Ep #348: Growth Without Suffering with Tah and Kole Whitty

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 348.

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Brooke: Well, hello, my friends…

Kole: Hey…

Brooke: Not you.

Kole: Oh.

Brooke: That’s my other friends. The ones that are listening. It’s not your turn yet…

Kole: Can I be friends?

Brooke: Okay, well, we have some amateurs on the podcast today.

Tah: An Amateur…

Brooke: We’ll for sure leave all of that in. I always start my podcast with, “Hello, my friends.” And even though you’re one of my friends, I wasn’t actually referring to you quite yet.

Kole: But I say it on the intro of your podcast too when you say it…

Brooke: Oh, when you’re listening you always talk back? That’s perfect. We are going to keep it controlled today, I promise. I’m super-excited about today because I have, for the very first time ever in the history of the podcast – we’ve been doing it for 348 episodes, I’ve never had a guest on that hasn’t been a certified coach. And I’ve actually really appreciated that about myself. So, when people email me and they say they want to be on the podcast or they say they want to be a guest on the podcast, I say that I just don’t have people on the podcast that aren’t certified coaches. So, this will be the only exception. Do not email me.

Okay, so I have Kole and Tah Whitty on the podcast. And they are friends that I met when I moved here to Austin. And they were, like, friends that – like love at first sight friends that you have, that I have. And I loved them immediately. They became family immediately and I have spent many wonderful times with them, having amazing conversations. And every time I have a conversation, I think we should record this and I should share it with my people because they have such a unique way of talking and approaching that aligns with everything that I teach. So, now, Kole and Tah, welcome to the podcast.

Tah: Well, thank you.

Kole: I get so excited when I’m around you that it’s just like, and then what? Yes, let’s do this. So, hi…

Brooke: I’m so excited to have you both here. I would like to start with both just allowing you each to introduce yourselves and share a little bit about the work that you do here in Austin and we’ll go from there. Let’s start with you, Kole.

Kole: Yeah, so my name is Kole. I work a lot with high-performance entrepreneurs. So, I’m optimization-obsessed. Not just like I go to the gym sometimes, but I must know what’s going to actualize things in my life, and not just business but in all aspects. So, optimization becomes imperative.

The thing is, with me, I do it through, as I say, laughter and leather. What I mean by that is through fun and through non-traditional modalities from my explorations just of life, of my healing journey, of coaching lots of different types of people. And so, I’m all about having fun to heal. I think that’s been a very unique experience for myself and it’s something I decided to start sharing a whole lot more.

Brooke: I love that. I have to say, before you go, Tah, I have to say that since I’ve met so many people – because now I guess I’m an extrovert and I’ve met so many people now – everyone I meet knows Kole and Tah. They are legendary. They’ve done amazing work for so many of the entrepreneurs, high-performance, high-income entrepreneurs in this area. And they are the go-to people in this area for this kind of coaching. So, go ahead, Tah.

Tah: Well, thank you for that because I did not know that I was legendary.

Kole: I mean, you are legendary to me.

Brooke: You knew that…

Tah: Well, thank you for having me. My name is Tah and my last name is Whitty. And I am an amazing human being in a body that I absolutely love that I did not always love. and I practiced nursing in New York City for 25 years. 23 of those years were in emergency medicine. I worked at 12 different hospitals because I am absolutely in love with human beings and looking to find out what makes human beings tick and what causes us to fall apart.

And so, in my journey, I’ve found out that the one thing that really causes people to be separated is loneliness and causes them to go into a space of physical degradation. So, I’ve been on this quest to unravel what makes people fall apart. And one of those things has been shame. So, I have been practicing helping people illuminate things in themselves that they never knew about or that had been hidden by shame and the shame that society has been placing on people.

And so, the way Kole and I move is from a context of, like, there’s a totem pole of esteem, a hierarchy in the human organism. And it starts on the top with spirituality. After that is mentality and mind processes. Below that is constructs of relationship, of religion, of business or whatever, all the constructs. Underneath that is the heart and intuition space. Below that is the body, that’s a fifth-class citizen. And the under that is the microbiome.

And what we do is we get people to take that totem pole and turn it sideways and hold all the aspects of the human self in the same awesome esteem. And then, they bring it together for a complete human experience. And so, we show people how to pull shame out of your spirituality, shame out of your body, shame out of your biome, shame out of all of these things and illuminate them awe that you are as a human being and bring that together.

And so, Kole does it through her ways. I do it through my ways. We do it together. And Kole is the group person. I am the one on one really close proximity person. And it really works well because Kole, she’s a very feminine woman with a masculine twist and I’m a very masculine man with a very feminine twist to my energetics. And so, we have this way of dancing with people that we haven’t experienced before and other people haven’t experienced before. And so, we fall into a really awesome place of connection with folks. And it’s been miraculous to bring what we bring to people.

Brooke: I love it. So, one thing we didn’t mention is that Kole and Tah are married and very much in love. and being in their presence is such an honor to see true love happen right before your eyes. When I first met them, we were on a boat with one of our friends, Mike Dillard. Shoutout to Mike Dillard. We love him.

Tah: Mike Dillard.

Kole: We love him.

Brooke: We were on a boat and it was so awesome to watch their interaction and their love with each other, and also the intimacy they had with everyone else on the boat at the same time. And I was newly divorced and trying to figure out my new identity. And Tah looked right at me in the most intimate way, in the most connected way, and asked me very sensually, I might add, “Have you ever thought about how you want to be kissed?”

And I’m telling you, in that moment, having him ask me that question in such an intimate way, in such a genuine interest in that really did change my life. It really woke me up in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. So, I will always be thinking about kissing when I think about Tah. And if you could see him, you would completely understand. And Kole is completely on board with me…

Kole: I’m down with the entire world basking in the beauty that is Tah…

Tah: Y’all are making me feel amazing. Thank you. It’s an honor to be a part of your process and to be able to have that be received. Intimacy is what we work in. Everything is about a deep intricate connection with the self, with other people, with the environment, with the food that you eat, with your movement, with your ideas, with your business. All of this is intimacy work that we do. So, the whole coaching industry is about intimacy.

That’s really the intricacies of whatever it is that you’re looking for. If you’re looking to be intimate with your business, intimate with your partner, intimate with your vulnerability, whatever it is, it’s all intimacy. And so, thank you for receiving that, that intimacy, and participating in it with me. Because if you didn’t speak to me about the things that were going on with you, I wouldn’t have known to lean into that space with curiosity. I was really curious as to what it is. I mean, you’re a beautiful woman. Your laugh is infectious. It’s just awesome…

Kole: I live to make you laugh.

Brooke: Well, it’s your fault because you make me laugh constantly.

Tah: It’s awesome. So, to be able to be in that space with you is a great honor and a pleasure and I’m so curious as to how things move along with you. I’m so interested.

