My WorkLife Journey

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”— David Viscott

My WorkLife journey to becoming a professional development practitioner and writer wasn’t planned. It emerged through a series of unexpected turns that ultimately revealed my true calling.

I’m Carmel O’ Reilly, founder of School of WorkLife. Through story-based character-driven learning, I support independent learners and organisations seeking meaningful development.

Below is the story of how this work found me.

The Catalyst in My WorkLife Journey

In the early 2000s, my investment banking contract ended abruptly. When offered a permanent position, I declined. Something inside me knew it was time for change, though I wasn’t sure what that change would be.

The universe has a way of providing answers when you’re ready to receive them. My friend called with an emergency: she needed someone to teach the job-search portion of her programme in Ireland. The original trainer had dropped out. Despite my lack of experience, she insisted all I needed was a common sense approach.

With just 48 hours to prepare, I crafted the course while embarking on an adventure—taking trains across England and Wales, a ferry to Ireland, and finally, another train and bus to reach my destination. Sleep-deprived but determined, I did what I always do when I’m nervous: I over-prepared, then let go.

The Revelation in My WorkLife Journey

The programme participants had all lost their jobs to economic downturn. Their stories reflected broken confidence and diminished self-worth. My carefully prepared plan suddenly seemed irrelevant—these people needed something different.

We began sharing stories. As each person spoke about their WorkLife achievements—things they’d forgotten, dismissed, or never recognised as special—the room transformed. The collective mood shifted palpably and their spirits lifted before me as they rediscovered their value and potential. Only then could we tackle the practical elements of job searching, crafting CVs that truly reflected their capabilities and unique journeys, preparing for interviews where they could articulate what they genuinely had to offer, and approaching salary negotiations from a place of clarity about their worth.

The Transition in My WorkLife Journey

On my long journey home, exhausted yet energised, I recognised a profound truth: I had found my gift. Though I couldn’t articulate it perfectly then, I knew my purpose was helping others navigate their WorkLife journeys.

But passion alone isn’t enough—I needed proper training to serve others effectively. Following my belief that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” I pursued a degree in Career Coaching and Management. This led to a position with a careers consultancy, where I honed my skills before launching my independent practice.

The Evolution in My WorkLife Journey

Since 2003, I’ve guided many individuals and companies through both stable times and times of uncertainty. My own experience of changing direction adds a deeper level of understanding to my work—every challenge, obstacle, failure, and success has enriched my ability to help others.

The Next Chapter in My WorkLife Journey

When COVID-19 disrupted everything in 2020, I faced another WorkLife pivot. However, having just published my first book, I was unknowingly prepared for this transition. Then, understanding that the professional development industry would need time to recover, I expanded my horizons.

What began as a single resource evolved into a comprehensive curated collection of learning resources: Story Lessons, WorkLife Compass Guided Professional Programmes and Professional Self-Coaching Resources, organised across five collections — Self-Discovery, The Art of WorkLife Storytelling, Enhance Your Character Traits, Good Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Book Club Books — with new additions published regularly.

This evolution felt natural, guided by my long-standing mission statement: “To create resources that are insightful, inspiring, and useful in helping people pursue their WorkLives with greater clarity, purpose, passion and pride by developing continuous WorkLife learning resources that are accessible to everyone.”

The Ripple Effect Creating Legacy in My WorkLife Journey

Throughout this journey, I’ve been continually humbled by the transformations I’ve witnessed. Career changers who rediscovered confidence after months of rejection. Leaders who found their authentic voice after years of adopting personas that didn’t truly reflect their values. Teams that developed deeper connections through understanding each other’s professional narratives.

One participant’s words from that first workshop in Ireland have remained with me: “I came looking for job search tips but I’m leaving with a rediscovered sense of who I am professionally and what I truly have to offer.” These moments of insight—when someone recognises their own value through the lens of their unique story—continue to affirm the path I’ve chosen.

