Your calling is calling! Will you answer?
ADHD Praktijk Leiden
It's late September 2025, I am sitting across Tina Wrede, an accomplished woman in her seventies reminding us all of the importance of being connected to ourselves and leading from a place of authentic meaning and passion. As I am sipping on my tea at her colorful and cozy coaching and counselling practice in Leiderdorp (ADHD Praktijk Leiden) where she so generously invited me, it doesn't take me long to understand that the colors of her practice resemble the playful, energetic, and vibrant interior of her inner world. Tina’s journey to becoming a coach and counsellor is a story of transformation through accepting and honing her own personal history and reconnecting with herself. Born in post-war Germany into a family marked by loss, trauma, and resilience, she learned early to sense and feel deeply, even when there was little space for it. Her path wound through years of caregiving, migration, motherhood, divorce, and reinvention – from nursing to IT and from there to coaching and counselling. In embracing her past rather than running from it, Tina found her calling: learning about and connecting to people all with the aim to help them get in touch with themselves with the same compassion and courage she learned to extend to her own story. Today, she draws on her life’s mosaic to inspire and encourage others toward awareness and meaningful change by reminding us of the important inner resources that we all carry and that can be helpful for informing meaningful career paths. Her ingredients for a fulfilling career are the following:
· Reconnecting with our intuition
One of the very first things she shares with me is about the crucial role of intuition and inner connectedness to oneself for building fulfilling and sustainable careers: I don’t know why, but I had this feeling I am good at this. I can feel, I can have this kind of intuition to feel and to see. The IT helped to get a job and get money and helped me to stay alive because at that time I didn’t need to work on my own things. I had my children, I had work, and I had friends, and I had my tennis, and I had everything. But I wasn’t really connected to myself. (…) That’s the most important thing that you can stay with yourself. When you follow your passion, and you know this is what I want to do. The way is not always straight. But dancing with it is also nice. I think in my coaching, the most important thing is that nothing is stupid or crazy. Openness to everything. Curiosity. And trust that I am coming somewhere.
Tina Wrede, Coach & Counsellor
· Cultivating determination, hope, and trust in ourselves and in the process
Tina shares about her first steps in starting her coaching and counselling practice, where fueled by enthusiasm she was eager to put her offer out there and share it with the world welcoming all who would be interested. And the disappointment that followed due to the first confrontation with the difficulty to reach clients. As Tina showed her determination earlier when stepping into the labor market for the first time after her divorce and building a career in IT from the ground, she tapped into this inner resource in this novel situation as well: There had been moments when I have been going into a depression something like that not really. But I knew then that what I want I will get. And that was because I did it before. I did it in IT, I did it after my divorce. I could do it. I knew I could do it. (…) And I always know if it’s not easy, I will get up again. As she remembers those times, I can also feel the power of hope that she cultivated and the encouragement she gave herself to keep pursuing the chosen path: Yes, it was not easy and there were really times where I thought… and I was afraid. But then it came, NO, you will get there, you will get there, you will get there.
· Creating and sustaining social support personally and professionally – groups for sharing learnings, emotional support, and emergent opportunities
What supported Tina through the pursuit of her newly chosen career path was the power of connection to not only herself but also to others. She remembers – with deep appreciation – of the support she received from her late husband creating space for her career transition and the start of her entrepreneurial journey. And she fondly recalls meetings with her fellow coach colleagues all dealing with similar challenges, which allowed for both validating and normalizing her experiences as well as exchanging knowledge and growing together as practitioners. The power of connection to others is also reflected in Tina’s efforts to move beyond her existing group and actively seek out and build new professional connections through attending conferences and networking events with the aim of putting her public image as an emergent professional onto the coaching landscape. What she didn’t account for at the time is that activities that we take on with one intention, can with a sprinkle of serendipity bring along new and unexpected opportunities. For Tina, it brought a job with valuable learnings and experience as working for another coaching organization (ADHD Center in Delft) ensured her a platform to exercise her skills as a coach and build a solid customer base that created the foundation for a self-sustaining client base later on. Beyond enhanced visibility and becoming one of the top-of-mind service providers within her niche, Tina’s story reminds us of the importance of keeping track of our own development and aspirations. Tina describes the moment she knew it was time for her to move on to the next challenge – returning to building her own practice: I started then in Delft first as a coach and then we needed a trainer and I gave workshops and I did facilitate family constellations, but I worked further on myself and on my occupation as a counsellor and so on. The gap between what they wanted to do and what I knew became bigger and bigger and bigger. And it was 2014, it became the moment when I said, I have to go.
