Before starting with Terri-Leigh, I had tried lots of different things to try and figure out what was going on within myself.

I had done different types of therapy and other forms of support, and although I learned a lot, I often found myself going around in circles. I did not enjoy always going backwards, because the kind of person I am likes to have a plan. I like to feel like I am moving forward, achieving and being productive.

With traditional therapy, I felt that once I had acknowledged certain things, there was no point in continuing to go over them again and again. At times, it felt counterproductive. It almost reinforced the negative belief I already had about myself, rather than helping me move beyond it.

What felt different about working with Terri-Leigh was that we still acknowledged the past, the behaviours and the things that were happening, but we also balanced them and made a plan for the future.

For someone like me, that made much more sense.

It meant I could still feel productive while dealing with the things that were holding me back. We figured out the why, we balanced it, we looked at why it was okay that certain things had happened, and then we looked at what I could do moving forward.

I have always loved being busy and achieving things. I also recognised that I had always looked for outside validation. I believed that being super busy meant I was super successful.

But as I got older, I started to realise that being busy does not necessarily mean success.

I had sacrificed a lot of my health, my mental health and other parts of my life for what I believed was success at the time.

When I started working with Terri-Leigh, one of the things we looked at was my values. I did not expect it to have the impact it did.

I realised that a lot of the things I thought were my highest values, and that I was putting so much pressure on, were actually holding me back. I was doing so much for everybody else and thinking that everybody should be grateful for the sacrifice I was making.

Looking back, I think I had almost become a martyr.

As a single parent when my children were younger, I would tell myself, “This is for my children. I am sacrificing this for them.” But what I realised through the values work was that I was actually putting pressure on them that they had never asked for.

My children had never asked me to make myself ill, exhausted or unhappy for them. They wanted their mum to be healthy and happy at home.

That was a huge realisation.

Once I removed that pressure, my relationship with my children improved. We already had a good relationship, but it became even happier and more settled because I was no longer saying, “I’m doing all of this for you.”

I could see that I was doing it because it mattered to me. Providing is my value. It is something I choose. My children can benefit from it, but they are not responsible for it.

That changed my home life, but it also changed my business.

I also discovered, or maybe confirmed, that I had a strange relationship with money.

For me, being successful had always been connected to providing for my family, helping the people I love and being able to step up for the people around me. I had always been able to do that financially, so being busy and working hard meant I had the money to help people.

But at the same time, I also had a negative relationship with money. Part of me felt that wanting money meant you were bad, evil or greedy.

So I had this imbalance around how I perceived money and success.

This is something I worked hard on with Terri-Leigh. I realised that working hard, being able to financially provide for people and wanting that did not make me greedy.

I also realised that I did not have to sacrifice myself until I was ill in order to earn money or feel worthy of it.

I had to value myself, my time and what I bring to the table in my work. That is enough.

The people I work with do not expect me to sacrifice my health in order for them to value me financially. They value the work I do and the service I provide. I can go above and beyond for my clients in ways that do not require me to sacrifice myself.

That has made me value myself more, which has allowed me to value the work I do more too.

Now, when people come and work with me, they value me as well. I no longer feel guilty about the money I earn, because I know I am providing a service that has genuine value.

One of the biggest changes has been the balance it has created in my life.

I used to carry a lot of guilt if I was not working to the point of exhaustion. I felt guilty if I had a day off. But what used to happen was that I would work so hard I became physically exhausted, and then my actual work would suffer.

I was not giving my clients what they deserved from me, and I was not giving my family the version of me they deserved either.

Now, because I am more balanced, everything works better.

I provide a better service. I am able to do better quality work. My thinking is clearer when I speak with clients. My routines are better. My systems are better. Everything has started to fall into place because of the changes I have made.

My business has grown significantly because of that.

Another big thing I learned through working with Terri-Leigh is that there is not simply a right or wrong decision.

Every decision, whether it is in your home life or your business, will have positives and negatives. It is my responsibility to look at both sides, accept them, and then figure out the next step.

I no longer go round in circles when it comes to making business decisions or decisions within my home and family. I can sit back and look at the bigger picture instead of getting wrapped up in “what if”, “I should have”, or things I cannot change.

All I can do is make a plan moving forward.

That affects me every day.

Whether it is a decision in my family, my business, or something happening in someone else’s life, I am now able to look at the bigger picture. I even find myself helping my children and other people to look at the positives and negatives of a situation too.

It has become my normal way of thinking.

The things I learned during my sessions with Terri-Leigh are things I will take into everything I do in my life forever.

I have done a lot of work on myself in the past, and I have been through different therapies and programmes, but many of them were short-term or specific to one thing. The work I did with Terri-Leigh is something I use in every part of my life.

It is not just business. It is personal life too, because one affects the other.

The decisions you make in your personal life affect your business, and the decisions you make in your business affect your personal life.

I went into coaching thinking it was about business, but we ended up talking a lot about family life, the pressure I put on myself with my children, and how that affected the way I worked within my business.

That was a massive realisation.

I think this type of coaching can help anyone who wants to understand why they are going round in circles and actually resolve it.

For me, traditional coaching and therapy often felt open-ended. With Terri-Leigh, because the sessions were longer and because of the way we worked, I always felt there was resolution.

We would speak about something at the beginning of the session, balance it, look at everything connected to it, and by the end I would feel like I had discovered something about myself, understood the why and knew what I could do to improve.

It was not like having ten sessions talking about the same thing over and over again, waiting for one big lightbulb moment at the end.

There were many lightbulb moments along the way, with practical things to put in place as I developed.

For someone who wants resolution, wants to understand the why, wants to move forward and does not want to keep going around in circles, this way of working makes complete sense.

Sharni Knighton

SharniKnighton Hairloss Clinic