My deepest fulfilment comes from knowing that somewhere, someone is using these resources to navigate a challenging WorkLife transition with greater clarity, purpose, passion, and pride.

A Return to the Beginning

In many ways, this work has come full circle.

That first workshop in Ireland was not a carefully designed programme. It was a room full of people who had lost confidence in their professional value, and a simple decision to begin with their stories. As they shared their stories something shifted. Confidence returned. Clarity emerged. Practical career steps only made sense once their professional identity had been restored through story.

Over the years, that same principle has shaped everything I’ve created at School of WorkLife—story-based resources that help people understand their experiences, recognise their value, and communicate it with authenticity.

Today, that original insight has evolved into a three-day organisational learning experience:

The Professional Storytelling Organisational Programme

This flagship programme brings the same core idea back into organisational settings—helping professionals and teams craft authentic stories that strengthen leadership communication, career development conversations, and meaningful workplace connections.

In many ways, it is a return to where it all began, now shaped by years of experience, reflection, and practice—and designed to support organisations around the world.

Learn more about The Professional Storytelling Organisational Programme

Bringing the Conversation Back in My WorkLife Journey

For many years, my work happened in conversation. One person, one question, one working life, and the space to think it through together. When the world changed in 2020, that work moved onto the page, into stories and resources that people could work through in their own space and time. That has become the heart of School of WorkLife, and it continues to grow.

But something stayed with me. That first workshop in Ireland didn’t change because of a carefully prepared plan. It changed because people were in a room together, sharing their stories and hearing each other’s. Some things only happen in conversation: a question asked at the right moment, a silence that gives a thought room to form, a story told aloud that suddenly makes sense of someone else’s.

So I’ve brought the conversation back, in two ways.

Individual WorkLife Coaching

There are times in our working lives when it helps to have the space to think with someone else. A decision about your WorkLife. A difficult situation. A change you want to make. A question about who you are, where you’re going or what comes next.

For more than 20 years, I’ve worked with people navigating exactly these questions about their working life and direction. Individual WorkLife Coaching provides that dedicated time and space: to explore what matters to you, see your situation differently and decide what you want to do next. Each 90-minute online session is designed to help you think clearly, identify what matters and find your own way forward. There’s no fixed programme. We begin with what matters to you and work from there.

Online Live Story Classes

Online Live Story Classes return to that room in Ireland. Real stories. Structured learning. Small group practice. Each class is built around a real WorkLife moment, a conversation, a decision or a pressure where something important is at stake, and runs across all five School of WorkLife collections. In Book Club Books classes, the story comes from literature itself, with fiction and non-fiction illuminating leadership, courage, identity, relationships and personal growth in our own working lives.

Every class moves through four spaces:

• The Reading Room — where stories open things up
• The Writer’s Table — where ideas become personal
• The Workshop — where thinking becomes something you can use
• The Rehearsal Space — where you begin to put that into practice

Each class lasts 90 minutes online, with no more than six people, so the insight comes not only from the story, but from each other.

The Next Stage in My WorkLife Journey

I’m nearing retirement age, but I’m not retiring. Instead, I’m thinking about how my work can be different: how it can leave room for life outside work, and how it can travel with me, so I can work from anywhere.

I want to travel more, and that connects to something else I’d love to do: share this work in person, through talks, readings, workshops and teaching, at festivals, retreats, universities and cultural venues around the world. It would bring me back to where it all began, in a room in Ireland, sharing stories with the people in front of me.

I think of my written work, and the work I do with people, as my legacy: stories and ideas that travel beyond me, to places and spaces I will never be, through people I may never meet, carried by the gift of sharing. Speaking and teaching would be part of that legacy too. And they would keep me doing what has always been at the heart of my work: learning, and learning by doing. Every room, every conversation and every new place teaches me something new.

The Gift in My WorkLife Journey

The words that open this page have guided my work for a long time: the purpose of life is to discover your gift, the work of life is to develop it, and the meaning of life is to give your gift away.

