ABOUT ME
GET INSPIRED
My name is Tara Rafter and I am a fully certified professional Award Winning Life Coach. I also hold Advanced Coach training in Career, Parent and Relationship Coaching and I am a Master Neuro-linguistic Programming Practitioner. I am a successful author, speaker and also an educator for The Irish Life coach Institute.
My bio didn’t always read like that however, I qualified in 2005 with an Honours Degree in Business while working in the retail industry on my school holidays as a sales assistant from an early age. On completing my degree I sold my Honda Civic and left my job in Dunnes Stores and went off to live the dream in Australia, like so many, but on a sunny Tuesday morning in Melbourne one phone call turned my world upside down. I was told that my Dad had died suddenly at only 58 years of age. I came home to my Mam and brother to help pick up the pieces and got a job on checkouts in my local Supervalu.
Over a short period of time and with sheer determination I was lucky to work my way up in the store from cashier to top level management. I spent the next 9 years ticking all the boxes the world tells us we should tick and climbing a ladder that I now know was leaning against the wrong wall.
In 2015 I gave birth to my son Kai. My husband and I were just besotted and also thrown sideways with the new transition into parenthood. My maternity leave was probably the first time I had honestly taken the time to sit back and reflect on my life and on the person I had become. With all the boxes ticked and ladders climbed the view from the top felt meaningless and I felt hollow. I didn’t know what was missing but I KNEW I had more to give the world, this couldn’t be it!
As a result of my childhood (a whole other story) I had an incredible capacity to read people and situations. I had a fascination with human behaviour, psychology and the mind. During this “break” on maternity leave I began to explore that world which had always been my passion and I really began to recognise that I had a yearning to make a change in my life and it had to start with my career.
I can still remember the fear, the thought of leaving everything I had worked so hard for behind, to begin again, was terrifying. What if I failed, I had a baby and a husband and a mortgage. My friends and family thought I had lost the plot.
I began to research courses and let’s just say I took the scenic route to get to where I am today. I made the decision to leave my job and return to education when Kai was just 5 months old, needless to say I was petrified.
On a Saturday morning in Dublin, Ireland in 2016, I embarked on one of the single greatest personal development journeys of my life to train as a professional coach and sitting in that room, consumed by fear, I felt like I had come home. Since starting my business in 2017 I have been coaching clients across 5 continents. I am SO passionate about my bespoke one-to-one work with my clients both face to face and online. I use a blended approach, from all aspects of my training and experience, based on my client’s needs with the added bonus of accountability to ensure results and my testimonials speak for themselves.
I opened my own private coaching practice in Ballina, Co Mayo in 2018 and I was awarded ICF Ireland Life Coach of the year after only 11 months in the industry. I created and published my very own goal setting diary in 2018, My Life Compass, which sold out. I was a finalist in The Mayo Business Awards in 2019 and was awarded an All Ireland Business All Star in 2020. I have been a guest on many chart topping podcasts and volunteer on my own local radio station here in Ballina, BCRFM. I have been invited as a guest speaker to many incredible sell out events and I am proud to say I work regularly with global multinationals and their teams. I have been featured in Mayo Now Magazine,The Sunday World, Sunday Independent and The Irish Examiner. I am also proud to educate coach’s for The Irish Life coach Institute where I myself trained.
Once I found my path, the doors just kept opening! I did it all, with fear as my companion and I’m still only getting started. My passion for people and my belief in never ending possibilities is my driving force..
So now, what can I do for you?