Brooke: Yeah, so let’s just do a little side note here about intimacy. We’re going to talk about – we have a different topic today, but I do want to talk about intimacy because one of the things that I’ve noticed with the group of friends, the family that we’ve kind of all collected together is that the intimacy with all of us is so intense; the way that we look at each other, the way we touch each other, the way we talk to each other.

And I’ve gotten so used to that intimacy, being here in Austin with you all, that I notice it sometimes when I’m not with our family people, that people have a much harder time with that, as I’m trying to connect in that true intimacy with people, and the way that you are, even when we’re in public with some of the wait staff. Like, Tah is always very intimate with everyone that we’re with. And some people can’t receive that and have trouble with that. Do you want to speak to that for just a minute?

Tah: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I’ve been practicing is to build intimacy with a person in five minutes or less. And so, it comes with recognizing a person’s nervous system and seeing how their body responds to you. There are people who have a gate up that you can never get through that gate. So, once you learn the cues that a person’s body has, the way their shoulders drop, the way they breathe, if they’re able to engage in eye contact with you, if they’re fidgeting, you can actually lean into it.

The thing that I do with people, instead of asking canned questions looking for canned responses like, “How are you?” I’ll ask a person, “What’s making your heart sing today?” Or, “What was the best part of your day so far?” I’m really interested to know. And it slows them down and it makes them realign and it’s like, “This person’s actually interested in me as a human being, not for me working as a waiter,” or whatever it is, not because they need something from me but because they’re genuinely interested.

And when you show a genuine interest in somebody, it allows their body to align with you. And that causes the hormones in their body to shift and vibrate in a very similar frequency to yours. And that’s where intimacy lies, is when the bodies start to align and the chemicals start to wire in a similar way. And this is practicing empathy. We all have empathy. But to be able to practice empathy and bring empathy in as a tool to connect with people is awesome.

Kole: I think that’s also the difference in intimacy versus say just coaching someone. When you’re intimate with someone you’re working with, that intricate connection, you’re meeting them in a space they are, regardless of what you see or what story or whatever is coming up for them. Like you’re saying, not everyone is in a position to receive that. And if you commit someone really aggressively, their coping mechanisms are going to come up, their defensiveness, their whatever.

And so, what you’re really looking for is to be able to connect with someone, then it’s not coming at them so directly. What Tah is basically doing is like a side door. He’s coming over to the kitchen window and rapping on it and being like, “Hi, what are you making?” versus like a sales pitch at a front door.

And when you can change even the auto-responders and pause and wait for someone’s body to attune and really just make eye contact, or if that seems intense, maybe I don’t square my shoulders. You know, when you pay attention to body language, even on Zoom, on video calls, you have the opportunity to wait, to hold on a second, which was not an easy thing for me to learn – shocking that might be already to some people right now – but what I learned in that though is that that was the most intimate some people had ever experienced, was just to be seen in a moment in their discomfort without having someone trying to fix them or change them.

And so, for me, that was the beginning of intimacy. And for some people, that is as far as their edge can be pushed right now. And I’ll acknowledge and thank people for their time in the recognition. And I think that when we’re present, we notice those things. And that’s the opportunity for more intimacy. For them, the next interaction, it’s like we’re all coaching each other all the time. And we’re preparing ourselves for the next interaction. So, every person we interact with in that way.

Tah: Yeah, and there’s a pathway that we’ve developed that is flawless with building intimacy with the self and building intimacy with everyone and everything around you. And so, get your pad – if you are listening to this, you are listening to this. Get your pen and paper and write this down. The first thing is tolerance; to be able to physically tolerate yourself, with yourself or with another person. To be able to physically tolerate yourself without going off into a mind space or having to cloud yourself with activity or something else.

When you can tolerate yourself, you fall into a space of acceptance, “Okay, I accept my situation. I accept my thoughts. I accept my feelings. I accept the person around me.” After that, you assess if you’re safe, “Am I safe? Am I physically safe? Are my ideas safe? Are my finances safe? Am I safe?” And once you’re in a safety space, that’s when you open up the gate to vulnerability.

You ask questions or you expose something about yourself. It can be a smile. A smile can be vulnerability. Some people have the RBF, resting bitch face. Can I say that?

Brooke: Yeah, you can say that…

Tah: Some people have resting bitch face or resting whatever and you never get to see that smile, you know. And so, them cracking a smile can be vulnerability. And when you open up with a smile, it usually causes another person’s body to open up. So, that is a volley of vulnerability. And when you have a volley of vulnerability going back and forth, that is connection. And once you have connection open, you test the waters and you open your filter and see if another person can receive you and be completely in the space to receive you, sans judgment, sans nonsense. They don’t want anything from you. They’re just receiving you.

And then you output back to them. And when they receive it and volley, you have connection. And the more intricate you get with the volley, that’s where the intimacy lies and the intricacy. So, you’ve seen me do it in a couple of seconds with wait staff. I stop and I pause and I talk to them and I bring myself to their level. I square off my shoulders and I’m actually deeply interested to the point where I get my breathing to synchronize with them. That’s when the intimacy starts because the body becomes a vehicle for intimacy.

Brooke: One of the things that’s so interesting about this for me personally is kind of my whole, the past 20 years of my life, I’ve been what I would call an introvert and I’ve been kind of at home, taking care of my kids, being with my family, not really doing a lot of socializing, definitely not creating intimacy with strangers. That would have been my nightmare. And now, I’ve completely done a 180 where I feel like I’ve connected with more people in a social setting, more friends, more strangers who’ve now become loved ones in my life. And I see how much I’ve been missing.

So, I think some of the people might be listening to this podcast being like, “Why would you want to be intimate with your waiter? That doesn’t make any sense.” But from my perspective now, I see that when you really understand that we’re connected, all of us are connected, and when we go through our day disengaged from the people around us, we miss out on having the experience of being alive.

And so, I think you demonstrate that so beautifully, not just with opening yourself up intimately to people, but with the love that you give them once you do. And so, I think that’s the other piece. It’s like creating that intimate connection and then you say such beautiful things to people and…

Tah: I love people. Oh my god. I love people.

Brooke: And whether you receive it or not, you still get the joy of having said it. I think that’s just a kind of nice, like what you’re saying, pen to paper, try that. Try to connect with just anyone, the person you’re buying something from at Target, connecting with them, not in a superficial, “I like your dress,” kind of way but in a deeper – can you connect with them, eye contact, all of it?

Tah: Yeah, it’s all about an offer. You offer your vantage point, and you offer an opportunity for somebody else to give their vantage point. So, it’s always an offer. Intimacy always, for me, always starts with an offer, “Hey, hey, what’s the best part of your day today?” Which gives them an opportunity to offer their vantage point, so you can see where they are. And once you have that space – and for us, intimacy, there’s a context that people have been using that intimacy is attached to sex or deep sensual or romantic situations.

