# The exact moment Leanne decided to pursue psychology

- **Episode:** [17](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/17.md) (2022-12-20)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** career-path, psychology, motivation
- **Time:** 6:11–8:03 (start 371s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/17?t=371](https://truthliesandwork.com/17?t=371)

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[6:11] Al Elliott: So why did you become a business psychologist? What's the story behind this?
[6:15] Leanne Elliott: I can remember the exact moment that I decided I wanted to pursue psychology, not necessarily business psychology, but psychology as a subject. I was in high school, and very sadly, one of my close friends lost her mum very suddenly to meningitis. And the school reacted in such a brilliant way. It was a small school. There was only like 25 of us in my year. But the headmistress brought us all into her office, and she'd engaged a clinical psychologist to come and talk to us about how we're feeling, what's a normal feeling, normal reaction to have in in the face of such a shocking and traumatic event. And I walked into that room as a scared 14-year-old, not knowing how to react, not knowing how to support my friend. And I walked out feeling, I guess, in a simple word, better and empowered. I felt that I understood my feelings better. I felt that I was given some really positive coping strategies. And I feel that I was, by understanding my own behavior and my own feelings, I was then able to—
[7:26] Al Elliott: Support others
[7:27] Leanne Elliott: show up and be there for the people that needed me to. And I think in that moment, I saw for myself the power of psychology in terms of helping us navigate our lives and the challenges that we experience. So yeah, at that point, I was interested. I knew that I wanted to pursue psychology, and this was when I was 14 or 15. So yeah, from that point on through to after I finished my— my undergraduate degree, psychology was the only thing I had on my mind
[7:56] Al Elliott: You mentioned there a clinical psychologist came into your school. What's the difference between clinical psychology and business psychology?