I’ve always shared much of my work freely. Every week, I write and publish stories that I hope are insightful, inspiring and useful, for anyone who needs them.

The Reading List for WorkLife Learning

It began with books. When I created The Reading List for WorkLife Learning, bringing together every book featured in my Book Club Books stories, I chose to link each one to Bookshop.org, which shares its profits with independent bookshops. Then I noticed they also support Book Banks UK, bringing books and the joy of reading to food banks. It made me think about what giving could look like in my own work.

The Gift of WorkLife Learning

That led to The Gift of WorkLife Learning. Every Story Lesson, WorkLife Compass Guided Programme or Professional Self-Coaching Resource bought gifts a Story Lesson to someone at a turning point in their working life, and I match each one with a Story Lesson of my own. The gifts reach people through organisations that already know and support them, anywhere in the world. School of WorkLife is also a member of Pledge 1%, a global movement of businesses giving back.

I think of it as reciprocity: learning that keeps moving, from one person to the next.

Epilogue

My journey continues to evolve, but my core purpose remains constant. Helping others discover and share their gifts. Just as I discovered mine through that unexpected teaching opportunity in Ireland many years ago.

The work I do now as a professional development practitioner and writer combines everything I’ve learned along the way. Each skill, experience, and insight contributing to my ability to serve others in their WorkLife journeys. It’s a reminder that our paths aren’t always straight, but they lead us exactly to where we need to be.

Reflecting on my WorkLife journey — from that nervous first teaching experience in Ireland, through navigating a global pandemic, to creating curated professional development resources and bringing the conversation back — I’m reminded that our greatest lessons often become the foundations for helping others.

Each learning experience along my path has developed into something more: practical resources that can guide others along their own WorkLife journeys. This realisation led me to transform my experiences and insights into accessible learning resources others can use to navigate their paths.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that the way I naturally learn — and the way many others seem to learn most deeply — rests on three interconnected foundations: learning how to make grounded choices about your path (self-directing), how to support yourself through uncertainty and change (self-coaching), and how to grow into guiding your life and work with intention, integrity, and compassion (self-leadership).

This is what now shapes the work I create in service of others.

Professional Background

While my path to becoming a professional development practitioner and writer emerged organically, I’ve built a solid foundation to ensure I develop the highest quality resources. I hold a degree in Career Coaching and Management, have worked in the professional development industry, and have run my independent practice since 2003. With over 20 years of experience guiding individuals through working life transitions, I’ve worked with people across diverse industries and at all career stages.

Alongside this practice, my work has been shaped by training across executive and business coaching, organisational psychology, emotional intelligence, learning and development, as well as formal education in the performing arts — including acting, movement, voice, directing, and theatre practice — which continues to inform my approach to story, narrative, and professional development.

The curated learning collections I’ve created represent distilled wisdom from years working with individuals navigating their own WorkLife journeys. My work draws from both evidence-based career development practices and inspiration from the authentic human stories I’ve been privileged to witness throughout my WorkLife. These insights now inform all professional development resources I create, ensuring each one combines theoretical grounding and meaningful application.

Learn More

The Learning Resources I’ve developed help you live your best WorkLife by managing your learning, development and growth through insightful self-questions, effective self-feedback and the ability to shape and tell your unique story. You will learn to craft deeply reflective, inspirational narratives that transform personal experiences into professional insights.

Whatever stage you’re at in your professional journey, whether you want to navigate career transitions or simply bring more purpose and satisfaction to your working life, you’ll find Story Lessons for a single WorkLife moment, WorkLife Compass Guided Professional Programmes for deeper, structured development, and Professional Self-Coaching Resources for the thinking a coach would bring to one-to-one work, placed in your hands.

About School of WorkLife: What It Does and Who It Serves

Work With Me: Individual WorkLife Coaching, Commissioned Learning Resources, Speaking Engagements and Organisational Partnerships