INTERVIEW: Mari Kennedy, Life Coach at Oscailt

I met with Mari Kennedy recently to discuss her transformation from Projects Co-ordinator for President Mary McAleese to Business, Life and Wellness Coach and Yoga Teacher. In that transition everything changed and she discovered the empowering process of Life Coaching.  Two years ago she received a Diploma in Personal and Business Coaching from the ILI. Mari is an Associate Coach with Xenergie Coaching. She also facilitates corporate coaching seminars on behalf of the VHI and organises yoga and coaching holidays.

You’ve undertaken a major transformation in terms of your career. What was the key factor in initiating this change?

There was no one instigating factor but rather a series of things that happened over a relatively short period of time. While the momentum started from within myself external factors were also at play.  In my decision not to take up a second term as Projects Co-ordinator for President McAleese in 2004 I recognised that I wanted a more balanced life.  It was a big decision but I knew it was right and that I needed to take the leap.  I had planned to take a year off, complete my yoga teacher training and try to start a family, with a longer term plan of becoming a yoga teacher. Unfortunately my marriage ended quite soon after leaving my job and I found myself in a place of personal crisis.  This propelled me into a period of inquiry and the realisation that  this was an opportunity to to make the fundamental changes  I needed to live a happy and fulfilled life. I began teaching yoga, qualified as a Life and Business Coach and  set-up Soulworks , a wellness business.

Was there a phase in your life when it would have been ideal for you to have conferred with a Life Coach?

Absolutely yes! I know in hindsight that had I seen a Life Coach before leaving my job the transition would have been easier and I would have driven the change. When I did eventually attend a Coach,   it gave me the breathing space to look  honestly  at where I was and provided me with the a powerful process which put me back in the driving seat to start creating a life that was much more in alignment with my  values and beliefs.

Personal change requires strength, is it sometimes difficult for your clients to look inward and make changes to their attitudes, their behaviours, etc.?

The majority of people who come to coaching have reached a point in their lives where they feel stuck, out of balance, in the midst of a transition or change and find themselves  in a place of questioning.  There is a recognition that something needs to change.  Even with this awareness it can sometimes be difficult to look inward  but coaching provides  a supportive partnership that  allows the client to have a really honest conversation with themselves and make the changes to their attitudes and behaviours  which  immediately brings changes in their  life’s circumstances.   

Some people have difficulty in making decisions and for this reason, don’t seem to move forward. Can Life Coaching help? In what situations and life occasions should people seek the assistance of a Life Coach?

Coaching can help bring perspective and clarity. Many clients are overwhelmed and over worked by the demands of their lives,  over stretched by responsibilities  and paralysed by fear. We tend to live in reaction mode, on auto pilot letting life just happen while trying to control people and circumstances around us.  People often come for career coaching to proactively move forward in their professional lives.  Others find coaching enormously helpful through transitions and change in their lives, a break-up of a marriage, downsizing, redundancy, diagnosis of an illness.

I often think of coaching as arriving at your own door, entering a safe room where you can throw everything out on the floor and begin to sort it out with the help and guidance of a coach.  Through coaching, the client steps into a transformational space of possibility and support. The partnership with the coach offers a process of inquiry that empowers clients to reconnect with their own inner wisdom.  The objective is to help the client to achieve balance in their lives by increasing awareness of those areas that are out of balance.  In essence, it enables the client to look at where they are today, where they want to be in the future and supports the client to take the steps to get there.

There are huge challenges and rewards in Life Coaching. Can you explain in your own words what makes your career so satisfying?

I find coaching hugely rewarding and it energises me in a way that I have never known in other jobs. To work with each client on the premise that they have innate potential to be the masters of their own life is a privilege. To see a client become aware that they create their reality, to watch them grow in clarity and confidence and witness the small steps becoming bigger steps as they move towards fulfilling their potential is enormously satisfying.  Where else in this world is there a space to work that is non- judgemental?

So many people are lost in today’s society. There are massive pressures and it is difficult to find an inward haven in which to be at peace. Would you feel that more often than not, it is the person themselves that puts themselves in these unhelpful mindsets and not the external factors we would like to pin the blame on?

Its very easy in this externally focused world to feel victimised and therefore disempowered by life’s circumstances.   Often unconsciously we let external circumstances and the peanut gallery of “other people” dictate our decisions which leads to what John O Donoghue called  “unlived lives” .  We are responsible for our lives, based on the choices  that we make.  If we have the courage to make the internal shifts our  outer lives will change.

It is so apparent we have no space in our lives, no space in our minds, no space in our bodies and this leads to constricted lives, inflexible attitudes and contracted tense bodies. Coaching is a step to re-introduce a  space to think, to assess, to go inside, and begin to live from the inside out. Life mastery is  the ability  to welcome everything , meeting  life’s  challenges with an open heart, greeting change with a flexible mind-set and  it starts with self-inquiry.   

Where do you find inspiration for your life’s work? Who do you look up to as the great ‘thinkers’ in the realm of self-improvement, philosophy and personal development?

Primarily I take inspiration from my own experience and my own  learning through transitioning.  As regards great thinkers, although I doubt he would be comfortable with the title of “thinker”,  Eckart Tolle’s continues to inspire me with his simple teachings on the power of staying in the present moment.  

What would you say to someone who might be cynical about attending a Life Coach, who says ‘It won’t work for me…”

Coaching may not work for everyone. Timing and willingness to take responsibility is crucial for a client to achieve results.   There has to be an underlying desire to change or move forward.   To engage with a coach takes courage, honesty and commitment.  However I do believe that any process that believes in the power and potential of every individual to find their own answers and live a fulfilled life is worth a go!

Mari: 087 9150264, marikennedy@eircom.net

Interview given to Frankie Macken.