Lena Jakobsson PowerfulU strategic midlife coaching

Gain CLARITY on what you want. Build the STRATEGY to get it.

Join me on an unapologetic new journey in midlife and beyond.

I know where I am going.

OH HELLO!

You're here. (Welcome!)

That means you've already taken the most

significant step toward a more fulfilling future.

I'm your coach, Lena Jakobsson.

Strategic Life Coaching is a great way to cut through the fog and plot out your path - with an element of accountability built in.

On your team, you'll have a Master Certified Coach,

veteran strategist, and Emmy-winning

news & documentary producer, with decades of

experience knocking down obstacles

and making the impossible possible.

Let's do this.

i'm ready to learn more!

THE MAGIC OF TRANSITIONS

Women in our wise stage of life often see beyond their boundaries without knowing how to breach them.

We have ideas that excite us, but hesitate to leap.

We face hormonal and physical changes;

ageism and job loss; empty nests; relationship crossroads...

Not to mention anxiety about the world we see around us.

The list goes on.

Overwhelming concepts, that can challenge

the very core of who you know yourself to be -

and hold you back from pursuing the ventures

- and adventures - you dream of.

Working with me.

Together, we will tackle a structured program to rediscover your passion and purpose, figure out what stands in your way of realizing that potential, and forge a path toward a life you're excited about. We'll use concrete tools like assessments to dive deeper, and action steps to track progress.

I'm not a therapist and I don't give medical advice -

but I do investigate and research, and listen and lead.

As a Master Certified Professional Coach, I am bound by ethical obligations like client-centered practice, respect, transparency, and confidentiality.

Also, this isn't school. While I offer a unique program, we can devise our own version depending on your needs and wants. It's your journey - I'm just your facilitator. Let's talk!

I'd love to tell you more about this process

and what we can accomplish together,

so drop me a note or voice message for an initial

(free, obviously!) 15-minute conversation.

I can't wait to find out what may lie ahead for you!

I'm ready to learn more!

Who is Strategic Coaching For?

People come to service providers like me from all walks of life, and for all kinds of reasons. Most feel stuck in some way - but every person and every situation is unique.

While a Strategic Life Coach may have expertise in one area or another, effective coaching transcends specific circumstances: It’s the ability to achieve clarity about your challenges, set direction for change, and build strategy to get you where you need to go.

Along the way, your coach holds you accountable for the work you need to do, and provides a safe space for you to express frustrations and explore

difficult feelings as they arise.

Some common reasons to pursue strategic life coaching:

Career Change: Many industries are facing challenges and cuts right now, and for mid- or late-career employees, that can mean involuntarily having to plot a new course. At first, this is often a confusing and downright terrifying situation to be in, and can chip away at your sense of self-worth. With the right resources, though, it can be an opportunity for powerful reinvention.
Identity Drift: This happens when the circumstances of your life don’t align with your sense of self. Things like job loss, aging, “empty nest syndrome,” losing a partner, perimenopause/menopause, and physical illness or injury are just some examples of how your relationship with your world may have changed in disorienting ways.
Self-Doubt: Almost all of us struggle with this at times, and may let opportunities pass by and dreams fade as a result. The king of self-doubt is Imposter Syndrome, even among the high-achieving and most successful. Negative self-talk can be loud and paralyzing, and affect every facet of our lives.
Stress & Overwhelm: The feeling of drowning in responsibilities has been proven detrimental to both our physical health and mental/emotional wellbeing. It makes it hard to prioritize and be truly productive, let alone set boundaries and advocate for our own needs. To complicate things, we often experience guilt or shame for feeling this way, especially when the care of others (like kids or aging parents) is in the mix.
Lack of Purpose: The feeling that our life has no core meaning is a very real and common thing, and can be detrimental to mental health. We often beat ourselves up over this because we should be grateful for what we have, and live happily within social norms and expectations. Working strategically, though, it's possible to rediscover what drives and excites us.

Unfortunately, our minds don’t have neat little buckets with italicized labels to hold

these things - and we may struggle to even understand what the problem is.

We just know there is emptiness, or discomfort, or fear,

or an amorphous mix of nagging thoughts and feelings.

more about Lena Jakobsson.

I grew up in Sweden - a lovely, orderly, and punctual place - but with a nagging curiosity about the rest of our planet. My dad, who traveled for business, took me through Europe, top to bottom/east to west, before I hit my teens. I rode the TransSiberian Railroad to the Soviet Ural Mountains, broke my leg at a roller disco in London, and joined a German schooner crew for a while after befriending them in the Stockholm harbor. And then, at 19, I arrived in New York City, and fell madly, helplessly, and forever in love with it.

So, here I am.

Now, why I am:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do two things with my life: Tell stories, and make a difference. I wrote fiction in my teens, and marched against nukes and racism. My goal, for quite a while, was to live onboard a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship. (There's still time!)

Eventually, I settled on journalism as a way to combine storytelling with affecting change - and that’s where I’ve spent more than two decades. I’ve had the great privilege of amplifying suppressed voices; of (hopefully) making my viewers and readers tilt their heads and look at the world in a different way.

I’ve also sprinted for flights with my camera crew, not knowing what we’d face at the other end... A school shooting or terrorism event? I’ve banged out a coherent script on the geopolitical impact of the price of crude oil (what? who?) before my second coffee. I’ve pumped breastmilk in a satellite truck in a blizzard at 4 a.m., getting ready for the network morning shows.

Figuring it out. Always figuring it out.

The other great lesson of my professional career has been in human nature.

With Court TV, I spent weeks-upon-weeks in criminal trials, sometimes watching gruesome autopsy testimony next to a victim’s, or a defendant’s, loved ones. I recall so very clearly one time in Panama Beach, Florida, when the murdered man’s mother grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go until the end of the day. (For a journalist, this is fraught. For a human, it’s not.) A troubled key witness in a serial killer case asked me over dinner if I’d seen others like him - who witnessed a 1979 random murder without being able to help - “go crazy.”

I often got to interview those witnesses and family members, and convicted murderers and jurors and lawyers, at length.

Several questions came into focus.

What drives us? What compels and controls us? What feeds us, as emotional beings? And what stands in our way?

At CNN, ABC, VICE News, and all the other places I’ve called home since, there has been ample opportunity to explore the human condition further. But the “doing good” part has felt more and more elusive. At my career point, with hard-earned wisdom, and a drive to make a mark on the lives of others, there had to be a more efficient way.

And so I had this crazy idea: Maybe I could meet my peers where they are - a crossroads, carrying their bags of life experience, but needing help mapping out what’s next. Maybe I could apply my strategic and investigative experience to their conundrums.

Maybe that would be a win-win.

I'M READY to learn more!

Lena Jakobsson, M.C.P.C.

Lena@PowerfulU.coach

‪(917) 426-3739‬