to understand that I could control my thoughts and emotions if I learned how to think about things differently. I now saw it was all about my perception of the world around me and that if I opened my brain to new and challenging thoughts, I would be able to create a happier and more fulfilling life.

And this was when I knew that by using the coaching methods, that I had just found, I could help others to find the root cause of their problems, enable them to understand their way of thinking and feeling and help them to change their lives too.  

I am now able to accept who I am, and I have become passionate about empowering people to help themselves, whatever their challenges may be. My new way of thinking and Ollie Coaching has made such a difference to me and to my life.

Every day opens a new chapter. I wonder what your next chapter will be, what will you notice, what chapters will open for you, and what will be the difference that makes all the difference to your life?

Belinda Wells, Ollie Coach

Belinda is an Ollie Coach and Foster Carer. Previously a Primary School Teacher, she now has over 20 years’ experience working with children. Her interests are psychology, how we think and why we behave as we do, and she loves learning and writing.  Belinda enjoys seeing the difference her work as an Ollie Coach can make to the children and families she works with.

To get in contact with Belinda email Belinda.wells@ollieandhissuperpowers.com

To find out more about Ollie and his Super Powers and how to become an Ollie Coach go to https://www.ollieandhissuperpowers.com/pages/about-us