Ep #198: What it Takes to Succeed (Success Stories from Scholars)

Episode #198 January 11, 2018

This week, I’m excited to share an amazing treat with all of you!

This episode is a collection of stories from six Self Coaching Scholars program members who have succeeded in different areas of their lives using the tools I teach on the podcast and in the program.

Episode Transcript

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 198.

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.

Hello, my friends. I'm so excited for you all to have this amazing treat. Which is a collection of scholars who have been successful.

I titled this podcast What It Takes To Succeed, because these are all people who have succeeded in different areas of their life, using the tools that I teach on this podcast and in Self Coaching Scholars. I am thrilled for you to meet each and every one of them and to hear their stories. I recorded all of them in their entirety and we're not going to edit them.

So this is going to be an exceptionally long podcast. But because the last one I did on success stories of my coaches who make over $100,000 a year was so well received, and you guys are so excited about it, I decided that I would do the same here. So please get yourself a cup of tea, sit back, relax, or get your running shoes on, and go for a long run or a long walk and enjoy.

Okay, you guys, I'm so excited to have Whitney on the podcast. You guys might remember her from the proposal episode. Whitney was the one that got proposed to, and she and her husband had been listening to the podcast for a long time.

And then Whitney joined Scholars and has done some amazing work in there, but I'm going to let her kind of start from the beginning and tell you a little bit about herself.

So welcome to the podcast, Whitney.

Thank you, Brooke. I'm so excited. It feels unreal, like a dream.

It's a dream. So tell me, let's start from the beginning of when you first found the podcast. Give us a little summary about you guys listening to me in the car and...

Yeah, well, girlfriend sent me a text message and I was in a pretty low place. I had not heard your podcast. She sent me a text message and she's like, I thought of you.

I know you listen to a lot of self-help. You've got to check out Brooke Castillo. I remember exactly where I was and I received that text message.

I had been crying. I don't know what about, but laying in my bed in a fetal position, just feeling hopeless, trying to do a lot of deep work, but not really having any tangible tools. And so the first podcast I listened to of yours, Brooke, was on PTSD.

And I was like, wow, this is good. She's actually going deep. You know, I have listened to a lot of people and it all seems very surface level, and she's really not afraid to talk about the painful stuff.

And so I couldn't, from that point, I listened to your podcast pretty religiously. just really, I think I caught it at a really pivotal point for where I was too. It was also, I think, soon after that was like hedonism and all this stuff that I was just, my brain could not feast enough on because I was trying to figure this out on my own.

Right.

So yeah, that was the first time. And I think that was like maybe a couple months before I even met Jake, my husband.

Oh, but even before you met him. Okay, so then you met him and you were always having me on in the car.

Yes.

And you guys, and if you guys remember that proposal episode, you talked about how, I think I briefly talked about how you guys were, you lived far away from each other, so you would be listening in the podcast. And then I loved how he talked about you guys talking about self-help together and what you were learning from me and applying it in your lives. And it was just such an amazing story.

So it was so fun to have him propose to you, the podcast. It's like amazing.

And it was such a celebrity. I still feel like a little kid with you, Brooke. You're such a celebrity in my mind, or like hero, role model, because before I even met Jake, I was starting to apply this work just through your podcast.

And I felt like I was really starting to grasp a new mindset in a sense just through your teaching. And so when he and I met, I was like, you've got to listen to Brooke Castillo. But it was also kind of like a test, like how well, or how much does he desire improving himself too?

Like, is this gonna be something that I do on my own, or is this something that he's gonna be interested in? And it turns out we would do it, like you said, together, or we would do it separately on our way to see each other, and then talk about it, just like feasting on the information. And so it was so funny when he said, I have the best proposal for you, and he had talked to you.

I was like, there's no way it would be Brooke Castillo. Like, that's, it sounds impossible.

So fun, so exciting.

And then you guys joined Scholars and started doing all of that work. And one of the things I wanna acknowledge you for, one of the reasons we chose you out of so many people to be part of our magazine and part of one of the success stories is how all in you were. As part of Scholars, it's a volunteer process where you volunteer to be coached, and then you volunteer what you're gonna be coached on.

And you were always volunteering to be coached, which I think you and I have so much in common there.

because when I'm with my coach, I'm always like, pick me, I wanna do it all.

And so I got so many posts and emails and acknowledgement of how much people had benefited from seeing you be coached and just in such a fearless way. And so I really take my hat off to you for that because I think it's, one of the things I've been talking a lot about on this version of the podcast is, when you take and make the effort to be successful yourself, it doesn't just affect you, right? It affects so many other people.