And so, our context of intimacy is a deep intricate connection. And you can have intimacy with your business. You can be deeply woven into your business and really know the inner workings of it. And this is one of the things that I know you’re a master of, is finances and the flow of money. There are people who want money, but they won’t get intimate with how money works. And if they don’t get intimate with how money works, they’re going to miss things. These are blind spots. And it’s the same thing when you’re looking to have a partner. It’s are you able to get in those blind spots that you don’t know that your partner has? Are you interested in those blind spots? Are you creating stories and question marks?

People create tons of stories and question marks around money and what their business could be. But they don’t go into that space. And so, it’s the same thing with connection with anybody, with your kids. And one of the greatest things that we have issues around, right Kole, is people with their kids, they don’t have intimacy with their children. But they put up blockades, “This is how a parent acts. This is how a child acts. And you don’t step beyond this.” So, you can’t get into what another person knows because you can’t get into their context. And so, we’re looking to create an overlap of context. And when you have that overlap of context, that’s where intimacy resides.

Kole: And really, what it all comes down to in the end and how we come to all of this and how we recognize it is it’s a congruence issue actually. If someone is doing all the mind work and they’re going, “Oh, I love people and you’ve got to change your mindset and those limiting beliefs,” and all of that are all mind things. And you can understand it intellectually. That is not the wisdom of the knowing. And that is the embodied actions that support it.

And so, I could sit and say all day long that, you know, money beliefs or what my parents’ thoughts of money were, but if I’m still acting on a daily basis, by not handing the extra quarter on my pocket to someone on the street because I’m afraid of letting the quarter go, I’m still functioning from a deficit-based mindset in action…

Brooke: Even though the thoughts have changed, which is what I teach. Yeah, totally.

Kole: Correct, so there’s the instinctual intelligence of the body. And that’s where we come from. That’s what intimacy is. When you get that intimate connection with the self and with the body, that translates into loving your life because you’re intimate with the table, with the chairs. I clear out my closet of anything that I don’t feel connected to anymore after six months because for me, to be connected to what I’m wearing is part of my intimacy.

It starts with the sheets I wake up in and I basically took one action every day to increase the connection I had in my life. And that meant okay, I couldn’t afford the nice new fancy bed. I’m going to buy the new sheets though. That’s like the first beginning of the imagination. Okay, I don’t have the dream relationship yet, but I have friendships that are very deep and they can hold space for me.

And so, it’s like curating and bringing together people in your life through intimacy is what starts to create what we call a life team. That life team with intimacy makes your life so much easier. You’re not as reliant on willpower because intimacy and all those intricate connections become like a safety net of support.

Brooke: Yes, I love this. I think that, as you were speaking, like it’s one thing to say, “Okay, I’m going to tell my husband that I love him,” or, “I’m going to tell my kids that I love them.” And that’s an intellectual exercise. I can say, “I love you, Kole.” Like, I say that. There’s very little intimacy as I say that to you. But if I look at you and I connect with you in your eyes and, like, “No, I love you,” and feel it in my body, it’s such a different experience. And that’s a very easy thing that many of you can do in your own lives is be able to notice how often you say, “I love you,” flippantly. And then try to do it with intimacy.

Which, of course, what Tah was saying is it doesn’t mean it’s sexual. It may feel that way, especially at first. And people may avert their eyes, even people you love deeply when you look into their eyes. They may be like – I know, my kids, when I first started doing it, they’re like, “Mom, what?”

Kole: What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?

Brooke: Now they’re just used to it. Like, “Oh, she’s coming in again…”

Tah: you know, the charge between people is an interesting one. And people look to avoid the sexual charge, they look to avoid the attractions they have for each other. And that also blocks intimacy. If someone is attracted to someone else, they will make sure that they don’t say something. So, what I do when I’m speaking to – I’m attracted to all human beings, but I’m particularly attracted to women. And so, if I’m in a situation where I’m looking to have a conversation and connect with a woman that I think is really, really beautiful, I’ll keep hearing in my mind how beautiful this woman is. And if I don’t say how beautiful she is, it’s a distraction for me.

So, I’ll ask, “Hey, do you take compliments? Or can I say something that is on my mind right now? And I just want you to know what’s on my mind so I can be clear in my conversation.” And they’ll be like, “Sure, what is it?” And I’ll be like, “I think that you’re extremely beautiful and I just want that to be out on the table so I let you know that, so I can continue with this conversation because the acknowledgment of your beauty is really important to me right now so I can focus. And I want you to know that this isn’t a pass or anything like that. I’m interested in your knowing my vantage point so that I can be clear on my thoughts.”

And that allows the other person to relax because if they have a sexual charge for you too, they may be able to say something to you as well. And it gets it off the table and out of the way. And that opens up the gateway to intimacy because there’s a block in the way.

Brooke: That’s fascinating. So, that’s actually super-fascinating. Can you have an intimate relationship with a friend, can you have sexual attraction with a friend and still feel safe and comfortable in that relationship if you know that you don’t want to have sex with that person? I think that is something that people avoid even knowing if it’s possible. They’re like, “Oh, I’m sexually attracted to this guy. I better not be intimate with this person.”

Tah: Right, and at first, denial is the intimacy with the self and acknowledgment with the self that you are attracted to this person. I have plenty of people that I’m around that I’m attracted to. I mean, I was with Stephanie yesterday. The woman is beautiful. She’s sitting on a trampoline in a bikini and we’re having these deep conversations and I just was unable to focus and I was like, “Hey, can I share something with you?” And she was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Girl, you are beautiful.” And she was like, “Thank you.” I was like, “Now, can we continue this conversation?”

Brooke: So, did that diffuse the attraction?

Tah: No, it just diffused the energy. I felt like I was holding back. The attraction’s not going anywhere. I’m still attracted to her. She’s beautiful…

Brooke: Okay, let’s talk about that because I think that’s kind of the question. So, you’re talking to a woman that you’re attracted to. I’m assuming you aren’t going to be intimate in terms of a sexual way with her. So, how do you remain intimate with someone like that in an intimate conversation, knowing that you’re sexually attracted to them but you’re not going to act on that?

Tah: I speak on it, “Can we stop for a second? Can we talk about this? I want you to know that there’s no threat here. I want to know where you are with the knowing that I have an attraction to you.” And so, it allows her to speak. Because if she’s uncomfortable with my attraction for her, she may not know why she’s not able to lean into it…

Brooke: Yes, even if it’s unspoken…

Tah: She can feel it. This is where the energetics happen. And the congruence of the hormones that we are both producing that vibrate at similar frequencies. This is where the science and the woo-woo all come together. Because there is an energy that is happening between two people, a sexual charge that happens, whether it’s spoken or not.

