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Women Who Went for It! is a bi-weekly podcast, hosted by Career Change Agent, Sara McArdle. The show features inspiring chats with successful industry changers who share how they found the clarity, courage and motivation to step into a deeper vocation and a life of meaning and fulfillment. We hope you'll see just how many before you have GONE for it—and they're eternally grateful that they took the risk!

Apr 15, 2018

Eva Cruz Pena
 
In this episode, Sara talks with Eva Cruz Pena about her journey from nursing to ministry to counseling and eventually life coaching. Eva shares how she connects with her intuition, follows her heart and "lives whole, piece by piece." Eva coaches professional and entrepreneurial women to achieve the creative dream that burns deep within them so they can live the full expression of themselves, show up fully in the world and connect to their power and creative source.
 
Sara and Eva discuss:
  • How they met
  • Eva's early desires to be a flight attendant
  • Listen to her mom and going to university
  • Having a hard time deciding what to study
  • Going to nursing school
  • Working at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota
  • The ups and downs of her nursing profession
  • Feeling like something was missing
  • Going back to school for a Masters in Theology
  • Moving to Portland
  • Pursuing a Masters in Counseling
  • Healing herself through becoming a counselor
  • Her growing restlessness and lack of satisfaction
  • Looking very successful on the outside
  • Being a pastor
  • Experiencing a crisis of faith and not belonging
  • Her breakdown to breakthrough moment
  • Wise words from her psychiatrist
  • Getting certified as a life coach
  • Realizing what was missing from her life
  • Reintegrating the pieces of herself that she'd left behind
  • The freedom to get paid for who she is
  • The ways that life coaching incorporates her knowledge and experience in nursing, theology and counseling
  • How she intuits the "right choice" to make for her
  • Feeling empowered to use her voice
  • Feeling expansive and peaceful
  • The power of visualizations
  • Going to school while working and being a mom
  • Always wondering: is this it?
  • The moment she knew life coaching was "it"
  • Never questioning herself
  • Pushback from others in her career transitions
  • Not getting sucked into people pleasing
  • Other projects that she's working on like painting and her Courageous Malas
  • Energy medicine
  • Her guiding principle: "live whole, piece by piece"
  • Her role models:
  • Eva's one piece of advice to the listener
 
Eva's full bio:
As a nurse, turned mom, turned theologian, turned Air Force chaplain, turned psychotherapist, turned pastor, turned businesswoman and life coach, Eva Cruz Pena has had quite the journey. This journey prepared her with a solid foundation to coach others become the best version of themselves. Eva has a bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Puerto Rico and worked as a hematology and Post-Partum nurse at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She has a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Arts in Counseling from Multnomah University. She served in the Air Force Reserves as chaplain, and worked in the Multnomah Counseling Center as counseling intern and as Pastor of Women's Formation at Imago Dei Community. After completing her Whole Person Coaching Certification at Coach Training World in Portland, Oregon, she worked as an Executive Coaching and Leadership Consultant at V2A Solutions in Oregon. Today, Eva coaches professional and entrepreneurial women to achieve the creative dream that burns deep within them so they can live the full expression of themselves, show up fully in the world and connect to their heart’s truth, power and creative source. She currently resides in Rochester, Minnesota with her husband, two daughters and their Australian labradoodle.