· Accepting and welcoming the unknown
In her entrepreneurial path, Tina speaks about the importance of admitting and connecting to the feeling of not knowing to better deal with uncertainty. In her view, making peace with not knowing is the first step to create space for new knowledge to emerge: And that is what I am saying that experience of not knowing. I don’t know [she smiles]. That is the nicest experience in my family constellations, sometimes I sit there and I think I don’t know what’s happening. And then I stand up and say, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on here. And sometimes I say it out loud and sometimes in myself. But when I am connected to this “I don’t know” then there, the answers come up. As she describes, there is beauty in not knowing and finding comfort in uncertainty. While she was referring to the generative role of not knowing in her work with clients, I couldn't help but think of the utility of such not only accepting but notably welcoming approach to uncertainty in the context of entrepreneurial paths in general and in hers in particular: It’s OK not to know. Because we can’t know everything. When I think I know, then I am going to my head. And then, the danger is that I will give some interpretation of what I see what’s not really – what we very often do. When I say to myself, I don’t know, let it come up - then there is room… (…) and I will always explore, and it will always come up when I know nothing.
· Creating mindful moments of anchoring oneself
Tina shares about her ways of grounding herself when anxiety knocks on her entrepreneurial door. Beyond breathing exercises that help her land from her head back into her body as she describes, she intentionally surrounds herself with physical testaments to her fondest memories to actively anchor and remind herself of all that she is beyond the role in which she faces the current storm: The other thing is that I am looking at the nice trees, looking at the garden at the birds singing. I create a space for myself where I can enjoy my home, my practice, this is my room. It’s me. These are my stones, and a lot of these stones have a history. This one we found when I was with [name of daughter] in Chile so a lot of time I have things around me that stabilize me that help me. Because when I am strong, I can handle everything that life brings. That’s my vision. Tina also reminds us of the importance of creating space for hearing our inner whisperers. The truth is, as we go through life and engage with different experiences and encounter different people, we often don't realize, but we internalize bits and pieces of their wisdom that can guide and ground us in moments of uncertainty: The memory of one of my teachers who said people who fly away know how to come back. When you ask these nice questions, I have a lot of people, trainers around me they are on my shoulders, they are whispering. I can listen to them. I didn’t know but now I feel them.
· Creating mindful moments of curiosity and playfulness
Tina’s story reminds us of the importance of leading mindful lives to actively cultivate our fulfillment within and beyond our work. She shares about how crucial curiosity and playfulness are for her in her journey: And yes. I think it is still my curiosity about people about looking at them about seeing about dancing around and I think what I learned the last 5-6 years is to play more. In the TA, we have this natural child, just to connect to my own natural child. And be curious and look what is there and how can I do and how can I play and how can I see people, that gives me, then I feel it here in my body that I am on the right way. If you wonder how to create space for playfulness in today’s high-pace, high productivity work (and life) scene (as I did), Tina has some answers here as well. She shared about little moments of mindful play plugged into her day – such short moments if intentionally approached are often sufficient to get in touch with a lighter and brighter version of ourselves setting the stage for the day: (…) and is very important that I take time for myself. I wake up in the morning I make a kind of a plan for my day, what do I want, what do I like and what do I not like so that’s time for myself. To order and structure my day. And then I stand up, and I have this nice dog coming to me, it helps. Laughs. I very often put on some music, and I start moving like swinging, dancing, singing. Moving around and I walk the dog. It’s not everyday but I try to. Tina also shares about the importance of intentional moments that she takes where she prioritizes her joy, self-care, and inspiration: And I make sure that I have few moments in the day when I it’s just for me. One is the cappuccino sitting on my couch drinking cappuccino just for myself. Just time to enjoy.
