Client Stories

“Now I believe things can change, and they will change.”

Oliver reflects on how coaching with Marianne gave him purpose and a greater sense of who he is and what he cares about.

“Rather than searching with your eyes closed, it’s very much searching for something with your eyes open,” says Oliver as he chats about his newfound inspiration and positive mentality since his coaching process. “You know what it is you’re looking for.”

Oliver, a 37-year-old coffee roaster from Derbyshire. He was unemployed, been made redundant, and in his words, “in quite a dark place” before coaching. He needed help with taking the next steps in life.

“Issues around identity and purpose were causing me a lot of frustration and anxiety,” he recalls. “I felt very hope-deficient.” Oliver felt that a greater sense of his life’s purpose and general direction eluded him. Out of pure desperation, he decided to approach coaching as “an opportunity to explore me in a way that I hadn’t done before.”

He describes his coaching journey as a necessary emotional rollercoaster. “There were some challenging times where I was facing my current situation head-on,” he remembers. “Also, a little bit of dealing with past hurts and emotions and various experiences.” However, those moments were what brought him to a much healthier place. “That was coupled with a lot of positive discoveries,” he explains. “Being reminded of skills and talents that I currently have and looking at ways of expressing them, pursuing them, and utilising those in the future.”

Inner strength from a mindset shift has utterly changed the trajectory of his thoughts. “[I’m] not just optimistic for the sake of being positive, but I truly believe that things can change, and they will change,” he says.

Gaining much-desired employment whilst being coached wasn’t the only benefit Oliver received over the six months he spent coaching. The envisioning tools that Marianne took him through brought his dormant dream-building potential to the surface. “It was fantastic for me to engage in creative processes and to harness the power of dreaming,” he says. “As ridiculous as some of my dreams might have been, it was almost like stretching a muscle. It’s an exercise you need to push beyond its natural limits.”

Previous to coaching, Oliver had tried other things like aptitude tests and assessments to inspire him, but they had come with a systematic approach and left him lacking. 

“I needed something more all-encompassing and, initially, something less specific. It was more a case of having a broader, more stratospheric vision and purpose: a holistic thing in terms of lifestyle, family, job, my faith.”

Oliver found Marianne’s coaching technique refreshing and unique.

“It was much more engaged in the individual — their personality, their life experience, their sense of emotional intelligence — which I think a lot of coaching styles wouldn’t delve into,” he describes. “For the first time in my life, I feel as if I have not just a sense of purpose but a greater sense of who I am and the things that I care deeply and passionately about.” 

Oliver is now fulfilling his dream of living in Cape Town, South Africa, with his wife, working as Head Coffee Roaster at Truth.