Brooke: Yes, that’s so good.

Kole: I feel like that’s actually what makes it easier to know how to operate. Because by having something come out to the table and it’s simply expressed, then it’s no longer a concern of something that’s, like, hiding in the closet or the boogeyman under the bed that is just going to jump out and get you.

Brooke: Or something to be ashamed of, “I’m married, happily married, I love my husband, and I’m sexually attracted to you,” and then I feel like I have to hide that away and then it festers and I feel like there’s something wrong with me…

Tah: Right, and so you trip over your words, you may trip in your business situations, which is something that you don’t want to do. You don’t want to trip at all. I want life to be easy. So me being honest and really, really honest and outright about my feelings, about how I see things, about my expressions and my voice, I think all of these are really important. And to honor someone else and give them an opportunity to put something on the table that they may not have been game to. Every time I open up with vulnerability, vulnerability comes back to me, each happens and then there’s a huge expansion of connection.

Kole: I mean, that’s what authenticity is. Because for me, people think consent starts once you’re getting towards physicality or being intimate in that way through sex with someone. For me, consent starts just by telling you where I am or can you receive where I am, regardless of what it is, to remove assumption. I don’t assume that if I feel energy that it’s sexual energy. I don’t assume that someone doesn’t like me or they’re mad at me.

By operating from this intimate place, we get clear very quickly and then we know how to operate and where to move from and we can step out of this societal posture we’ve created of, “Well, I don’t want him to think and I don’t want her to think and I don’t want them to think…” and it goes back to shame, of protecting everyone else from me. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. The energy is there.

Brooke: They’re already going to feel that is what you’re saying.

Kole: They’re going to feel whatever they’re going to feel. But by us talking about it then maybe this is the first time someone actually said it and they can go, “Well, thank you for that. I’m uncomfortable with that concept and I’d prefer if you left now.” You’re actually helping them empower themselves through boundaries. So actually, it makes it easier for everyone to be in alignment with where they want to be.

Tah: Yeah, and a situation like that where you’re talking about, Kole, that allows a person to have a business situation or a relation situation that’s easy. If a person doesn’t have the option to say, “You know what, this isn’t for me,” then they’re leaning into something that just doesn’t feel connected. And it’s down the road, it’s going to cause drama.

Kole: Or in a business, you know. If you hire someone and there’s a sexual energy. And it’s not that you have to name it that. But by having a more honest conversation with someone, then that could save you tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars by having an honest conversation versus someone trying to pretend they don’t have feelings or they don’t want to make someone uncomfortable.

We made the decision. We were looking to learn through play and pleasure in our life, not trauma and drama anymore. Did that, marked it off as complete, and now more than ever, people are so energetically chaotic from all the consumption of media and social media and what friends are saying and in business things, very few can think straight right now.

And so, now we’re carrying around even more assumptions because it’s faster for our mind to just make something up and fill in the gaps so that we can survive. And by creating a new habit of this level of intimacy, it makes it easier for everyone around you to operate, to get what they need, to get the ores in the water and to keep moving forward because it’s very clear where we are. Until we know where we are, we don’t know how we’re going to get to where we’re going.

Brooke: So good. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think for all of you who want to accelerate your evolution, truth makes everything go faster. So much faster. If you can just start with the truth instead of waiting around for it, it just cuts through everything. And I think a lot of you listen to me and the way that I coach because there’s no fluff. We’re just, like, straight to it.

So, that leads in perfectly to what we want to talk about next, which is Kole and I, we go on walks a lot. And one of the things that we talk about is learning through joy instead of learning through suffering. And both of us approached our initial work on ourselves through, “Let’s find out what’s wrong with us and fix it.”

And it’s so funny, I was making fun of one of my friends, as I do. And we were talking about the class called how to find out what’s wrong with you, like doesn’t lead anywhere good. There’s no good conclusion. Like, what is the result of that program? If you do it well, you lose, you find out what’s wrong with you. And so, I feel like we want to completely eliminate that class from everybody’s programing, like finding out what’s wrong with you is not the right direction.

And a lot of people have trauma that needs to be processed. And that has to be the first part of it. So, let’s talk about that a little bit and how that can end up going wrong if it’s not done properly. So, I’ll let you start with that.

Kole: I mean, I could give you all sorts of ways that it goes wrong because I spent 13 years doing it all the ways I thought were the right ways to figure out what’s wrong with you. So, I’m going to save everyone now probably a good six figures just from my experience. So, you’re welcome in advance.

So, just to back up a little bit, I had a lot of childhood trauma, teenage trauma, overdosed into a coma by 17, didn’t graduate from high school, at-risk youth, you’re never going to be anything. And not only that, I got lumped into the once an addict, always an addict, which I think is very disempowering. Not, I think. I know for me – won’t speak for anyone else but myself – for me, that created this, like, I wasn’t strong enough basically to do anything is what it translated into.

And even after, like, yes, I grew and evolved and I started to get a lot of significance from my story, because I, quote unquote turned my life around. There was no support for turning my life around. That was just no longer talking to the people I used to and willpower. And the thing is, willpower runs out, or it just gets redirected to some other dysfunctional behavior. And so, then that turned into a marriage that was dysfunctional and all sorts of other things, trying to avoid substances.

Brooke: Yes, and I just want to pause there because I think a lot of my students come to me from this place of identifying themselves against their trauma and identifying themselves as a survivor. I used to be this and now I’m the person that has survived this. So, they’re identifying themselves. They don’t realize how much they’re bringing that story…

Kole: Correct. So, it starts with victim. Then you become a survivor. The problem with the survivor badge, as I call it, that I wore very proudly for a very long time, is that you have to continually come up with new things to survive to maintain significance. So, my trauma of being in a coma from a drug overdose had good legs on that one. That took me to some really powerful places.

Then that runs out and I just kept having all these injuries, but with really bizarre circumstances like kicked in the face by a horse, horseback riding. But it was always the best-case scenario of the worst thing that could happen. That was my underlying story as I got deeper into some of this trauma work and timeline therapies and options like that.

So, what I realized was that I was still maintaining a need to have things to survive so that I could hold onto this identity that made me powerful. Because when I was once an addict always an addict, I was disempowered. Now, as a survivor of addiction, quote unquote, I am empowered until I wasn’t anymore because it wasn’t fun.

Brooke: Being a survivor over and over and over again is not fun.

Kole: No, I mastered that and moved on with life. If 10,000 hours makes you master something, I mastered that a long time ago.