And especially in the scholars environment, you've been such an inspiration. So for those people who listen to the podcast who aren't yet in scholars, can we talk a little bit about some of the work that you did on your past and how you've kind of applied the model and the work in scholars to move on to some emotional adulthood a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. I honestly didn't realize how, until I started doing your work, how much my past was affecting my current state of mind, my current happiness. And still, I think up until even, you know, it is still a lot of my daily work, but in the beginning, there was so much pain, anger, fear, that in terms of like dealing with it and being able to feel like I was going to be okay.

And I love how you say, there's no emotion that can kill you. For me, I didn't feel like that. I felt like my emotions have the capability of killing me.

because it just felt so surreal, like so in the raw, in the moment, even though it's years and years ago. But the reason that is, what I've learned from you, is that I never learned how to deal with those emotions. And so I was suppressing, suppressing, numbing, numbing.

And so as I was dealing with them, they absolutely were as raw of wounds as they were when they were actually happening. And so doing your work allowed me to have tools to feel like, okay, one, if Brooke can do it, I believe that I can do it because she wouldn't be offering these tools that they didn't really work. And so there's a lot of trust.

And then two, I just, I knew I was willing to put in the work as long as it was going to be worth it. And I loved how you talk about envision a future self, envision a better future you or your own self, because it gave me something to hope in, put hope in to the future for. And so it wasn't just like, okay, do all this work to feel pain to hopefully get better.

It was like, no, do all this work to feel pain, so your life can be amazing.

Right.

And I really bought into that idea, and I believe it, and I'm seeing it in my life. And so it's really powerful.

So one of the things that I think is extraordinary about you is when you have a childhood like you did that's filled with abuse, it's very easy to identify as a victim, right? because there's so much evidence that you are a victim. Now the difference is, of course, when you are a child, you are a victim, right?

You are helpless in that situation. But now as an adult, you are no longer a victim, and yet you kind of came with a lot of that mentality. And so being willing to look at that from in a new perspective, I think is some of the most challenging work that we'll ever do.

because how do we honor ourselves as children and what we went through, and yet not give it power as adults? And I think that's been the work that you've been doing, and not just doing it, but doing it in front of other people so they can see you doing that work. I think that that was the work of my life.

That's the work of so many of our lives, is really deciding as adults who we're going to be and what we're going to believe, and not bringing our painful past with us and letting that define our future. And so, if you could just speak to a little bit about that shift for you, and maybe think about the person that's listening to this that still feels very chained to their past and still feels, and what that might sound to you guys listening is, well, I'm this way because of my past.

Yeah, and I can totally resonate with that because like you said it absolutely, that victim mindset has been me all my life. I'm 31 years old and my family is still stuck in that. And so, I guess I have the blessing and curse of being able to see that.

And it's something that stuck with me. I see it as a reminder that I don't want to be 60 years old feeling like I'm still a victim, not having taken control of my life. And so, the shift for me was realizing that if I can change the story that I'm telling myself, if I can continue to uncover the beliefs that are keeping me chained to my past, and if I can continue to become more and more aware of my thoughts that seem so natural, then I can start choosing, okay, you know, for me, my mind automatically goes to judgment, which I hear you teach that that's so normal.

But coming from a victim mindset, the judgment feels, it doesn't feel, it feels protective. Like, I have to be judgmental to be protective. And I think that's probably my biggest shift that I'm still trying to correct is that my default thinking is no longer protecting me.

It's keeping me stuck.

Yes, that's so important. And that is so hard. One of the things that you said that I think is so important for people to hear, and some of the work that you've been doing is a lot of your thinking is so ingrained that it doesn't even feel like thinking.

It just feels like the truth, right? Many of us have these thoughts that don't sound like negative beliefs, but they're causing us so much pain. Like, I was a victim, I was hurt, I was abused, this was a horrible childhood.

Any of those things just sound like you're conveying the facts, and yet when they're prominent in your brain, they affect so much what you're able to do and create in your life. And so the work that you've been doing doesn't at all negate what you went through, but it lets it go, right? It lets it go and stay in the past where it belongs.

And I think that work is so challenging, and that's the work you've really done. And I've just seen so much of a change. And a lot of people who do this work kind of come to it and then retract from it and come to it and retract from it.

