Welcome

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Career counselling is best known for helping students explore career options, but career counsellors can support people over their entire 50+ year careers. People face quite different issues in their early, mid and late careers and there's a broader range of help available than people usually expect. 

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​If you're wrestling with something in your career (or someone you care about is), I'm glad you found your way here. I hope you find some useful information here and it opens the door to contacting me to discuss what's going on. 

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While you're here, I'd love to share a few bits of wisdom that I've gathered with people over years of talking and thinking about work together. It's a laundry list of things that I wish more people knew when they are considering career counselling:  

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• Not Too Late - ​​Most people worry that it's too late to make changes (even teens). Unless you're retired, it's not too late - it's just that your commitments might mean aren't in a position to change everything asap and you'll need to make changes over time

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• Don't Know Where to Start - Many people feel paralyzed/overwhelmed and don't know where to start. It's ok, I do! People tend to get their bearings faster than they expect because there's a difference between going over and over ideas in your head and talking them through with others

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• Counselling Doesn't Equal Commitment - Starting career counselling doesn't mean that you're committing to making changes in your career. Career counselling tends to be a place where people get more serious about exploring ideas and answering questions that have been in the back of their minds (often for a long time). Ideas, plans and expectations can shift through talking them out. Some people go on to make big changes, some people make small ones and others decide to keep things as is but feel more settled about doing so

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• Don't Know What's Important - Some people start counselling without knowing what they need or what's important. There's usually good reasons for that (some common ones are growing up in survival mode, being impacted by someone else's very strong opinions about your life or trying to come to terms with your identity). Most people know more than it feels like they do and it's possible to start figuring out what's important together

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• ​Not One Size Fits All - Careers aren't "one size fits all" and people have very different opinions when it comes to the importance fulfillment, balance and money. I don't have an opinion about what people should treat as important. I help people understand what's important to them and brainstorm ways to maximize those things

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• ​Non-Traditional Careers - Some people aren't sure if career counselling is flexible enough to accommodate them because they don't want to have traditional career, sit at a desk or climb a corporate ladder. You're absolutely welcome in career counselling - I'm thrilled to help people no matter what their goals are and consider myself lucky when I get to work with adventurers

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• Being Honest in Counselling - ​It's ok to be you in career counselling and actually it's important - the more honest you can be, the more likely you'll end up in a workplace situation that makes sense to you. Over the years, I've noticed people initially hesitate to talk to me about the following work-related topics that I'm very open to addressing with people:  

  • discussing discrimination 

  • discussing polarizing topics (like vaccines or politics)

  • being honest about the importance of money/status to you

  • being honest about interests/passions that feel too nerdy or unacceptable in some way 

  • discussing faith, spirituality & other ways of navigating the world that people question  

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• ​Trying Counselling Again - Some people aren't sure if they want to give counselling another shot after unhelpful experiences (like sitting through career lessons that feel pointless in school, getting off-putting career advice from someone who was supposed to help or taking frustrating tests that tell you things you already knew or that recommended career paths that made little sense to you). You're welcome to come in for a few sessions to see what you think  and tell me what hasn't worked well in the past so we can avoid those things 

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• Career Testing - It's normal for people to hope career tests will provide quick and easy answers, especially when people feel lost, stuck and defeated. Testing isn't a magic bullet, but "doing the legwork" can be engaging, energizing and not as hard as people expect it to be 

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• ​​Fantasizing about Quitting - When people are ready to quit their jobs on a weekly basis or they need to regularly convince themselves to stay or find reasons to be grateful, it's a telltale sign of people trying their best to ignore something important (and understandably so because work decisions can be high stakes). The good news is, it's counter-intuitive but often helpful to face issues head on because solutions aren't necessarily as drastic or as impossible as they feel in moment when we want to run away and never look back   ​

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• Job Search Discouragement - Job searches are hard work and often demoralizing (you definitely aren't alone). If you're applying for tons of jobs to feel like you're accomplishing something, feeling desperate and believing your worst fears about yourself or the world are true or you're going through the motions to keep someone off your back, these are often signs of a level of discouragement that's hard to pull yourself out of alone​​

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