Brooke: Now, let’s pause here because I just want to say, if you think this might be you, if you think you might be someone who is living in this survival mode, you will know because you are always talking about the things you’ve survived. And that is how you’re identifying yourself in relation to the trauma that you’ve experienced. And it’s not to undermine your trauma to say that it’s not significant, because it is. But if you’re identifying yourself in relation to it, you may be experiencing the same thing. And it becomes a problem.

Kole: Correct. And it’s an evolutionary process. That’s the truth of it. So, there is first an aspect of owning your story, because people avoid it. So, once you own that you were victimized, then you own that you survived it. It’s when you hold onto it in a past tense as a current verb, “I am a survivor, surviving,” that it becomes problematic.

So then, I recognize that, “Wow, this identity isn’t serving me anymore. This is getting in the way of my growth now. And what is the next book?” That’s my thing lately. What’s the next book?

If you wrote the book that was everything that happened of your trauma, what’s the inspiring story book, the one that’s after all of that? The one that achieved everything you ever dreamed of? And it’s like, now, honestly, the only times I share my trauma in stories is for someone that needs to see that I wasn’t born this way, that it was a process. Because as humans, we learn through story. It’s powerful. It’s recognizing the language of how I’m referencing it.

I can say, “When I was victimized, when I survived that thing…” And I also am careful to not say, “My coma.” Like, this thing I’m keeping that’s mine. And so, if I say, “When I was in a coma. When I was in the coma,” it’s not something that is mine. It’s something that happened. And these little distinctions, you recognize when it’s time to.

And so, if you’ve been sharing your story – here’s how you tell, Brooke. When you look around and everyone around you is traumatized and they’re inspired because you’re traumatized and no one’s having any fun…

Brooke: That’s what I was going to say. You know that you’re doing this because nobody’s having any fun. Everyone is very serious about their recovery…

Kole: You connect through trauma and drama for transformation. And that is the thing I had in common with people. At one point, I was getting 200-plus emails a day after they were filtered of parents, kids, adults, grandparents of their child, mother, sister, uncle dying, trying to kill themselves, whatever. And I realized that my connection point, my intimacy was with suffering. My intimacy was with pain.

And I actually went through – it’s called a plant medicine or a psychedelic experience in a therapeutic setting so that I could actually neurologically let go of pain as my best friend. The loneliness I experienced growing up, pain became this blanket to let me know that I wasn’t alone. And so, I actually made habits in my body of fibromyalgia, endometriosis, ovarian torsion, scoliosis, all of these patterns and pains and broken bones that would help support my story and it would help me be in physical pain to avoid the emotional pain.

And so, the scary thing was as I started to remove that story, then the emotional pain started to come up. And I realized, then I started to bury it in work and just stay busy and grow, and as long as I scaled then everything will be fine, until my health crashed. And we call that a transformation trap. And that’s tirelessly repeating a painful process for the purpose of transformation.

And so, when I looked around and I was surrounded by people that are miserable and surviving, but barely, I decided I am no longer interested in not dying. I want to live. I want sustainability, longevity, vitality. And I’m pushing 40 now and I’m in better shape than I ever was in my teens or my 20s. Tah’s going to be 50 next year. He looks hotter and younger than he did in his 30s. This is something that, when you realize, stress and suffering is a physical representation, a physical identity and mask that we carry and that we wear as humans.

Brooke: Yeah, and I know that many of you can relate to Kole’s story and that you may be in the middle of what she’s describing. And I just want to really encourage you all to reach out. We are going to give you their information at the end of this podcast, but I want to encourage you to reach out because that is no way to consistently live.

Kole: Well, not only is it no way to live. You can’t build your coaching business that way. You can’t connect to people. Intimacy cannot happen when you are in so much physical pain and it’s not just changing diet and it’s not just dealing with trauma. It takes a holistic approach. You have to look at the mindset work. You have to look at the money stories. You have to look at all of it because it’s all creating hundreds of thousands of habits, neurologically in your body, of a way of being.

And yes, I made tons of lifestyle and diet changes. No question. I no longer took Ambien to sleep and Rockstars to wake up and those big magnum Sutter Home bottles of wine. I think I went one step up. I think it was the $12…

Brooke: Sutter Home. I’m just saying…

Kole: Maybe if it was Sutter Mansion I would have felt a little better.

Brooke: Okay, so let’s talk about this. Maybe, Tah, you can speak to this. When people come to me – and I’m sure when they come to you – they’re very serious because they’re struggling and they’re dealing with heavy, what they think is very heavy. And my approach, and I know your approach is all through joy and fun. And how do we take people and how do you address, “This is a very serious problem? I’m in a lot of serious emotional pain. I’m in a lot of serious physical pain. This isn’t funny.”

Tah: Right, well the thing is, what do they have anchored to the pain? There is usually a virtue that’s attached to the pain that people won’t let go of. And I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of virtue signaling. Have you heard this before? And so, when a person – there are three parts to a triangle. The virtue signal triangle, it’s victim. The villain, and the victor. And so, the victor is the hero, the survivor, like Kole was saying. That is the person who is virtuous.

And so, when you get trapped into that triangle, you just keep going to the different points. Sometimes you’re the victor, sometimes you’re the villain, sometimes you’re the victim. Those three things.

So, sometimes, you’re all of those things. And when you get trapped in it, there’s suffrage in all of those parts. You have to work hard in order to be the victor, in order to get past this triumph. And it’s the hero’s journey that’s being broadcasted to the world. It’s in all of our movies. It’s in all of our Disney stories. It’s in all of our books. It’s in all of our advertisements. It’s in finding the pain points.

And as coaches, we’re looking for pain points, you know. What are the pain points? Let’s find the pain points and let’s dig them up. And so, there’s this virtue thing to being, you know, everybody’s telling a story, I did this horrible thing, this thing happened to me, and then I was this and now I’m that and I got through the evil… It’s being trapped in that cycle.

Once you get to the space of being in your virtue and you can step back and you can look at all of this, “Okay, I was the victim. I’ve seen the villain. Maybe I’ve even been that too. And I’m all of these things. Do I need to participate in this to be happy? Do I need to participate in this to be in a great space? Do I need to participate in that?”

And so, stepping out of the suffrage space, because all of those spaces require you to acknowledge suffrage, all of them. And so, when you can step back and pull people into a space of let’s be connected, let’s have some fun, let’s get our nervous systems to align outside of that space, you start to uplift other people. And it comes with being honest, being able to be honest, removing shame from the dialogue because if there’s a villain, there’s shame. There’s something wrong with this person that they would make me suffer. There’s something wrong with me that I am suffering, and so I need to have the virtuous person come in and rescue the whole situation.

So, stepping back from that and uplifting all parts of the virtue triangle up into the totem pole, turning it sideways, uplifting everybody. If you leave the villain behind, you’re leaving space open for the virtue signaling to come back online. So, you’ve got to uplift the villain and you’ve got to uplift the victim, and you’ve got to maintain the virtuous person. All of them are one and the same person.

