Mind Your Trap A Conversation with Pritam Jha ; Coach, Geologist, Explorer

This interview is part of an ongoing series by the ICF Netherlands DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging) Group, featuring conversations with its volunteer members. Our goal is to bring visibility to the people behind the group, their stories, values, and the shared belief that coaching can be a powerful force for a more inclusive world.

Pritam Jha is a certified life and career coach, former exploration geologist, and founder of Mind Your Trap and one of the dedicated volunteers of the ICF Netherlands DEIB Group. Originally from India and having lived and worked across multiple countries, Pritam now coaches mid-career professionals through transitions, identity shifts, and the quiet courage it takes to begin again. We sat down with him to talk about burnout, belonging, and why he believes the best time to start is always now.

From Corporate to Coaching: The Long Road Back to Himself

Let’s start at the beginning. How did you go from a corporate career to becoming a coach?

First of all, I had no idea what coaching was, it was never introduced to me. It was a completely new world. The background of the long story is: I was struggling a lot at work, maybe around 2018–2019. There was too much change, my team kept changing, I had so many bosses at one point, and I was sort of losing myself somewhere, trying to keep up with everything, trying to fit in.

Late in 2019, a colleague stopped me in the hallway. That person was genuinely curious and asked, “Hey, are you doing all right? It doesn’t look so.” after seeing me in a meeting where I was a bit edgy. I said I didn’t know, I wasn’t feeling good. My colleague suggested that I visit the company nurse, which of course I did not do initially. Months passed by, and struggling with similar situations, I finally knocked on the door of the company nurse after three months! Ten minutes into the conversation, the nurse said, “I think you’re going through a burnout. You must stop, take a leave, rest.” And I was like “what is burnout, really?” Coming from an Indian background, we’re taught that more pressure, more doing means you are doing great. She said, “No, this will be catastrophic in the future.” Looking back, I know she was right – but of course, I didn’t pay much attention. I felt my work, my project meant more to me than my burnout symptoms.

Then COVID came. Things went even worse. After a few incidents and unpleasant moments at work, I called the health advisor again. She said, “Six months back I told you, right? You must go on leave.” So I did. It’s funny, it’s April now and it was April 2020. I never went back to work. Six years now.

I was on a long medical leave. I was also clinically diagnosed with depression, so recovery took a long time. Eventually, when the company started reorganizing and pushing people to return, my internal compass just didn’t say yes to it. So I quit. I took a voluntary severance. Around the same time, my wife got a job transfer to Hamburg, Germany. I thought “okay, that’s a good change”. So we left.

And that’s when coaching entered the picture?

 When I was on medical leave, I remember seeing a LinkedIn post from someone in my network — “People in this company are going through a lot of changes, if you are one of them please feel free to get in touch.” I called. It turned out to be the husband of a dear colleague. I didn’t know. But that half-hour conversation went on for one and a half hours. After the call, I was like “Oh my goodness. These people ask so many questions I had no answers for”. It kept me awake all night. I told my wife, “This is a very strange feeling.” That was my first encounter with coaching.

When we were in Germany in the middle of strict COVID restrictions, I was wandering around, not sure whether to take another corporate job, start consultancy, or do something completely different. And some of the times the conversation with the coach would play in the background, so I started joining webinars and workshops about coaching. I also spoke with a few coaches on LinkedIn, just to understand what it was and how it worked. It sounded very purposeful to me. I like helping people and people around me have always known that. It became a tool to express myself. I found a school, the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) that suited very well with my queries. I went to a couple of their workshops and said: yes, that’s it. I booked the full course, including certification, and that’s how the journey started.

Becoming a Professional Coach: Certifications, ICF, and a Company of His Own

How did you decide to go all the way — ICF credentials, your own company?

When I was taking the courses at CTI, it was so liberating. The ideas, the exercises, the things we worked on. Seeing so many classmates going through unique struggles, a lot of pain but a lot of hope and pursuit of happiness and meaning in life. A shared understanding of situations, different perspectives, and choices that we have in life. That made me feel much better.

