That's life for Mary!

Former investment banker Mary Shakun has a new life ... helping people take control of their own.

Moving away from fear to self-confidence was the topic of a seminar she staged on Saturday at the Fraser Suites complex in Seef.

Professional 'life coach' Mary travelled to Bahrain in May to spend time with her daughter, Sonia, who works at Charles Russell law firm and during her stay she has been inundated with inquiries about the subject both by individuals and companies and decided to organise an introductory event.

Mary, 65, said: "I shift gears for my clients all the time. Life coaches are there to give direction through various techniques; it's like a tennis coach teaching how to smash a perfect volley or a football coach training his student how to tackle his opponent. In a nutshell life coaches are there to rescue people in difficult situations."

Her mantra is 'to be true to yourself to be truly happy in life'. She firmly believes in drawing a line in the sand, taking control of fear and changing your life around, something that she herself did a decade ago. Now she helps people find focus and coaches them to deal with life's many challenges.

Mary is Irish by birth but has lived in New York for most of her life and worked in the world's financial capital for top international banks, Lazard Freres and Bank of America. But, after working in the highly-competitive environment of restructuring, mergers and acquisitions for three decades she decided to draw her own line and refocus.

Mary enrolled in hypnotherapy classes, studied Neuro Linguistic Programme (NLP) and changed her career path. She is a lifetime member of The Royle Institute of Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy, a full member of The Association of Complete Mind Therapy and Advanced Master NLP Practitioner and Rapid Results Pain Consultant.

She explained: "In corporate America individuals experience a lot of traumas. Life coaching is an ongoing process and is very big in New York both with individuals and corporations as a whole.

"Most traumas manifest from fear and the moment of power is overcoming that emotion. Fear becomes apparent by the way you use your body and the critical thing in fear is to change the body's physiology before dealing with a situation head-on."

At present, Mary is residing in Zinj with her daughter and plans to return to New York later this month.

She believes that at the end of the day life coaching is a whole lot of common sense coupled with techniques to eliminate fear to enable an individual to 'jump start' their life with complete self-confidence.

She believes her knowledge of certain disciplines; her life experiences and personal highs and lows have shaped her into an effective life coach.

"In my opinion, Donald Trump is a perfect example of a success story. Despite divorces, business failures and bankruptcies he has bounced back in life with greater success," she added. Mary can be contacted by emailing mary.shakun@gmail.com