Don't play with knives I was told as a child and, even today, my mother's voice still echoes vaguely in the back of my mind whenever I start slicing vegetables: 'Careful, it's sharp!'

Of course now this is always mentally followed up by, 'Yes, yes, I know it is', with the absolute certainty of an adult who knows her way around a knife block. However, in spite of this, I recently sliced the end of my thumb off while chopping up an onion.

Nothing had to be sewn back on and it's healing now, but for the last few weeks, I've had to work around it, being careful not to knock it on anything because if I did, it really hurt...

It's reminded me how big an impact one little thing can have on the rest of your life. All the other parts of my body have been working just fine, but that thumb has caused no end of problems in its own small way.

People assume that they need a life coach when they're falling apart, when everything has gone wrong, when they're utterly broken and need fixing. 

Actually, in most cases, it's more subtle. It's about working with someone to sort out their metaphorical thumb – the one small part of themselves that's stopping them doing and being all they want to be. 

Of course they're functioning just fine with that aspect of themselves being out of whack, but - wow! How much easier life becomes when they don't need to operate in that permanent state of work around!

I believe that life coaching often involves making the little changes that can create wider  horizons, open out possibilities and allow you to notice what suddenly becomes possible that wasn't before.

Our bodies are clever – they automatically compensate for our weaknesses. When one muscle or joint is under-performing, others take over - but after a while, we tend to feel other aches and pains as a result of being out of line and off balance. 

Like a chiropracter, a life coach is about realigning, rebalancing and helping you perform in a way that reduces stress. It allows you to be more effective, to move more effortlessly, and yes, sometimes to let go of pain.

So what's your metaphorical thumb? What's holding you back and making you compensate and work around?

And one final question - if you could change one small thing about the way you do things today, what would it be? 

In a much-loved farm house, surrounded by cornfields, you'll find the Ewefields Retreat. It's a place for seeing things more clearly, a beautiful, light-full space. Swallows were scoring perfect parabolas through the air as I let myself inside.

There were six of us. Two coaches and three others like me - waiting to see what would happen.

We sat on the carpet, in a circle, in a mainly empty room designed to let the people be the focus not the furniture, and for much of the first day, we talked. We talked about where we were in life personally and professionally and what we needed and wanted. With all the doing that happens, it was a time for being and taking stock.  

I'm aware that I do a lot of rushing around and, occasionally, a casualty of this is the ability or perhaps even the willingness to think about why I'm doing what I do, what I want to get out of it and even whether I actually know. 

Sometimes we find ourselves on a trajectory, propelled into doing (at speed). It may be a trajectory initially determined by us, but often it's by circumstances or other people - and sometimes it's taking us in the wrong direction. 

The trouble is, by then we're already moving at such a pace that unless we jam the brakes on, we'll carry on until we hit the destination we didn't want. Or like a doomed rocked hurtling through space, warning lights start flashing and the body starts malfunctioning. Sometimes. 

Among these women, talking was uninhibited and honest. We had the chance to be heard and to listen. Mutual respect and consideration gave room for emotion to emerge and then cradled it gently. 

It was a contemplative space in which we shared humour and experiences and found connections through sympathy and empathy. It was a place to put the brakes on.

The second day was more about setting new trajectories, gaining a clearer idea on what we wanted and needed and looking more closely at how we could achieve some of our most important goals, dreams and desires. 

Of course you can do this kind of thing on your own - you don't need to go away on a retreat - but, for me, the guidance of two experienced coaches and a supportive, all-female group made the mental and emotional self-exploration more profound and the process of gaining focus far easier.

In my (albeit limited) experience, men seem more likely to do this kind of processing on their own - and appear much less frequently than women on retreats like this one. They may have one best mate who they talk to in depth, or a partner, but the default seems to be to go it alone - and there is a miraculous process I've observed where they will take themselves off for a pre-defined period of time and come back with THE ANSWER. I am in awe of this. 

Many of the women I know (myself included) choose to look for answers through a more collaborative process, building the networks that provide the support and feedback they need to make their own minds up. 

There is no right or wrong way to go about the process of answering questions - but I think the secret is to be open to anything and leave no stone unturned. 

I have noticed that unexpectedly amazing revelations can come from the most unusual and unlikely of people and places - and whatever leads you to them is doing it for a reason. Trust it. And yourself. We know everything we need to know about ourselves to be happy. It's just a case of stopping and listening.