In therapy, I learnt how to open up and talk, but nothing was really moving much. After a couple of years in therapy, I was still repeating the same story almost every day. But when I did the coaching courses, when I went through the exercises and started practicing with clients, everything changed. There was a trajectory, a way to move ahead. I found the tangent to go out of the circle of my loop.

I was so intrigued. And I felt: this is my place. I said, whatever needs to be done; certification, accreditation. I’ll just do it, without asking too many questions. So yes, that’s what ticked all the boxes for going to ICF, creating the membership, and building from there.

“Mind Your Trap” — The Name That Found Him on a Walk by the Elbe

Tell us about the name of your company — Mind Your Trap. Where did it come from?

So Mind Your Trap has a very interesting origin. We all hear “Mind the Gap” at stations, platforms, airports. That’s one thing — playing with the word ‘mind.’ But then there’s my background: I’m a geoscientist. An exploration geologist, my job was to find traps — where hydrocarbons accumulate inside a completely sealed formation of rock.

When I was looking for a name, I realised a lot of coaches use their own names. That wasn’t quite me, as I felt it is more about people than me. So I mixed the two worlds: my geoscientist journey, and the coaching world — because in coaching, we work with the mind and we are always trying to solve a puzzle in that.

It was an “eureka” moment. I was walking one afternoon by the Elbe river in Hamburg with my family, it was very close to our house. Suddenly the name came into my mind “Mind Your Trap” – I ecstatically shared it with my family right then and there and they were like, yes, yes – that’s a great name!

I came back home, bought a domain, and started designing the logo myself. That’s how it happened.

And the motto “One Day”?

It’s something a lot of people use, but it resonates deeply with me. We tend to keep things for another day. We’ll go on vacation when we have money. We’ll have a nice dinner when we have time. We keep delaying with the frame of mind that a better, more perfect moment is coming. But I think: do it now. At least give it a try. You will learn something out of it. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment, I suffered from that myself for a long time, wondering whether to launch the business or wait for the website. The decision becomes much easier if you say: I’ll do something now.

So: don’t wait for one day when it will happen. Make today day one.

The other tagline I am working with now is : “If not now, then when? If not you, then who?” It’s very coaching-focused, helping people realize they have the choice, the decision power. There is no magic pill. I see people wanting to have everything, but they are not ready for the hard work or the trade off.

Expats, Immigrants, and the Courage to Start Over

You work a lot with expats and immigrants. How did you come to choose that niche?

It has two sides. One part is personal: I left home when I was 18. The longest I ever stayed in one place was maybe seven or eight years; twice. Delhi, and then The Hague the first time. But otherwise I was always moving. Two years here, three years there, different cities, different countries. Netherlands. Then Germany. Then back.

Change is sort of in my blood, even though it is a hard thing to realise. It doesn’t even feel like change to me anymore. But with every move, you lose a part of the identity you created there. Your friendships break. Your contacts break. Your support system breaks. Every time, you start fresh.

When I started talking about my coaching career, the people who reached out to me were people like me. My first few clients were from the UK, US, India, Oman, Brunei, Qatar. When I was based in Germany, I was coaching a literally global crowd, not a single client from Germany or the Netherlands. All outside. All people like me.

The niche didn’t come to me from a marketing decision. I remember talking to my coach about it and felt the same way: let it come. Don’t chase a niche, let’s see who comes to you over two or three years. And when I looked back, these were the people coming to me. Mid-career, mid-age men and women, expats. That’s my tribe. If you’re growing in a pot and you start to outgrow that space, there comes a time to repot, to move yourself to a bigger pot, a different environment, a place with more room. We move because we are hopeful. We believe the next move is brighter, that something better is coming. We’re looking for more growth. But when you re-pot a plant, the first days or weeks are always a shock. The plant reacts to the new environment. The leaves might wilt a bit or the flowers may start withering. That’s the space where you need to be most conscious, choose what you’re creating, be patient, and then start growing again. That’s the metaphor I use. That transition period — the wilting — is exactly where my clients are. And that’s exactly where I can help.

