About
"Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility."
– Oprah Winfrey
Career True North
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Career direction coaching
Meet Michele
Hello! I’m Michele Fawcett-Long, a career direction coach and founder of Career True North. You absolutely can find a new career direction and a more meaningful life, and you don’t have to go it alone.
By coaching together, we will help you harness your innate energy and map your way to your own career true north – to a place where you can
- live your passions
- really use your skills
- live what you value
- find fulfillment, and
- navigate to a career that truly fits
How do I know this kind of change is possible? I’ve lived it. Here’s my story ~
Finding and Following My Own Career Passions
I know about searching for a new career direction – I’ve been there, more than once. Work has never been just work to me. I’ve always needed to find meaning, to do tasks that match who I am, to be around generous and good-hearted people, and to feel that I am adding to the sum of good in the world.
If I don’t have these, then I start to lose my way. Like this. . .
It started with misery
My path to career coaching started, perhaps like your current situation, with being miserable. I knew I could happy at work, because I had had more than one job that I loved. But I was a Hospice Volunteer Manager, and my beloved hospice was being shut down in a merger. I had spent 10 years building the volunteer program and nurturing a community of the most beautiful, giving people on earth. The program was thriving – until the moment it ceased to exist.
I remember sitting at my computer, my heart weighing 2000 pounds, staring at the screen through tears. Another hospice in Seattle was hiring. I rallied myself. I applied. And I got the job.
Good news, bad news, who's to say?
Great news, right?
Actually. . . I was miserable. I was still grieving, and although some of my day-to-day tasks were the same, the culture of the new hospice was very different. I felt like I couldn’t be truly myself. As I sat at my new desk, now bathed in the light of my two huge state-of-the-art computer monitors, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
And so I desperately looked for an escape. The bad news was that there were no other Seattle hospices hiring. I would have to move or else find a new career direction.
Not knowing what else to do, I turned to self-help and started reading Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck. For months, ensconced in my comfy chair, notebook and pen in hand, I worked my way through the exercises in the book. I made friends with my inner lizard, dug out of my dungeon, dreamed, cried, and lived backward. And I started to hope that I might find my way.
But before I could see what to do next, I had a particularly bad day at work. It came after a number of not-so-great days. I bet you’ve had these miserable times at work, too – the kind that kick you in the butt and tell you that you HAVE TO GET OUT.
That afternoon, all through the long, slow commute home from work in Seattle’s notorious traffic, as I watched the endless sea of red tail lights ahead of me, my mind swirled. I had to get out of there, but what should and could I do next with my career?
A gift. . .
And then I got one of those gifts from the universe. One calm thought emerged out of the swirl, and said, “Call Lita. Ask her.” Lita was a good friend and former co-worker.
I wasn’t sure why I was supposed to ask Lita, but I listened. Once I was safely home and hunkered down at my kitchen table, I called her. When she answered, I said, “What am I supposed to do next?” I didn’t really expect an answer.
But she said, “I think you should be a life coach. It’s a lot like what you’ve already been doing.”
In my work as a Volunteer Manager, as I trained and supervised volunteers, I made a priority of getting to know and really seeing who the volunteers were. They were great people, and I cared about them. I also listened to grieving and stressed families to understand their needs. I used my intuition to match volunteers and patients to create a win-win experience for both.
In this amazing conversation, Lita also told me her friend was taking coach training through none other than Martha Beck, the author of the book I’d been obsessively working my way through.
It felt like a magical moment.
And I did my homework. I interviewed Lita’s friend and researched the program details. All the skills I’d bring with me from my past experience were indeed, like Lita had said, a good match for coaching.
I asked my gut and my spouse and my bank account. And I signed up for life coach certification through the Martha Beck Institute.
It was a happy decision.
Finding my coaching passion
Once I’d earned my life coach certification, I founded Compassion & Clarity, a general life coaching business. I coached with lots of different kinds of people with a variety of problems, and I enjoyed helping people find their way through whatever was holding them back.
But as much as I enjoyed what I was doing, I also knew that I needed my own clarity. I wanted to be more specific about exactly what problems I would help people solve. I felt drawn to career coaching, but because I doubted myself, I put that idea on the back burner.
And once again, a phone call changed everything. One rainy afternoon, while I lounged on my rug and chatted casually with my coaching buddy Lisa about random flotsam in our lives, she told me that consummate career coach Alison Cardy was hiring.
Score!
I knew about Alison. She had created powerful and effective programs to help people find their new career directions. She was also kind, generous, and worked with integrity. I really wanted to learn from her.
And so I applied and was lucky enough to be hired and trained. I loved working with the many career-searchers I had the honor to coach through Alison’s Cardy Career Coaching. It didn’t take me long to realize that career-direction coaching was my own career passion. I loved supporting people as they opened up to who they really were and found a direction that made them want to get up in the morning.
Career True North
I’d discovered what kind of coaching lit me up, and it was time to spread my wings. I founded Career True North to offer my own brand of career discernment coaching.
My coaching incorporates everything I’ve ever done and all that I have learned – with deep gratitude – from my amazing clients, fellow coaches, and my other teachers along the way.
Career True North clients are people who not only feel stuck in the wrong job but also want to find meaningful work. They often feel that their values and priorities are at odds with their employers’, and they are yearning to be able to live their passions. Many identify as introverts and feel unheard and overlooked. They are stuck doing what they are “supposed” to do, trying to fit into a world that feels foreign to who they really are. All are intelligent, capable and have a creative streak.
My passion is to help people like you find and live your own passions. As we coach together in a supportive and catalytic process, you will evolve ~
- to embody who you really are
- live what you value
- find fulfillment, and
- navigate to a career that fits
And here’s my promise to you: If we coach together, I will see you, hear you, honor you, and help you find the path that is uniquely yours.
And Just My Credentials ~
- TypeCoach, Certified Professional Type Coach
- Cardy Career Coaching, Trained/Apprenticed
- Martha Beck Institute, Certified Life Coach
- University of Washington, Writing for Children Certificate
- Brian Utting School of Massage, Licensed Massage Therapist
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, BA with honors in Speech Communications and Sociology
What people are saying:
"Michele is outstanding!! She helped me to dig deep and get to the heart of my biggest fear – this was by far one of the biggest breakthroughs I have ever had!
I particularly appreciated how Michele listened to everything I had to say and gave me the space to share feelings and emotions. She held space for me to really feel safe and nonjudgmental about my words.
Michele is compassionate, reliable, and witty. We hit it off from the beginning and build a very strong rapport, and our work together was exactly what I needed."
– David R, Virginia