As with many people who leave the hustle and bustle of city life for either retirement or a new career, certified life coach, writer and photographer Cindi Saadi’s move to Delaware was all about the ocean.
Coastal Point • Submitted
Cindi Saadi spends some time with her friend Stella at the beach.
“I get such peace and true joy from the ocean,” said Saadi. “It is priceless being close enough to visit anytime. Even if I can just stop by briefly and put my toes in the sand and gaze at the water for a few minutes, it makes the day so much better.”
After Saadi and her sister moved to Lewes from the Maryland suburbs, she found herself right at home near the water and started to settle in. Soon after, she heard about something new — life coaching.
Saadi’s experience with life coaching grew out of her criminal-justice background. After leaving a government job, her time there and her background in criminology and corrections led her to writing. She had asked herself the hard questions many people ask when faced with a transition in their lives: “Where do I go from here?” and “What do I want to do with my life?”
After working in a few different jobs, she got an opportunity that changed the direction of her life. She wrote a story about a woman in prison, and it was published in a magazine-type publication in the D.C. area. That helped kick off her freelance writing career and opened her up to her love of writing — something she says is still a work in progress. But it was there that the concept of life-coaching caught her attention, as it has proven to be a help in her writing career.
“I have a coach helping me” explained Saadi. “I have several writing projects I want to finish, and it really helps with the accountability.”
Once relocated to the beach, Saadi started researching several different life-coaching programs before settling on one for her own certification. The benefit to training in life-coaching, according to Saadi, was that even if she never used it as a business venture, the skills she learned were invaluable in her own life and career, and within her own relationships.
Thankfully, her business is growing, so she not only has a coach of her own, but is working as one as well. Typical clients come in for two things: help in gaining balance in their life, and help when they are going through some type of transition, be it divorce, a career switch, empty-nest syndrome or some other life change.
Saadi said the core mission of her life-coaching work is to inspire creativity and promote conscious living, because of her belief that creativity helps people to feel “so much more alive.” According to Saadi, conscious living includes many things, including being more aware of how the way we think and live impacts not just ourselves, but also our planet and all of the other creatures who live there.
“I have two niches,” explained Saadi. “One is creativity coaching. That is where people want help with a particular creative goal — they want to write a book or sell their art. The other is conscious, healthy living. Maybe someone has specific health goals, or balance would fit under there, or they want to learn about how to live a more natural, eco-friendly life.”
An important difference between life-coaching and psychotherapy is that coaching focuses more on the future and less in the past, Saadi said. Although limiting types of beliefs and past patterns can be touched on in life-coaching, they are not the focus.
“In a nutshell, coaching is about helping people figure out where they want to be and how to get there, with as much joy and ease as possible. It can also be a lot of fun. The answers that we all seek are not somewhere out there — they are within us. And a coach can help us tap into them so that we can live our most authentic lives,” said Saadi.
Saadi will be at Good Earth Market on Saturday, July 26, offering an “Essential Life Tools Workshop.”
She said the free workshop developed out of her life-coaching work, because of common themes in her clients, and will focus on two often-forgotten tools for living and enjoying a more productive life: self-acknowledgment and self-compassion. The workshop is open to the public and will last about an hour, starting at noon. Refreshments will be served.
For more information on Cindi Saadi, visit the Web site at www.cindisaadi.com.