And when you bring them together and you have a cohesive experience of all of them where you know all of the things – have you ever see the movie Joker?

Brooke: Yes.

Tah: With Joaquin Phoenix. And this really talks about how the villain is overlooked and underserved and how the systems have been built to keep people victimized. And so, when we create a system within ourselves to not be a victim anymore, to never be a victim, no matter what’s happening, if I’m in a place where I’m hurting, how do I get support? And this is where building a team around, make sure that you are supported.

You build the team, you’re supported in that space. These are the ways that you can move away from having to be looking for a victor, looking for the hero, and looking to avoid the villain. You bring all these things online and you see how all of them are connected. You uplift a villain. You uplift the people that have been victimized. You uplift yourself and you bring it all together and have an intimate relationship with the self and with the environment. And the other people in the environment are you as well, you know.

Kole: And that suffering that you were talking about earlier, the propensity to suffer is a conditioning. In workouts, it’s like, you see all the t-shirts, or I see a lot of t-shirts where it’s like, “If you’re not puking, passed out, whatever, keep going.” It is a conditioning, harder, faster, more now will bring you success.

So, if I learn that if I work really hard, I’ll ear the right to have money, we’ll say, then if I direct that into self-work and going after my traumas, then I’ll get the best outcome. When really, I watch every single day – and I did this myself – that I started to do my self-work so hard that I was digging a hole with no plans of what to do with the hole.

Now, if I want to build a house, if I want to dig out a pool, I start digging with an intention. I know that I want to create a pool, so I’m going to keep digging. And let’s say I want to build a house, I hit a big boulder in the property, great, we’ve got to extract the boulder. What if we looked at self-work like constructing a house?

I don’t survey the whole property to remove all the rocks first. I start first by we dig out the foundation. If there’s rocks, we move them. And so, when it comes to self-work, I got this clear message that was like, “If you keep digging in the dirt, you’ll find it.” If you want to create…

Brooke: Yeah, if you want to find out what’s wrong with you, keep looking.

Kole: Right, if you want to create, you have to look to the stars, the wonder, the, “What’s possible,” and stop looking at the ground because that shame. That’s the posture of shame. And so, when you look at what suffering is, it’s an attachment. It is an attachment to the pain. Pain is a real part of the human experience. It’s recognizing, am I doing harder, faster, more now to have fun…

Brooke: Later, right, you can’t suffer your way to happiness.

Kole: It never comes.

Tah: But this is the thing. We are told all the time by people who come to work with us that this is the way it is, you have to work hard and laborious and you have to go through this suffrage in order to be successful. And look at the way the world is right now. There are so many people suffering because this is an ideal that has been built into people and the idea that you have to go through this hardship, you have to be broken, which is part of shame.

Shame is the idea – the shame device works on the idea that something is wrong, bad, broken, not enough, or too much about a human being. And so, when you pull back from that idea that you don’t have to have something wrong with you or have to have gone through all of this suffrage in order to be successful, in order to be happy, in order to be content and be connected and intimate. I can get intimate with somebody in five minutes.

Kole: And people get punished if they’re not suffering. Like, especially in 2020, man, if you’re too happy, people don’t like that because others are suffering. And that was a part of my thing at certain points. When Tah and I first started seeing each other, people did not like how much in love we were and would do everything to shoot it down. They’d be like, “Oh, well, wait until the newness wears off.” And then when we got married it was like, “Oh, well it’s the honeymoon phase.”

So, we said, “Fine, we’ll get married every year and stay in honeymoon phase.” And we made a conscious decision. I wasn’t going to dull my light because my joy makes someone else uncomfortable. Because that’s the other flipside of shame. Maybe you’re listening right now and you’ve actually had a great year. Brooke, this isn’t even in my top five challenging years of my life…

Tah: Neither mine.

Kole: I’m also not going to pretend it is to pacify other people’s suffering. And so, for me, a lot of people project that it must be inauthentic to be this happy in this crisis. When really, when you read story after story of these poor third world countries where the kids are out playing, they’re not playing thinking about, “Am I going to eat?” They’re in the now. They’re kicking the ball because it’s there.

And when you will focus on, “Can I have fun for two minutes?” Then what if I did that 10 times a day? That’s 20 minutes of fun. Then what if I give myself a whole song to dance to every day. It brings the mind a different focus. Not because the other things don’t exist, but because I am creating and expanding moments of joy. Even if it’s just a split second, I acknowledge it happened.

So, if I see Tah and something he does delights me, now I see how long I can get that moment to last. So, I’ll sit and hold his face for 30 seconds and tell him how much I adore him and how much I value that moment. So, that moment, I just swelled into a few minutes of joy.

Brooke: Yeah, and I mean, think about it. If there’s a lot of suffering in the world, the last thing we need is more of it.

Tah: And people are constantly shoveling that stuff at you. And so, herein lies the concept of polarization. You have to be either happy, or sad. You can’t have a mixture of both. And so, getting into the and, you know, I’m in pain and I’m happy. I don’t have any money in the bank and I’m in love. You can have all of it at the same time.

People talk about abundance, especially in the coaching world. Coaches come to us all the time and talk about, “I have an abundance mindset and I have this idea that I have all of these things,” but they’re not looking at what’s under the table. And that’s part of abundance too.

The cornucopia that’s on top of the table with all the food, that’s great. But there’s gum under the table. Have you acknowledged the gum under the table? Have you acknowledged the dirt on the floor? Have you acknowledged everything about all of it? And when you can see the and, that’s when all of the expansion happens. I can have all things at the same time.

And that’s where your magic is, Brooke. You see the all. You have the all. You participate in all of it. And this is where the abundance comes in easy for you…

Brooke: Because we say yes to all of it. not just the good stuff, but to all of it. That is exactly how you create abundance.

Tah: That’s it. That’s what it is. It’s the observation. And so, moving into that space, the suffrage, when you have gratitude for all of it, there’s no suffering. And gratitude for me is the observation of everything. I am observing everything, all of the crappy things that happened to me in my life, I am grateful for. I don’t like them. Don’t like them. When I got beat up and all of this other stuff, I didn’t like it. But I’m grateful for it because it’s bringing me to the moment of now so that I can have this interaction with you and all these people that are listening, this beautiful, gorgeous woman that I stay with and that I’m with every day of my life. I’m so grateful. And the gratitude is an observation of all the things.

So, I observe what’s going on with the corona virus, I observe what’s going on with the election, I observe what’s going on with crime, and I also observe what’s going on with finance and people having wonderful things. I observe having fun and being on Mike Dillard’s boat, I observe being in the sun. I observe all these things. And that is where my gratitude space is.

