Head Health Coach and Registered Nurse, Sonya English, sits down with recent graduate, Anna Fatai, to discuss her experience and journey to become a PREKURE Certified Health Coach.

 

So Anna, you are one of our PMA Health Coach Certificate graduates. We’re so excited to have you on the PREKURE team and community. I just want to talk to you a little bit about your experience in becoming a Health Coach and what it’s been like for you.

I wanted to ask you, first of all, what brought you to the Health Coach Certificate?

I was working as a Whānau Ora navigator for a Pasifika organisation called Fonua Ola. And, we were introduced to this workshop through Pacific Futures. The idea was to educate us and give us the tools to help our clients and impact their lives a bit more than what we were currently doing. I had never heard of PREKURE but I was super excited because I love learning and I think this was different because it was all so new. I was super excited because I was like, “okay, cool. This is another tool that I can get under my belt and use to help make an impact on our people.”

Wonderful. I heard you say that word impact a couple of times, it feels like it’s really, really important to you, making an impact with your people.

It is. You know, getting paid is a bonus, but I think the most rewarding thing for me is being able to help somebody and see their lives change forever. And, I know that that’s my calling. That’s my purpose. Being able to help people navigate through their life struggles and just walk alongside them. Make life easier for them by helping and supporting them.

Amazing. And tell me, when we first met each other last year to start the Health Coach Certificate, what were your expectations then?

You know what? I seriously approached it like a sponge. I just came in and I kind of just left everything that I learnt and knew at the door. I thought, what better way than to leave everything that you’ve studied, everything that you’ve been taught growing up and all your life experiences at the door. Just to allow yourself to relearn and learn new things. So that’s exactly what I did. And man, it blew my mind just to be there that day, to hear everything and all the conversations, the Talanoa (conversation/sharing of ideas) groups. It actually shifted my mentality. It really shifted my heart’s passion in terms of how I relate to people. What Health Coaching really is, and not what I thought it was before I walked into that place. So, yeah, it was a game changer for me.

I see a big smile on your face. What does Health Coaching, now that you’re a graduate, mean to you?

Health Coaching is being able to walk alongside somebody. Helping them and supporting them through their life decisions. And, more importantly, it’s being able to allow them to have that control. So you allow them to make the decisions and you support their decisions. I think your role is to help hold them accountable for the decisions that they make. It’s having that one on one mentor that you can always call up if you need a little bit of help or some advice.

What has changed in your mindset from when you first started the course to now?

I guess the difference now is that I’m well equipped. I have the tools. The core elements of science and the evidence of preventative and lifestyle medicine. That’s what PREKURE is. Now I have the tools to help somebody make a shift and change their life forever. And, those tools work. Because they definitely worked on me. I think the most important thing in becoming a Health Coach is you have to be able to use those tools on yourself and see if it works. I applied it to my life. I also applied it to my family. So for me, after doing the PREKURE Health Coaching training, it’s given me the principles to live a life that is positive with less stress and greater levels of happiness.

I can really see your joy as you talk about it and something else I really notice is your confidence. How confident do you feel to go out there and coach your community now?

I think it’s natural for me. It’s natural for me to be able to help people because I already have a passion for people. I think if your passion goes before you, then it can guide you. If you’re not so much about people, if you’re not a ‘social butterfly’, if you’re not in a space where you can make a positive impact, then you won’t.

I remember Prof Grant Schofield saying that, “it makes more of an impact if you can use those tools that we teach you at PREKURE for yourself. So you know how to go out and use them on somebody else.”

Beautifully said. And, over the course of your studies and coming to the live labs, what surprised you the most?

Our world is ever changing right now. And, even through the middle of a pandemic, it didn’t change anything for me. I was so stoked and happy that it was online. That was a game changer for me. You can study online and anybody can make time for this. It was in the comfort of my own home. I could be with my family. I did get COVID but I still managed to catch up. Being able to watch the recorded lessons was amazing. So you are not left in the dark. If you miss a session, you can always revisit them and catch up. You also have a great support team in PREKURE who you can have a conversation with. If you’re missing something or if you want more information, they’re right there, eager to help.

One of the things that we did as a group is a lot of work around Talanoa and metaphor. Tell us a little bit about that.

Oh, that was beautiful. I think that was the core of the training, the Talanoa sessions. Because for us Pasifika, it’s where we can converse. It’s where you can really pour your heart out and have those hard conversations. It’s about family. It’s about having a safe space to be able to just share your thoughts and opinions. You weren’t going to get jumped on if you were wrong or if what you said wasn’t the right thing. For me, having those Talanoa sessions was really important.

Lastly, what advice would you give someone who was thinking about doing Health Coaching?

In my opinion, PREKURE offers the world’s best Health Coaching training from the world’s best experts. It’s a game changer. I wish you were around a lot earlier because we would’ve impacted and helped a whole lot of people, even before the pandemic hit. But it’s here now, so we can make an impact moving forward. What PREKURE has done is create Health Coaches to change the world.

I’m with you, Anna. All the way. I can just see your passion and how much it means to you to be able to work with your people. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

Thank you, Sonya. Have a great day.