Helping Women to Navigate Change and Thrive: Positive Psychology Coaching

Helping Women to Navigate Change and Thrive: Positive Psychology Coaching – the powerful wellbeing tool that is making a real difference.

Imagine you’re juggling roles, spinning plates, handling changes relating to your career or relationships, while also moving through inner shifts that come with different life stages…

And you’re just about keeping afloat, seeming like you’ve got it under control, but it’s starting to take its toll on your general sense of wellbeing… your energy, motivation, calm, enjoyment in life, sense of fulfilment, even your sense of identity.

You try to support yourself as you’re interested in personal development and increasingly in your health and wellbeing; you fit things in where you can, with healthy eating, yoga, a self-help book here and there, but it’s not moving the dial enough.

Firstly, if this is you—and you’re facing new changes around career, relationships, loss, health, or life-stage transitions—take a moment to acknowledge how much you’re dealing with. Reading this is already a sign that you are open to taking steps towards supporting yourself. Secondly, it may help to know you are not alone.

Now, imagine someone shares some research with you that really helps you understand what influences your wellbeing, including factors that may have been in your blind spot. Not only that, but you are also given a supportive, practical tool that helps you use those insights along with small, easy-to-apply, day-to-day actions that lead to positive changes that really shift the dial… How would that feel? Probably hopeful.

Every day I work with women navigating all of this; I help them ride the waves of change with more ease and build their wellbeing with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Most of these women face two sets of challenges:

1. The psychological and practical barriers to supporting their own wellbeing, and
2. The extra demands created by change itself.

The good news is that all these challenges can be reduced or overcome.

The psychological barrier is belief-based: the feeling that prioritising yourself is indulgent or in competition with what (and who) you care about. However, supporting your wellbeing isn’t selfish—it’s a necessity. It’s also wise. When you shape your life so you feel happier, calmer, and more fulfilled, you benefit of course, but you’re also better able to contribute positively to the people and pursuits that matter. There’s no conflict there.

The practical barrier relates to limited wellbeing knowledge but also limited time. As a woman already interested in your health and wellbeing, you likely have more knowledge than most and so have some practices in place to support yourself. Perhaps you’re good at carving out some ‘me-time’ when you can and have some practices you slot in here and there. But are you picking the right practices for you, and are you placing too much focus solely on practices you spend time ‘doing’?

Let me talk you through this… You hopefully have some practices in your days that serve you; other practices you’ve tried may leave you disappointed and frustrated as they may not be the perfect fit for you—your needs, your preferences, and your personality—and as a result, you feel frustrated that you ‘use’ time on taking actions that seem to work for others but don’t do much for you. With more wellbeing knowledge, you get better at picking the right practices for you. When you have more understanding of your needs and preferences and have guidance on a wider range of practices that can then be personalised to you, you find practices that make a bigger difference. You also feel happier to dedicate your time to them.

I’m a big advocate of carving out a bit more space in your life to incorporate practices that support your needs—from morning walks, journaling, your favourite form of exercise, and inspiring podcast pauses to mindful moments in your evening and gratitude practices—whatever works for you. But the great thing is, your wellbeing doesn’t rely solely on practices that you need to find time for...

It might be a relief to hear that there are also so many powerful levers you could be using that don’t require ‘time’ to practice as such, but instead focus on approaching the things you do in a different way; levers such as using your Character Strengths more in your normal working day, practising more self-compassion, or shifting dynamics in key relationships.

This is just an example of how Positive Psychology knowledge broadens and enriches the map to your wellbeing, and as a result, helps you make better choices in the practices you choose to spend time on, whilst highlighting other levers you can use which together will help move the needle more.

Change, even the kind we choose, often feels unsettling, yet it’s the one predictable constant in life. Positive Psychology helps us understand this human experience and offers tools to work through it. In practice, this could mean you start to:

• Focus on what you can control instead of focussing on what you can’t. It’s more efficient and less emotionally draining and can lead to empowered action.
• Balance attention between what will change and what will or could remain the same. Those comforting constants steady us.
• Build resilience and wider wellbeing first, especially if feeling burnt out or resistant to the change, so you have the psychological and emotional resources to make positive self-aligned choices.
• Remember your own track record: You’ve navigated change many times and can draw on those experiences in a practical and confidence-building sense.
• Turn inward for decisions. Often, we navigate the unknown looking outwards for signs of what to do, forgetting that the best way to make choices is to be led by what we know about ourselves. That’s why self-awareness is the key to making choices that are right for us in the face of change. Findings show that coaching is one of the most effective tools for increasing self-awareness and making more self-aligned choices.

Positive Psychology opens up a world of insights it gives us a roadmap to follow—one we can trust—a lens to examine our own wellbeing through. But just as important is our own self-insight, which is why Positive Psychology Coaching is so effective.

That’s why I think of Positive Psychology Coaching as the ultimate power couple, and why Martin Seligman, the prominent Father of Positive Psychology, calls it “weaving the art of science into the art of coaching.”

Whether it’s choosing daily habits that support your resilience and wellbeing as you navigate the demands of the roles you juggle, or the insight to make bigger choices that align with what matters most to you in the face of change, this hybrid approach is an invaluable tool.

Can you gain these benefits without hiring a coach? Of course. Having an experienced professional in your corner is powerful, but may not always feel accessible depending on your personal circumstances.

If you recognise yourself in the above, remember that prioritising your wellbeing isn’t indulgent or a ‘nice to have’—it’s the foundation that lets you handle challenges and change with more ease, show up for what you care about, and do more than just ‘get through’.

Positive Psychology Coaching is a supportive tool through which you gain the map, the tools, the self-insight, and the support to thrive, not just survive.