My Story: How I Became a Life Coach

Perhaps you've been reading the blog for a while, or maybe you've just found your way here. Either way — I'd love to tell you how Soulful Strides came to exist, and more importantly, why.

My name is Elise O'Shea. I was born and raised in Ireland and moved to New Zealand with my family in 2011. I've been based in Palmerston North ever since, and I completed all of my studies at Massey University — finishing with a Master's in Psychology before going on to train as a certified life coach.

This is the longer version of how those two things came to happen together.

Where it started: growing up drawn to how people think

Psychology became interesting to me long before I ever studied it formally. As a young person I was drawn to people and ideas that didn't rush to judgment — that chose instead to slow down, look at the fuller picture, and come to a more considered understanding of why people do what they do.

I think what attracted me to psychology wasn't the clinical side — the diagnosing and categorising — but the fundamentally human side. The question of why someone would keep repeating a pattern they clearly didn't want. Why a person could be intelligent, capable, and surrounded by people who care about them, and still feel completely stuck. Those questions felt important to me. They still do.

The Master's in Psychology — and what it actually taught me

I completed my postgraduate degree in Psychology at Massey University, and it remains one of the most formative things I've done. Not because it gave me a credential — though it did — but because of what it taught me about how human beings actually change.

The research on behaviour change, cognitive patterns, emotional regulation, and the conditions that make growth possible or impossible — this is what my coaching is built on. Not tips. Not motivation. The actual mechanisms.

Academic training - Master's in Psychology, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Professional qualification - Life Coach — trained in the specific life coaching approach alongside postgraduate study to apply psychological knowledge in a coaching context

Approach - Evidence-based, psychology-informed coaching. Not therapy. Not generic advice. A grounded, research-backed process tailored to each client

Specialisations - Self-trust and inner safety, confidence and self-worth, decision paralysis, communication, emotional resilience, and personal growth planning

What the Master's gave me, more than anything, was a deep appreciation for context. People aren't stuck because they're lazy or lack willpower. They're stuck because of how their nervous system has learned to respond, what beliefs were formed early and went unexamined, and what patterns were once adaptive and are now limiting. Understanding that changes everything about how you approach helping someone.

Why I chose coaching over the traditional psychology path

When I finished my postgraduate study, the conventional path would have been to continue into clinical psychology — a waitlist, a supervised placement, years of further training before being fully licensed to practise.

That path is important and valuable. But it wasn't where I felt most useful.

What I kept coming back to was the enormous number of people navigating real, significant challenges — not clinical conditions, but the ordinary and extraordinary difficulties of being human — who couldn't access meaningful support. Not because they didn't need it, but because the systems that provide it aren't built for them.

Life coaching attracted me as a way to change that. Psychology-informed, professionally trained, genuinely helpful — but accessible. Not behind a two-year waitlist. Not dependent on a diagnosis to justify the need. Right now, for the person who is ready to grow and just needs someone grounded and skilled in their corner.

I wanted to be truly helpful — not helpful behind a paywall or at the very top of a long waitlist, but helpful right now, right here.

That instinct is still what drives every decision I make about how Soulful Strides operates.

What I've learned from my own patterns — and why it shapes how I coach

The meta description for this post says I went from "overthinking everything to helping others find clarity" — and that's honestly accurate.

I know what it's like to have the knowledge and still struggle to apply it to yourself. To understand intellectually why a pattern exists and still find yourself repeating it. To be capable and competent in many areas of life and simultaneously feel lost in others. These aren't hypothetical experiences for me. They're things I've worked through personally — with support, with time, and with a lot of the same tools I now use with clients.

I think this matters because it means I bring something to coaching that credentials alone don't provide: genuine empathy for the gap between knowing and doing. For the experience of having all the information and still being stuck. I don't stand outside that experience and explain it from a distance. I understand it from the inside.

The concept of inner safety — the felt sense that it's safe to be honest with yourself, to take up space, to make imperfect decisions — is something I work on with clients because it's something I've had to build in myself. The work of trusting yourself when you don't have all the answers is real work, not a concept.

What Soulful Strides is built around

I built Soulful Strides around a simple belief: that the gap between where someone is and where they want to be is almost never about effort or intelligence. It's about understanding — and changing — what's been running in the background.

That means working on mindset and thought patterns, on emotional safety and self-trust, on communication and boundaries, on goal-setting that actually reflects your values rather than the expectations around you. All of it grounded in psychology. All of it tailored to the specific person in front of me.

I'm also a strong believer in accessibility. Coaching shouldn't require an enormous financial commitment to get started — which is why the first session is free, and why I've built options at different levels of investment, from the Soulful Growth Circle to 1:1 work to self-guided workbooks.

I'm glad you found your way here. If any of this resonates, I'd genuinely love to connect.

The first coaching session is free and obligation-free — just a real conversation. Book here →

Or if you want to get a sense of how I think before reaching out, the Sunday newsletter is a good place to start.