I was born in June and love this month! It cannot be a coincidence that my blog post is read by you now, isn’t it? Everything happens for a reason.
I’d like to share my personal story with you about “giving birth to myself.” My pregnancy lasted nine years instead of the usual nine months. Let me share with you how it all began…
Before moving to Vienna from Turkey, I had a good life with family support, an active social life, a house with a garden, two cars, two corporate jobs and two big salaries. You might ask, “Why did you leave behind such a ‘good’ life,’ Dilek?” Here is why…dissatisfaction. Not because I was a spoiled young woman in her late 20s, but because there was a hole in my soul…. I put on a mask, pretended my job was right for me while climbing the stairs of corporate success, but inside there was a constant suffering for no apparent reason.
Which is why I jumped at the opportunity to move when my husband told me that he found a position in Vienna. Meanwhile, I was about to be promoted to manage eight Villeroy & Boch retail stores in different cities including a move to Istanbul. To cut the story short, we moved to Vienna instead of Istanbul. Within three months, I was a stay-at-home mom of a “terrible two” instead of a recently promoted manager. Then I got pregnant with both, my son and myself, thus beginning a new life chapter.
I was raising two kids nearly alone, responsible for the household and family as my husband was often away on business. It was a totally different lifestyle than I had in the past 10 years and I had no clue how to make it work. So I started to ask myself questions like, “Who am I really?” and “How can I bring my best self and best work to this life?” I was determined to find answers as if my life depended on them…I was suffocating otherwise. Juggling between childcare and the household, I started to read biographies of successful people, especially late bloomers. Every day I watched 3-4 TED talks from different fields and noted down those I found interesting along with the reason why. I have a Master’s degree in Architecture, but saw no future for me in that field. I searched for tools to change my career.
Years passed by while I tried to (re-)discover my strengths and talents. I began working out daily to rebuild my self-confidence and asked my family and friends about the qualities and professions that best described me. Their feedback helped me figure out who I really was and included common themes:
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- Positive and helpful
- Communicative
- A good listener
- A good public-speaker
- A helper for people to find solutions to their problems
- A personal development junkie who loved to share knowledge with the others
- A structured mind
- Multi-lingual and multi-cultural
- Good at time management
- Good at inspiring and motivating people
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I looked for the type of profession where I could use these qualities and the kind of training that improves my competencies so that I could become more of them. I worked with a career coach and my life changed for the best. I found “Coaching & Training” and could study this online without leaving my living room!
Then it was free fall — kids, household, part-time job, studying, becoming an accredited coach, starting my own company and finally pursuing my true calling as an Erickson Certified Professional Coach with an ACC accreditation from the International Coach Federation.
It is now clear that my mission is to contribute to life in a meaningful manner to help and support others to (re-)discover their own calling and guide them towards their best possible personal and professional future. I have spent almost 20 years of my professional life to (re-)create a new physical environment for my clients; now I empower them to (re-)create a new mental environment for themselves to live up to their full potential.
My schedule is full of personal and professional development coaching sessions, workshops, talks and webinars. Life-long learning, life-long sharing and transforming lives for better — there is no hole in my soul any longer.
I was born in June, but I learned that we can give birth to ourselves many times in the span of one lifetime. Change is doable. Transformation is possible. If I did it, so can you!
Embrace dissatisfaction and believe in your resources. Miracles will happen!
Dilek Süzal is a VFN member and a mother of two. She is an Erickson Certified Professional Coach with an ACC accreditation from the International Coach Federation and her mission is to coach impact-driven individuals and teams to live, produce and thrive up to their full-potentials.
Dilek Süzal Coaching & Training
Website: dileksuzal.com
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Instagram: @dilek.suzal
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilek-süzal-48335b27
E:Mail: dilek@dileksuzal.com