My Story
Hi, I am Marc de Bruin and here is my story . . .
For the first part of my working life, I found myself entrenched in an intellectually stimulating and financially comfortable job as a Litigation Lawyer -specialising in Real Estate and Criminal Law- with a respectable, medium-sized firm in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. I wanted to study Law and become a “lawyer” from when I was about 8 years old, so it seemed I was on track to fulfil my life’s ambition and passion!
I encountered a major problem: after 6 years or so, I realised I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing anymore.
Even though I was quite good at my work, the money was good, and the work was intellectually challenging, on Monday morning I looked forward to Friday evening and on Sunday evening I dreaded Monday morning.
I thought I got it ‘right’ – I was working hard, striving, achieving, sacrificing, over-committing, specialising, progressing, battling and surviving. It just did not feel right anymore.
One day after returning from holiday, staring at 2 huge piles of “backlogged” files next to my desk, a massive wave of anxiety hit me and I felt physically ill. The realisation hit me – I have to change; I cannot keep doing this.
The big issue was: I didn’t know how to, or what to do in the first place. I did not have an alternative strategy; no plan B; I’d never learned one -or needed it, for that matter. For the next 3 months I tumbled headlong into deep downward spiral that completely threw me. I knew I was going to quit and had NO clue what I was going to do with my life from that point. I couldn’t see any future. The only thing I felt: what I am doing now isn’t it!
So, after a dreadful couple of months, wracking my brain about “what to do; what to do?”, I resigned in August 1999, with a 4-month notice period to hand over my practice.
This decision felt good in itself, and I knew right away I had made the right choice, even though “what’s next” was totally out of my field of vision and totally scared the living daylights out of me. I was 30 years’ old, at the time.
From late 1999 on, a synchronistic series of events unfolded that put me on the path I have been on since. I worked out that I had a number of key values, factors that were really important to me in life: travelling, preferably around the world; continually acquiring new knowledge and skills; working in a field that I can practice anywhere in the world; working with, and helping people; and having fun. And I decided to have these values guide my decisions from that point forward.
I was offered some part-time legal work by a former client, and I moved to South Africa for 6 months with my family (our daughter Kyara was not even 2 weeks’ old when she travelled there!) to study Body Stress Release (www.bodystressrelease.com). After returning to the Netherlands, I steadily built my own Body Stress Release practice, while doing some more part-time legal work for my former client.
In 2001, my partner Simone, our then 1.5 year-old daughter and I came to Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia for holiday to visit a good friend I’d made in South Africa, and it immediately felt like home. To cut a long story short: within 18 months -and with lots of immigration luck- we moved to Australia permanently. I set up my Body Stress Release practice after 2 years of travelling around Australia, and one fateful day Simone spotted an ad in a local paper promoting a course in Life Coaching.
The rest, in a way, is history. I became a certified Life Coach, kept practicing Body Stress Release, and progressed from there. I’ve met some amazing people along the way, such as Glenn Dietzel, for whose company Awakened LLC I became lead-coach, working with business coaching clients all around the world for about 7 years. I conducted personal growth, NLP and personality type workshops in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia. In 2011, I was offered a role as a coach and facilitator conducting employability skills training; I qualified as a Counsellor and started working with Campbell Page Employment Services as a counsellor. I now work in my private practice and work as a contract-counsellor for Employee Assistance Programs providers Telus Health (which incorporates Benestar and LifeWorks), Converge International, Acacia Connection, Eudoxia, Workplace Wellness Australia, Drake Workwise, AccessEAP, D’Accord OAS and LifeSkills Australia. I have also taught Diploma and Bachelor level Counselling for private Registered Training Organisations, and still teach as Sessional at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The key values mentioned earlier still stand, and I still live by them.
Change for the better IS possible.
I know from experience how daunting taking the first step in a new direction can seem to be. I also know how fulfilling and profitable taking that step can be! If you are ready for you, I am ready for you.
Marc de Bruin. Your Counsellor, Coach & Mentor