How's your relationship going?
Hi, I’m Bella. And I had a complicated relationship with my career.
Not the career when I was a doctor. That was straight up boredom and a case of un-passion - pretty straightforward if you ask me.
It was actually with my own business in financial education, Absorich. The one my husband, Adam and I built with a lot of heart work, sweat, tears and blood.
Literal blood. 🩸
Side note: I was pregnant when we started that business, and 3 months into it, went through a traumatic emergency c-section with major blood loss.
It’s also the same business that changed the direction of our life in Malaysia after leaving our lofty doctor jobs in the UK. The same business that provided us with financial stability and a platform into personal development.
The business that others would refer to as, well, their baby.
Well, I had a problem with that very baby. Every now and then, I got this urge of burning the whole business down.
.. Resentment over staying up past midnight to host webinars on Zoom 😵💫
.. Frustration about having to manage and train new employees, especially on marketing 🥵
.. Dissatisfaction over a business model and company structures 😤
It was confusing because I didn’t exactly know why I felt the way I did.
I loved our students, believed in our mission, and enjoyed seeing the differences we’re making in what otherwise would be a heavy, dry, masculine topic of money and personal finance.
So what was all this frustration about?
Working with my own coach, Bev, I realized that it was not the job of running that business that truly bothered me.
It’s the person I was BECOMING. By that time, I had done a lot of personal work to realize that I wasn’t bringing my whole, true self into my career. And that bothered me.
Because as much as Bella-2-years-ago would tell you otherwise, Bella in her wisdom now today would say that the work of Absorich is important to her.
But I wasn't getting enough of my ME-ness into the business and my career. Because here's the thing..
I love working in a deep connection with the same person over time and building trusting relationship with them. Our business model then didn’t quite provide that opportunity beyond the brief moments of me teaching and coaching in our life events. Other than that, it was aaaaall online course. 🥱
I’m pretty intuitive and often get a sense of “knowing” without really understanding why or the mechanics around it. This gift was my guiding light in the first few years of starting Absorich when the team was small. Once the team passed the 15-people mark, things felt heavy. I felt pressured to justify my “knowing” to my team, which resulted in me avoiding and suppressing it all altogether.
I’m an early bird, and I love my sleep. 🐤 I’m also protective of my time and space. Suffice to say, 2 hours is the maximum I can be alive and conscious on a Zoom call. Anything beyond that, I’M OUT. In fact, one of my biggest motivations to leave Medicine was because of the night on-calls. I. Simply. Cannot.
In other words.. 2 years ago, in my own career of business, I didn’t allow myself to be.. ME.
And as an introverted, intuitive, highly sensitive empath, not being me meant letting myself absorb others, and mirror them to the point that I didn’t even know what ME looked like.
Slow-forward 2 years later, here I am, building my own coaching business, while gracefully and systematically (tell that to my team and their SOP, ha!) handing over my CEO role to the next person in Absorich.
----------
(this is the part where I tell you that I sort of lost the point of this email. It's Friday 5:59PM and my brain isn't braining much anymore.)
But to cut things short, this email was inspired by feedback I received from 2 different people at the same time on separate occasions - about how I am the embodiment of my work.
💫 Helping success-seekers find their next soul-fulfilling career move that lights them up in their current season of life. 💫
The good news? I did not burn my business down. In fact, Absorich is very much alive and thriving under new leadership of our COO and CMO in-training. 💃🏻
The bad news? I genuinely forgot the point of this email. Whoops.
The most genuine-from-the-bottom-of-my-heart news? It’s possible for you too. You don’t have to burn the bridges completely, move to a Caribbean island, or change your Instagram profile picture to a cat to reinvent yourself and find a soul-fulfilling career.
The fact that you’re even here, reading this whole thing til the end, daring to even dream about it, already means that it’s possible for you. 💫
Rooting for your relationship Reader,
Bella
PS. The workshop I initially planned to do on 20th June is NOT. HAPPENING. A week of overseas holidays with kids, a sick husband, and a last-minute school sports day announcement meant that I’m completely thrown off with my schedule.
PPS. Instead of 2 spaces as I initially planned, I’m celebrating the 5 souls who took the courage for a Success Session. They’re also the reasons why June suddenly got packed, and I intend to serve them from the highest good of my heart, giving myself grace and space as I do that.
PPPS. (Is there such a thing?) Would you still be interested in a workshop on Inner Leadership? It's free. Reply to this email if you think it might be your thing.
