How They Did It | Christie Lewis from GP to Health and Life Coach
Where To Find Christie
Hello my friends, I hope you are all doing well! In this episode we speak with Dr. Christie Lewis who helps people find happiness and joy through 1:1 coaching and retreats. She strikes me as somebody with a positive attitude and healthy lifestyle, but we found out that she wasn’t always like this…
When she was younger, she had a bad relationship with food and disordered eating habits. After a career burnout and broken relationship, one of her friend convinced her to book a yoga retreat in Bali — alone. It was on this trip that she realized how stress was affecting her so much and pushed her to decide that something needed to change.
But what caused her stress and burnout was not immediately clear. It took her a lot of time and many therapy sessions to finally come to the conclusion that her career at the time was not a good fit for her.
Eventually she decided to cut back on her hours working as a GP and sought out a different career that allows her to help people solve problems in a completely different way.
This is a summary that accompanies the original interview published on Work In Progress Podcast. Here we highlight the main takeaway and useful resources. Listen to the full interview here.
Quotes We Love From This Episode:
- [2:20] “Life is an interesting journey and thankfully I’ve kept quite an open mind”
- [27:20] “People don’t focus on joy and happiness enough”
Who is Christie?
- Before Christie became a health and life coach, she was as a GP (General Practitioner), physiotherapist, and acupuncturist
- She currently lives in London and her goal is to help people find balance and joy in life through 1:1 coaching and retreats
- [8:00] She had always been interested in science since she was young and the decision to work in the medical field came naturally. She worked as a physiotherapist for a few years and then decided to become a GP
- [04:00] Stress had always played a big role in Christie’s life and they didn’t just come from her job: the pressure to look good and achieve left her exhausted and miserable. She had a bad relationship with food, burnt out, and felt tired constantly
- [07:00] Her turning point came when she was about to start a new job and her relationship broke down. She took her friends’ and family’s suggestion to delay starting the new job and booked a yoga retreat in Bali. On this trip she realized how stress was impacting her life so much and decided something had to change
How Christie Made The Switch
- [19:20] Soul searching helped: when she went to Bali she took the time to think about what she wanted to do next. She realized her priorities were: joy, being fulfilled in life, and she wanted to spend more time with patients and get to the root cause of their health problems
- [20:00] After returning to London, Christie started networking. She joined a business coaching community comprised of women who excelled in their corporate jobs but decided to walk away to find different careers; a lot of them were transitioning to become coaches. At the same time, she was seeing a therapist for disordered eating. She hired a business coach for about six months to help her figure out how she can use her medicine experience in another arena. The experiences with coaches inspired her to give coaching a try. She got coaching qualification and was excited that she would be able to help people in a different way
- [25:10] The online coaching community Christie joined was recommended by a friend
- [29:00] Coaching qualifications and courses can be online or in person
What Were The Obstacles She Faced?
- It was difficult to walk away from the medicine career: she felt guilty about wanting to quit after working towards it for so long
- [16:00] Being a junior doctor and GP means (1) the schedule was very demanding and she felt that she was being pulled in every direction (2) the time allotted for each patient was so short but she wanted to really get to the bottom of their problems
- [17:20] Christie told herself “I have to like this career [as a GP]”. She felt almost ashamed that she trained for so long but only to find out that she wasn’t happy. She didn’t tell anybody until her friends and family mentioned how unhappy she seemed. She felt that she really just couldn’t live this life… and something had to change
What Christie Does Now
- [25:25] Christie coaches clients 1:1 where she focuses on helping them manage stress, avoid burn out and find more joy in their lives
- [32:45] Her first client approached her on social media and since then it’s been word of mouth, her website, and from meeting people at events
- [38:00] On weekends Christie co-hosts Restorative Retreats with her business partner Yasmine Say, a Personal Trainer and Pilates instructor. These are weekend workshops that take place in the countryside and London where they share techniques on how to destress and live a more sustainable life
- [40:00] Christie explains that coaches are your accountability partner while you are responsible for finding out answers and “doing the homework”
- [43:25] Christie explains how she stays organized and productive working for herself
Christie’s Next Career Move
- [47:45] Could she change career again? Definitely! Anything can happen
Resources
- [31:00] Christie’s advice for finding a coach: since coaching can require digging up dark issues and talking about things you don’t, make sure to find someone whom you can trust and feel comfortable with
- [46:00] Christie’s advice on how to start your own business
Work In Progress is a blog hosted by two twin sisters passionate about transitions in career and life. The series “How They Did It” features interviews of people who successfully changed their careers in all walks of life.
Their belief is simple: if people are able to pursue the careers they like, they can lead more fulfilling and meaningful lives. This is where you can find a collection of interviews from people who have successfully switched.
