You're Not Behind

I passed my Associate Coaching Credential (ACC) exam!

This means I'm now officially credentialed through the International Coaching Federation (ICF)—the governing body for professional coaches. In plain terms: I completed my training through an ICF-accredited program called Lumia, and now hold an associate-level credential.

I'm really proud of this accomplishment. But this post isn't to brag.

Here's what I actually want to talk about: it took me over two years to get here.

Two years of trying to make a corporate job work while building my coaching business (spoiler: it didn't). Peer coaching hours, mentor coaching hours, relationship struggles, fertility struggles, personal growth challenges—the whole gamut. And for context, I worked with my own life coach for SIX YEARS. SIX. To develop personal resilience in the face of major life upheaval.

We live in a world built on urgency and instant gratification, and social media doesn't help—we only see people's highlight reel. The credential, the promotion, the wedding, the trip. We don't witness the years it took to get there.

So I want to be really honest about mine.

Because here's what I know to be true: everyone is on their own timeline. And nearly everyone, at some point, feels like they're behind. But "behind" compared to what, exactly? Whose timeline are we even measuring against?

I'd even argue that the "timeline" isn't real—but that's a whole other blog post that I don't have time for. (But if you want to go down that rabbit hole, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman is a great place to start.)

You're not behind. Life keeps happening, and we all keep moving forward in our own way.

So, the next time you catch yourself feeling like you're running late to your own life, I'd invite you to pause and ask: by whose standards?