About Rachel
Hello! I'm Rachel O'Brien and I'm so pleased you've come to see what I've got to offer here at More Balance & Joy...
Hopefully you will have found lots of information on the home page and through the course links.
But if you want to know a bit more about who you are dealing with you've come to the right place!
Relevant Qualifications
- CERTIFIED WOMEN'S COACH
- CERTIFICATE IN LIFE COACHING
- DIPLOMA IN LIFE COACHING
- MBTI® PERSONALITY PRACTITIONER
- NLP MASTER PRACTITIONER
- BLAST TECHNIQUE® PRACTITIONER
- TKI™ CONFLICT PRACTITIONER
- LEVEL 3 DIPLOMA IN PSYCHOLOGY
- DIPLOMA IN RELATIONSHIP PSYCHOLOGY
- DIPLOMA IN COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
- DIPLOMA IN CHILD BEHAVIOUR
- DIPLOMA IN AUTISM AWARENESS
- DIPLOMA IN ADHD AWARENESS
- LEVEL 3 CERTIFICATE IN DELIVERING LEARNING
- 17 YEARS COACHING EXPERIENCE
- 27 YEARS DELIVERING LEARNING EXPERIENCE
My first steps in coaching
As long as I can remember I've been interested in personal development, but I took the first official steps about 18 years ago when I decided to certify as a Life Coach. I whipped through that course, and onto the next for my Diploma in Life Coaching. I was lucky enough to be working in a Training & Development Department at the time, and whilst responsible for the redesign of the induction process initially, I was soon able to put my new skills to use, helping new managers to navigate their way. Soon, I went on to qualify as a Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) Practitioner which also gave me plenty of opportunity to work 1:1 with many.
More plates to spin
Over the years I've become a wife and the mother of 2 amazing children, but despite my knowledge of personal development techniques, I soon found myself spinning lots of plates, with parenting, helping ageing parents, working etc. It seemed that there was never enough time to do all the things that needed to be done, let along have any quality time for me!
I gave up my job, and began my own coaching and training company - Understanding People, which was fun, and enabled me to work more with people on a personal level rather just about work. But I still didn't find that time for me!
I took every opportunity I could to read the latest book, do the latest course on time management, but nothing seemed to make a change - my "timexiety" as I named it, was stuck!
I had almost given up hope, when I fell across another system that promised to make me more fruitful, so I grabbed the opportunity with not very hopeful hands and gave it a go...
Finally! More Balance & Joy for me!
... and finally SUCCESS!!!
That's why I'm here now, doing this! It really made a huge difference to my life!
Suddenly I was more effective, able to find more space for me, and much much happier!
It hadn't gone amiss that I knew lots and lots of other ladies who also felt very time poor, and I wanted to share what I had learnt with them. So I qualified as a Women's Coach with One of Many™ which means that I'm now licensed to use their concepts and tools in my work.
I also relaunched my business with a new name - More Balance & Joy, because ultimately whoever I work with, this is my goal for them. I see lots of people put themselves under pressure to achieve huge great things, but often it means they work their socks off for years and years and doesn't even bring them joy at the end of it all! My approach is about building a life which fits with our real values, and hence brings more balance and joy both NOW and BEYOND.
Always learning!
As you'll see from my qualifications list, I'm a work in progress!! I read once that "if you are not learning, you are dying" so I'm obviously working hard to live a long life!
I believe there's always a way to improve what I can offer further to my audience and will continue to seek out ways to do that, whether it's in the form of official qualifications, reading or listening to podcasts.
My most recent addition to my skill set is my BLAST Technique® Practitioner qualification - it's been really exciting to see lots of my clients set themselves free of things that have been emotionally triggering them, often for many many years. If you are intrigued to know more, you can find out here.