Sach Patel

Before we started working together, life for me was quite ‘noisy’ and I was very much in my head. I created a lot of pressure on myself. I was very critical of myself - and not in a constructive way - in a way that I now see as quite useless.

My biggest fear was that I was never going to be good enough in life - I wasn’t going to be able to provide security for my family; I wasn’t going to be great at my job; I wasn’t good at my job and someone was going to find out, and I was going to be revealed as a person who’s just faking it…all of that was extremely worrying for me.

I felt that I was struggling with so much. I had created this vicious circle of pressure that I just couldn't get out of. I was always thinking “why am I not good enough? I need to do all of these things in life and I'm never going to be able to do any of them because I'm just not good enough. And how can I get better? And am I even capable of getting better?” These thoughts really affected me.

Before I came to coaching I read a lot of books and I listened to a lot of podcasts and I just tried to understand how other leaders in different fields were approaching their own lives and trying to study them. I would look at things like rituals that successful people do; life experiences from successful people… and a lot of that was good to read but, I wasn't quite sure at the end how to apply that to myself. It was often inspiring but there were no action points I could take away from that myself. It was more of an awareness of “hey here is what these people do”.

After we had a couple of conversations I felt that I trusted Charlotte very quickly and easily, and it wasn’t just the conversations we had, I’d seen the posts with information and I thought “wow! This person is very open to learning, and helping and they are obviously very into what they are doing”.

I never thought I would have the confidence to get to the stage of putting myself out there, finding people around the world who would be interesting to work with, and just getting on with it. That has been really great.

Had I not been coached by Charlotte I’m not sure I would have the confidence to put myself out there and just get on with life and keep doing what I need to do.

One of the things that made a big difference is that I am a lot more aware of my thoughts. I can actually address them instead of letting them linger and bother me - which is what I used to do. Now, if I have any questions or doubt in my mind, if there’s any fear, I tend to take a step back - I will always now try to address that thought with the response I learnt of: ‘“hey, that's interesting”. Now, instead of letting the thought manifest and grow into something so that it becomes more pressurised for me, I can nip it in the bud from the beginning. I can really consider: “What is it that is making me feel this way? Is there any merit to it? And can I do anything about it?” I’ve started doing this proactively now and it's powerful because it just rinses away a lot of unnecessary fear.

Before, I was trying to sort of protect myself - when I didn't really need to in many cases- so that’s one HUGE aspect of change and where I am now.

There were so many insights that helped. Learning about the concept of agreements vs expectations was a game changer, it’s changed the way that I think about approaching people and relationships and collaborating with them - whether work or home or any situation. It has had a massive impact.

Charlotte has given me tools to observe my thoughts, and I deliberately make that time and space for it (which I never would have thought to do before we started working together). It was a tool that I learnt in the process and it’s blossomed.