I am a daughter, sister, wife, stepmother, life coach, doctor, writer and runner.
Trained and certified as a Master Life Coach by Martha Beck and by The Institute for Life Coach Training (an ICF affiliate), I am also a practicing family physician. My work as a life coach has helped me become a more effective doctor, and my experience with patients certainly enhances my skills as a life coach. My intention is to spend my work life serving others as a life coach and as a physician.
I graduated from medical school at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn in 1996. I completed a residency in Family Practice at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, ME, in 1999, and continued to practice family medicine in the Lewiston-Auburn area until 2006, when we moved to New Hampshire. I currently work part-time as a family physician and part-time as a life coach, speaker and writer.
I have a passion for life and learning, and enjoy sharing both with others. Through my own coaching, I have rediscovered my sense of joy and feel a mission to help others do the same.
Why I Created Healing Choices
One morning, a number of years ago now, I saw two women, one right after the other, in my medical office. Each woman had been sick for three weeks, and they had similar symptoms. I diagnosed them both with viral illnesses and gave them my advice: “It is my medical recommendation that you go home and rest and delegate whatever else you have to do today.” Both patients laughed at me. As the second one left, I thought, I am not helping these women at all.
After that day, I started looking for ways to help my patients make positive changes in their lives with regard to their health. I studied the psychology of change. I learned about limiting beliefs and the different stages of change and many other skills that affect our ability to change. As I continued to search for ways to help my patients make positive changes in their lives, the concept of life coaching came up. I investigated further, and eventually found Martha Beck and the methods she used in her book, Finding Your Own North Star. After reading her book, I was so impressed that I decided to train with her to become a North Star coach. Luckily, part of the requirement of training to be a North Star coach is to actually receive coaching from Martha.
A year later, I was a certified North Star Life Coach and realized that my own life had drastically changed. Having gone through the coaching process with Martha, I discovered my own North Star. I was surprised to find that being a doctor was not the end of my journey--turns out it was just the beginning.
Healing Choices, my life coaching company, became the first step along my new path. I still work as a doctor and see patients, as that continues to be an important part of my journey, but I also coach clients, individually and in groups. I now have two professions that serve others in different ways and that feed my soul as well. I am often asked by my patients how I can be so cheerful, (joyful, calm) in my busy medical practice, and the short answer is that "I only do this part-time," but the long answer is that it's easy to be joyful when you fill yourself up with activities and interactions that feed your own soul. As another mentor of mine, Rachel Naomi Remen, once said, "You must fill yourself up so that your joy overflows onto the people in your life."
If you'd like to know more about me or Healing Choices, please contact me at diane@dianemackinnon.com or give me a call at 603-809-4673.
