People who tried coaching: Fredrik
Fredrik Öjefors is 33 years old and lives in Saltsjö-Boo, Sweden. He suffered from a thirty-something crisis and wanted an answer to the question: “Does life have to be this way?”
Fredrik Öjefors, a sales rep. at a large Swedish food company, observed – as so many others his age – that he worked eight hours a day, slept eight hours and had eight hours to himself.
Day after day.
Life seemed “so-so”.
“I had the feeling, ‘My Lord, here I am sitting with my family and my children and living the life of the Average Joe.’ I leered at my buddies who had come a lot further along in their carriers and I wondered just what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”
It was then he looked for a coach.
“I felt that I needed help to get me out of my shell, and I hoped as well that the coach could serve me up some solutions after a few hours’ session.”
Did you get any solutions from your coach?
“No, I quickly realised that it didn’t work that way. It’s just not possible for someone else to tell you what you should do. My coach listened to me and then questioned my conclusions. If I said, ‘It’s like this…’ he might turn around and say, ‘Is it really like that? Could it possibly be like this instead?’”.
Fredrik Öjefors says that the coaching shook up his value-judgments.
“I understood that I was in the habit of blaming circumstance whenever I avoided doing things: ‘I would have done that had it not been for…’ I could, for instance, blame my up-bringing. Mine had been very good, but there were always instances I could bring up to use as an excuse for not daring to try. Now I know that the only thing affecting me is myself and my own thoughts.”
How has coaching benefited you most?
“In that I have grown as a person. I feel more self-secure, and I feel that I have obtained a sounder understanding of the world around me. I am not so set in my ways; rather I am more open to other ideas. I am also much better now at finding different solutions when I encounter a problem.”
After six months of coaching, you were able to get your employer to pay for another six months. How did you manage to do that?
“I brought the matter up when I negotiated for a new job within the company. I simply explained the private coaching that I had received, and they were rather impressed by it and then they agreed to cover the cost of my continued coaching.”