MY ACT OF REBELLION: MIRJAM VAN RUTH

After working my entire career in a corporate environment, I finally decided to change my path and start my own business.

It was a choice that was in the making for many years, but there were always reasons not to make the final step. I did not dare, it wasn’t the right time and I did not know exactly what I wanted to do… I do love cooking, I already had a side business giving cooking workshops so I considered expanding my cooking business. But there was always this little voice that kept interfering, saying this was not the right path for me.

But then what? Enough ideas, but how to choose?

Eventually I calculated and recalculated my financial position and found out that with a couple of changes, I could survive for a while. That gave me peace of mind to allow myself to just start experimenting. The first year I started of with lots of cooking activities (workshops, catering, organising dinners) and with coaching some of my previous colleagues on personal development. To professionalise in that area I decided to follow an education to become a professional coach.

At the end of the first year I made my inventory. I realised that cooking was indeed not the right path for me. I love to work with people, but I want to be part of their experience. Cooking in the background did not tick that box for me. So I decided to limit my cooking activities to cooking workshops, as these I thoroughly enjoy, and to further expand my coaching activities.

However I also wanted more diversity. Slowly more ideas started flowing. By letting go of my cooking activities, I got the space to let my creativity flow.

Currently I am working on a number of different initiatives focused on personal development, entrepreneurship and healthy organisations. At first I thought that all these initiatives were quite different, but I now see them starting to intertwine and that’s a lovely feeling as that means I am on the right path!

With that my why (or my purpose) is getting clearer and clearer: “To change the way people perceive themselves so they dare to be truly themselves and be at ease with that”. Of course this implicitly means that I want to be brave enough to be truly myself and that is what I am moving towards by becoming an entrepreneur, following my own creativity and daring to trust my own choices.

Check out www.fftcoaching.nl for more information about Miriam’s coaching activities.