Coaching in Multiple Languages

You coach in multiple languages. How does that affect the work?

My main language is English. But because I get quite a lot of Indian clients, they also speak my mother tongue, Bengali, and sometimes Hindi or other regional languages. The good thing is that most of my clients are also multilingual — they have their own mother tongue, they’ve learned English or other languages. So conversations become naturally multilingual. If there’s a phrase that’s better said in Bengali, I’ll bring it in. If something works better in Hindi, we can try that.

It’s a very fluid thing. In India, I think we’re blessed with that language diversity — most people actually know more than one language, and that works very well in a coaching context. And the same thing works so beautifully here too in Europe just like India. My Dutch and German are very basic, and I once learned some Italian when working with an Italian company. But even a few sentences can be a great connection-starter. If I meet any Italian, I can open with five sentences in Italian. That’s a great connection, right there.

DEIB — Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

How did you get involved with the ICF Netherlands DEIB group?

My interest in diversity started back at my last workplace, where I volunteered for the DE&I volunteer group. In 2018 and 2019, I was actually heading the group, we called it DIAT, the Diversity and Inclusion Action Team, in the headquarters here in the Netherlands. We had a fantastic team of seven or eight volunteers, and we created some really interesting work — intervention theater, where we’d go to different offices and forums, get on stage, and enact scenes. That was powerful.

I also realized — do companies really work deeply on this, beyond a flashy website page or a dedicated logo? I felt exhausted trying to manage the gap between what was said and what I saw happening. And what I saw happening was often quite anti-diversity.

When I came into coaching and discovered that diversity and inclusion was part of the coaching space, I thought: I must be there. As an expat and immigrant who travels everywhere, this matters deeply. So when I was invited to attend a DEIB webinar and they asked for volunteers at the end, I immediately said — yes, happy to join.

What’s been the biggest impact of the DEIB group in your time with it?

What stood out for me was how we worked. Everyone is a volunteer, the leadership was very fluid — anyone could pick something up and run with it. That freedom created a lot of amazing ideas and space for everyone. And we saw workshops grow from 10 or 12 people to consistently getting 20, 30 plus people joining from all over the world and ready to talk and contribute with really rich conversations.

I think we’ve created a real name for the group — the ICF Netherlands DEIB group is recognized now, even within the global ICF DEIB space. I’m really proud of that, and I hope we can continue to create more spaces like that.

What would you like to see the group do next?

Something on the road. Not just workshops. Not just being, as I sometimes say, LinkedIn warriors. I want to be with people.

My dream is that we — you included, as part of the team — stand at Utrecht Central, Amsterdam Central, Den Haag Central during office hours and actually ask people: what do they think? How can we contribute to something? As coaches, we’ve become more content creators for LinkedIn than anything else. The algorithm drives us toward likes and comments. But I truly want to be more on the road.

I’ll propose it again to the team. We have new volunteers now, some fresh energy. I think there’s a real space to create something unique.

On Coaching as a Profession

What are your broader thoughts on coaching as a profession?

Coaching is wonderful. It has so many powerful things it can do — through simple conversations, some questions — and I keep wondering: why wasn’t it there when I needed it? I worked in four big multinationals and coaching was never available. So many team issues, conflicts, and difficult decisions could have been so much more easily navigated if coaching had been part of the culture.

Where I struggle is the business side of coaching. I’m not a businessman by nature — that’s the difficult part. But the craft itself? I believe coaching should be mainstream. Part of the job description, for companies and organizations. People are burning out. People are overwhelmed. That doesn’t have to be the norm.

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Pritam Jha is the founder of Mind Your Trap Coaching. He is an ICF-certified coach working with mid-career professionals, expats, and immigrants navigating change. He is also an active member of the ICF Netherlands DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging) volunteer group.