· Breaking free from our inner critical voices
To the question what would she say to the version of herself at the very beginning of this career transition and entrepreneurial journey, Tina shared that knowing how things would evolve and having all this accumulated experience, she would wish for the Tina at the beginning of her journey to have more trust in herself: When I started, the first time in an exercise that came up – I want to be a coach. And there were some critical voices that said, “no it cannot be.” That was kind of a seed, I felt in myself it went deeper. But then, if I had someone like me looking back, I would say, if you had a little bit more trust in yourself then you could have made better decisions for yourself. (…) I think I would say to the Tina there, just trust that you can do it because you can do it!
To the question what would you advise to all out there who have great ideas but may be hesitant to put their offerings and voices out, Tina stressed the importance of seeking conversations with experienced people to give a reality a check to our inner voices that are often critical and out of fear may want to protect us by discouraging us from embarking on an unknown path: Look for people to talk with. People who have the experience. Be curious and follow your dream. Because I think, when you have these [critical] voices… These voices are very often voices of what we heard when we were young. And when we now look for older or senior people and you look with them together at your plan, they can help to analyze these blockages - where does it come from and is it realistic? Because very often it [critical voice] isn’t realistic. (…) These voices are very often critical voices so making you small – “who are you to do this, or that”. Very often I had the thing “who am I to be a coach who am I to think that I can do this”. And that had to be, I know where it comes from. She highlights the importance of breaking free from those inner voices: You have to break free and say ok, I hear you voice, I hear your warning and please support me in looking further. The blockages are inside us, by voices, by experience, by small traumas.
· Staying true to ourselves
The difficulties of finding clients and the financial pressure for someone just starting off can easily cloud our space and take away from our capacity to play and stay curious that are so crucial for sustained motivation and fulfillment. Tina raises an important question, a question relevant for coaches and beyond. To what extent are you willing to compromise yourself for the sake of maximizing demand? In coaching she mentions the importance of genuine connection with clients and daring to refer clients with whom we lack such connection as that will impact the quality of the service we offer: The problem is when you start as a coach, it is not easy to find, in the beginning where do you get your money from. When you are coming under pressure, when you have to take jobs because you need the money, then it’s difficult, then it’s not easy to play. Then you think you have to do it. And I think one of the things that I learned from a supervisor if there is a client that there is no connection, can you say that I don’t work for you, I stop even if it’s very hard and you need the money you have to say no. When you do that, it’s real, I saw it with a lot of other colleagues, then it opens up doors. If I stretch it a bit further, I see a parallel in this for entrepreneurship more broadly, finding the boundary beyond which we won't go for the sake of generating more demand. She stresses the importance of experienced advice and perspective in both guiding your efforts as a coach through supervision and also more broadly in guiding your entrepreneurial efforts to build a business:So that is very important to have supervisors and people who are experienced to help and to reflect and to look at the facts what’s going on. And also, in your starting up, I think that’s one very important thing. And I still have a supervisor and intervision groups. Every time you grow. Here again, I feel the importance of trust, trust that following what feels right will ultimately benefit us in a more longstanding way than compromising ourselves for immediate but short-lived capitalization.
Tina’s story feels inspirational and energizing – there is always something that we can do to shape lives worth living – we can take active steps to get closer to ourselves and unlock what we really desire, we can take active steps towards shifting career lanes no matter which stage of our career or life we are in, never too late to honor our calling, and we can tap into a diverse portfolio of inner resources that can support us on the decided journey. If all that is there, when your calling is calling, the question remains, will you dare to answer?