So, if you’re looking to come out of suffering, gratitude, the acknowledgment, the observation of all things is really important in how they play a role in what’s going on right now.

Brooke: Yes, 100%. And listen, we’re not saying that when you come out of suffering, there will be no pain and discomfort. That’s not what we’re saying at all. We’re saying suffering comes from the resistance of the pain and discomfort that is part of life and growth.

Kole: Which actually makes it bigger, by the way. And until you get to the other side, you don’t know it.

Brooke: Yeah, and so what we’re saying is you say yes to all the components of being a human being and to life, and it’s okay to laugh at all of it and it’s okay to even enjoy the part of life that is the contrast that makes the other part of life possible. Because without it, we don’t have it.

Tah: No, we don’t,

Kole: A couple of year ago, it was four years ago we filed for bankruptcy. Because Tah left nursing, we were personal trainers, we started our life over and our business didn’t work the first time around the way that we thought it would. And so, we had to file bankruptcy. And what we learned from that experience, when we were in one-bedroom cheapest apartment we could find with a futon mattress on the floor, we kept telling each other, “This will be part of the book someday.”

And so, we found gratitude in that, of like, “Wow, look how grateful, look how lucky we are to be crafting this story because we know we’re not going to give up. We know we’re not going to, you know, stop. There’s not another option for us. This is what we love. We just have to figure out how to make it work and not make the same mistakes.”

And so, even in that moment, we took photos. We kept a folder and we would laugh because, at one point, we had a bag of change we carried across the country for, like, four months saving for in case. And it was like $125 and it saved our life. When $125 saves your life – and I had to borrow $500 for gas from a friend, like whatever, when we decided we can have fun in that space, it expands from there. it gets bigger from there. Not when you get there it grows.

Brooke: And the alternative is what I see with so many people that achieve success and wonder why then they’re not happy all the time. Like, you’re never going to get to the place where you’re not a human being. And when you can appreciate that all of it is part of it and that every other person on this planet is experiencing the same thing, that’s when that connection is just so rich. Because everyone experiences shame. Every single person. And when you look at someone else’s life and you think that they have it better than you, you just have to remember they’re human too.

Kole: Well, then you haven’t talked to them long enough, to be honest.

Brooke: Exactly.

Kole: Because there’s been plenty of times that I’ve realized, if I’m with someone, if I’m either putting them on a pedestal or pedestalizing them below me, then it’s because I don’t have enough information because, for me, the more I get to know people – some of my biggest lessons came from, like one of my biggest in the last five years of all the money I’ve spent came from a homeless guy here in Austin. And I had a moment that he asked if we had a cigarette. I said we didn’t. And as he went to walk out, he offered money for a cigarette.

Now, old version personal trainer me would have been like, “Well, he shouldn’t be smoking anyway,” right? I smoked for 16 years, okay. Anyway, that’s a different story. So, in this moment with him, I had $10 in my pocket. And I went and handed him 10 bucks and I said, “Go buy yourself a pack.” And he hung his head and he goes, “I know, I should quit.” And I just kind of lifted his face – I’m getting emotional because this is a big deal. I lifted his face and I said, “You know, sometimes the greatest act of self-love for myself was buying a pack of cigarettes, because it’s all I had in that moment and it was the one thing I could connect to in that moment to keep me alive.”

And that, what I realized in that moment for that $10 was that intimate moment with him was me not only releasing shame of myself from the past. But it was also letting him know, from if he pedestalized me in any kind of way, assuming I had a cigarette if he didn’t, that means I have more than, then that also gave him a moment to be like, “If that’s what you need right now, I’m in support of that.”

And we just hugged and I had a moment. And I was like, of all the money I’ve spent on coaches and stuff the last few years, that was one of the deepest lessons for me, that it was like, that intricate connection for that moment healed me. And whatever it did for him, cool, worst-case scenario, he got his cigarettes. Like, for him, which is all he asked for. So, best case for everybody. And that intimate moment, if that, for me, that let another level of suffering go for myself, of the judgments of myself, of the shoulds, of if I was better, I’d be this way.

And so, as we go through especially holiday seasons, 2020, all this crazy stuff going on, that intimate moment is actually freedom for ourselves. That’s someone’s son, someone’s daughter. That’s your family member. When you’re kind to other people, that’s how people treat your family, how they treat your children.

And people say all the time, eb the kind of person you want to attract, or be the kind of coach that you would want, that you would pay for. And the more I started to look at that, suffering had to go because I wouldn’t hire someone that’s suffering that if they’re stressed out, they’re projecting their suffering on me.

And so, it’s a process to walk through and it isn’t always easy, like you said. And at the same time, there is no – I say better in air quotes – spend of your time than to be with the and, be with the everything, be with the gratitude. Because that is freedom. Freedom doesn’t come from a government. Freedom doesn’t come from a certification. It comes from doing that internal work, that freeing ourselves from that self-shame and the shame we’re carrying for other people.

Brooke: Yeah, and I think that’s what you were referring to earlier, Tah, when you were talking about intimacy with ourselves and, in order to be intimate with other people, we have to first identify that intimacy within ourselves and find where we are suffering, which means where we’re resisting and being able to explore all of that internally so we can enjoy all of the aspects that are us.

Tah: All of them. And I’ve heard you say this on your podcast multiple times. We are all one. This is all one connected situation. Do you know where you are? Are you intimate with your position, space, are you intimate with your location in your life and your heart space and your energetics and your thought processes? You know, all of these things are really, really important to have that intimate space with the self.

Brooke: Yes, it’s so good. What’s up, you guys? Holy cow. I’m going to come up for some air now. You know that was good. You’re welcome.

Tah: There’s that laugh. I love it.

Brooke: Alright, so here’s what I want to do. I want maybe Kole, you can tell everyone where they can find you, how they might be able to work with you. And tell them a little bit about the world that you do with building your life team, because I think a lot of them will be really interested with that.

Kole: Yeah, you know, now more than ever, understanding how to work with a life team, what that actually means – so, when we say life team, that can be your doctor, your personal trainer, your coach, your money coach. We have multiple coaches because we have different skill sets. But they all have different ideologies that maybe there’s some crossover, but they might not necessarily be working functionally.

So, building a life team is like taking a tool box, laying it out so we can see if you’re using the tools in a way that’s all supportive. Because you might have a hammer when we’re like, “Oh, but look, you have a drill. You keep trying to hammer in the screws. So, look, did you know you could use that drill?”

So, it’s getting the people in your life, whether it’s people you pay for support, or your friends or your spouse or your kids, getting them to work in support of you, and you, the whole you-ness that you are.

So, maybe you’ve been drinking more since COVID and you’d like your spouse, you’d like to let them know how they could support you in not drinking daily. And again, doing it from a space where there’s not anything wrong with what you’re doing. You don’t need to be better. You would like it to be different, here’s how, and giving people a clear plan of how to support you.

