Hello!

I’m Paul Bridel

After a career in IT and Project Management, I now help exhausted project leaders to rediscover their passion, so that they can figure out what they actually want.

 I have spent a full life in professional employment but like so many others, I started to question things; the passage of time, whether the work held any meaning for me, was this all there is, or whether there was something else out there that might hold more meaning to me, might align with my values more?  Was this corporate role really me?  Of course, I knew the answer to that.  For many years, I didn’t really know what else to do, I didn’t have a direction; the corporate work was my skill set and provided a good quality of life.  It’s what I knew.  I had commitments to cover, it was safe.

But, like for so many others: work was stressful.  Eventually I burnt out and it started to affect my health, mentally and physically, as well as my work.

My interest in coaching had started well over a decade ago.  I read and absorbed books and websites on coaching, but it didn’t feel like something ‘I‘ could do from my safe place as an employed professional.

Some years back, I had the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy after being in my corporate role for over 20 years.  It was too good an opportunity to miss so I grabbed at the chance and early the next year I was out of work and thinking what to do next.  

Obviously, coaching was on my mind.  But, I bottled it.  I had too much fear.  I wasn’t qualified, for a start, I had never been self-employed before, and how would I get clients? I didn’t believe that I could do it.  It didn’t feel possible.

So by that June I’d taken up another role as a project manager, having fallen back into my comfort zone.  I knew I’d missed my chance to make a big change in my life and that the fear had won over.  I continued to work in project management jobs for four more years until another opportunity arose to take a small pay-off.

I knew, this time, that I’d always regret it if I didn’t have a go, so after leaving my job I took the plunge and I signed up to a coach training course and now, here I am.

It was a little scary being out of work, but you only really fail if you don’t try.  So…

…finally, I’m where I want to be.  I share my story here because I think it is similar to many other people’s experiences.  I don’t want others to spend years or even longer wondering about their true purpose or agonising over other challenges that life can throw at us.  It’s my passion, and privilige, to help people avoid the long and drawn-out journey that I took.