And so, that’s what building a life team is. So, we’re going to be doing a masterclass and you can go to yourlifeteam.com and we’re not going to teach you how, we’re going to be with you how. So, we’re going to actually walk you through doing it. I’m big on, if I’m attending something, I would like it to be finished at the end, not go on the to-do list. So, you’re actually going to come for three different sessions and we’re going to talk about it live, and replays, all the things. But this way, by the end of the three days, you’re actually turning in these emails or contract type things so people know how to support you. And that gives the clear direction and then, obviously, Instagram and Facebook and all the places, you can also find us, Tah Kole.

We’ve got a podcast if you like these concepts. We keep it pretty short, 15-20-minute episodes. One concept, go deep for consideration. So that’s Mentor in the Mirror. And I mean, that’s the how. And then the type of work that we’re doing right now is always kind of in flux. The best is to be on the email list. We really answer and stay very present to where people are.

So, for me, I’m doing a lot of sensory modulation type – it’s not a therapy because I’m not a therapist. But we work in a lot of somatic modalities or body styles to help resolve patterns of stress.

Brooke: You guys have got to get in on that, that’s all I’m going to say,

Kole: It’s pretty remarkable stuff. We are non-traditional folks because we are looking to take you outside of your current perceptual lens to shift some things neurologically and physiologically. So, that’s going to challenge some ideas. Not beliefs, some ideas. And if you decide your beliefs are different, that’s yours. We’re not dogmatic in how we function. We want to be supportive of whatever you want for you because you are magically wonderfully perfect the way that you are, and whatever alignments or shifts you want to make, that’s what we’re here to support.

Brooke: So maybe, Tah, you could just end it with what have been some of the people that you’ve worked with, what have been some of their experiences of working with you? How have you been able to help?

Kole: Well, the realizations that people are capable of having the lives that they’ve wanted are probably the most profound things. One of our clients went from being an agent to really rocking out and having the most successful real estate firm in New York City. And this comes from being able to recognize the self, open up, see the self, lay things out in front of you, be honest with yourself, and bring people in on it to support.

And the lens that we work through is the body. And if you remember the totem pole, that was spirit, mind, construct, heart, body is all the way down towards the bottom right above the microbiome. And we bring the esteem of the body up so that a person can get intricate with the body, see all the signals of what’s going on with business, to see the signals that are going on with relationships. We’ve had people get married…

Kole: We don’t share names, just because we’re huge on people – you have to feel safe. And so, that means financially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and all others.

Tah: Yeah, so it’s important for us to be confidential. The work that we do is really deep work and we get into people’s business. And so, we have to get in and see all the aspects and facets of a person’s life. So, we show them how us being intimate with them, them actually knowing our situation and being vulnerable and talking about my issues around sex, around my issues around being dishonest my entire life, you know. When I’m able to let that out on the table, people come and they tell me everything. So, we can just lay all of the muck on the table and start to see the things you want to connect with, the things you want to move out of your life and eradicate, and the things you want to create and expand upon. So, we create and eradicate and we build upon it.

And we get the body to function in alignment with it. And so, people are having businesses open up. We have one guy in Canada who was at is wit’s end who created his whole awesome coaching business. He now moved to Vancouver Island and he’s making a ton of money every month, all because he’s integrating his body with his mindset.

So, we have a lot of mindset coaching going on but not a lot of body set coaching. And so, we bring the body online and get the body to participate in everything. So, when the body says no, it’s no. When the body says yes, you lean into it, it’s a yes. And so, because the body is very concrete.

And so, when we have all of these things going, people just connect and things synchronize and we’ve had people get into some really awesome relationships, people getting married that met through us and as a result of our situations with people getting to know themselves so that they can finally open themselves sup to letting somebody else know them.

Kole: We’ve also saved a lot of relationships.

Tah: We’ve also had quite a few people that were ready to leave the planet that turned their lives around and are now helping other people out of those spaces. So, suicide is a real thing. We do bump into a lot of people who are considered successful by the mainstream idea of what successful is. And they’re suffering inside.

So, when we teach them how to connect with themselves, they are actually able to move away from that space and really reassign their wealth into a space that supports them and what they want. People have been falling apart and they’re starting to integrate their wealth into their health because they’ve amassed all this money but their body is falling apart. And so, now they have to take the money and put it into their bodies to get them back into a place where they can actually function, and then they go tank again. That’s what we call the transformation trap, that Kole was talking about earlier.

Kole: Yeah, then it becomes a financial issue because our body is not running right.

Brooke: Of course, yeah.

Tah: So, it’s really bringing the body online with the mental processes, with the coaching process, with coaching yourself and being coached or coaching other people, bringing that in line, showing people how to be intimate with themselves, then intimate with their clients, intimate with their business, and all of that stuff starts to synchronize and it’s so beautiful.

Kole: And that’s the congruence piece. As a coach, we are almost completely a referral-based operation over here. If you look, we don’t have a lot of followers. We don’t have a large email list. That congruence is very felt when people meet you.

And so, if you think ads is what your business needs, probably not. It’s not usually an ad issue or a marketing issue. It’s usually a congruence thing. And so, when you look at this is the opportunity to get congruent with yourself, that translates to your family, that translates to clients. That translates to your business. And more people want to be around you. You know, it’s like, as soon as I met you, I was like, “I love you.”

Brooke: That’s what we text each other. We’re like, “I’m completely infatuated with you.” And she’s like, “I’m completely in love with you.” I’m like, “Okay, let’s just go straight to it. In an hour? Let’s go.

Tah: Girl, I hear your name 10 times a day. It’s awesome.

Brooke: That’s awesome. So, one of the reasons why I wanted to have Kole and Tah on is, first of all, everyone I talk to talks about the before they worked with them and then after and it’s always a very significant difference. And the other piece and the reason why I wanted to pull them on, even though they’re not trained – actually because they’re not trained through the Life Coach School is their approach is different, the way that they approach it is different but very congruent with that we all have the same ideas, that we’re all moving towards love connection and intimacy. And they hold space in a way that is extraordinary.

And so, I would recommend anyone, if any of this has resonated with you, I highly recommend that you check them out, read their stuff, listen to their podcast. Try their classes. They do in-person stuff as well. I couldn’t recommend them more. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I love you guys both madly.

Tah: I love you so much.

Kole: I love you so much.

Brooke: So happy to have you on as my first non-Life Coach School guests. The next time they come on, they will be certified at the Life Coach School. We’re working on it. No, I’m totally kidding.

Have a beautiful week, everybody. Thank you for coming on, Kole. Thank you for coming on, Tah.

Tah: Thank you.

Brooke: Okay, have a good one. Bye.

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