And one of the things that I've seen you do is just constantly open up and be courageous and be willing and present all the challenges that you're facing as an adult because of those belief systems. And I think that takes so much courage, but I think that's one of the reasons why you've had so much success. So what would you say to someone who feels trapped?

And maybe they're just started scholars, or maybe they really just want to get to the place where they feel like you do, where you're not 100% totally done with this, but you have some perspective on it now.

That's such a good question. The advice I would give is to be fearless with the process of learning a new, really tools, just tools. The way that you've taught me so much that I feel like affects the way that I live my life differently is being able to use something that can genuinely change the course of my day just by acknowledging a thought.

And so in the very beginning, we would do the group coaching calls. I'm like, okay, I want to know from Brooke if I'm doing this wrong, because if I'm doing it wrong, I don't want to waste any more time being stuck at doing what I know doesn't work right. And so the fearlessness had to be pushed to the front and say, okay, it doesn't matter who else is on the call.

It doesn't matter how wrong I have it. I remember being on calls where you're like, listen, Whitney, look.

Come to me.

You're not getting the point.

This is a sea line. And I'm trying so hard, and my brain is just not grasping it. But I got off those calls, and I was like, I'm so grateful for your push, because if it weren't for my desire to be like, okay, I'm gonna put myself out there, and your willingness to correct, then I think that that learning process gets kind of...

You know, it's easy to maybe get discouraged, or be like, I'm not making enough progress, or I'm not making any progress. And that's, man, it sure does take time, and just patience.

I'm so glad you brought that up, because I think it's important for us to talk about that a little bit, because a lot of when I'm training coaches, especially, one of the things that they're worried about is when a client's upset, they wanna have empathy. And your story is so painful to you, and it's so real to you. So when you're trying to explain your story, so I understand your pain, which is what we do, right?

If I agree with your story, I agree with you in that victim role. And so my job as a coach is to make sure you always know that I'm on your side, but that your story sucks. Right?

And so that's the game that we're kind of playing in the middle of a coaching session. It's like, listen, I love you, but you're wrong. I love you, but you're wrong.

And that is challenging. And I'll tell you that even when I'm coaching myself and I'm negotiating that, it's like there's part of us that we're so identified with the painful story that we have that even though it's painful, it's familiar and we kind of have to pry it away from ourselves. And so I think that that's something that we've had to do with you a lot because what we said earlier, you don't even recognize that your thoughts are thought.

It's like a fish doesn't understand they're in water. That's totally what it's like. And so I love what you said that just being patient, being willing to push your fear to the front and let it be there.

And instead of trying to push it away, like let it be there, be honest about it. I think that that's such a guide for anyone who really wants to do this work. So what would you say was the most challenging part for you?

Oh, goodness, the most challenging. I think the past, your past is not your future work. It seemed like the more I, every day that month that I woke up, feeling like I was putting on my, I was suiting up for the Brooke Castillo work, it felt like things kept coming at me that were so challenging.

I think it was that week that my dad went into ICU, just a lot of different family things, that my mind was really, it was really tempting, and often did go back into victim mindset, or this is my story, all of what you had just mentioned. And that month on top of the work with the events, I really got to see kind of a outside perspective of how intense it is when we don't allow our space, like you talk about that watcher posture. And so I really got to practice it a lot, but it was painful.

And I think it was like seven months in, so I was really beating myself up that I wasn't further along in your process.

Oh, that's, I'm so glad you brought that up. I know so many of our students go through that. And so many of my coaches, right, that have got master coaches that have gone through this process, they're like, wait, I still feel pain?

Wait. I still make all these mistakes in my models, and I still get mad and angry and lose my mind, and I still buffer and all those things, it's all part of this process. But being aware of it seems to make it more intense, I think, because you're living such a more conscious life.

So give us an update on your marriage. How's that going?

It's going great. I am so grateful for the man that Jake is. We're currently business partners.

He quit his teaching job. So that's...

That's so scary and big and huge.

It is. It really is, Brooke. And without your work, without your guidance, there's no way I would probably quit my nine to five.

He would still be teaching after 20 years. But, you know, I'm currently dealing with a stepdaughter, and that's been a lot of, I would say, a kind of hand-in-hand work that I'm doing with my past isn't my future, because now being a mom, and to a 12 year old, I'm constantly going to a place of comparing our childhood. Oh, that brings a lot of vulnerability, a lot of fear, a lot of different emotions.

And so I feel like I'm starting your program some days just from the beginning. And so I just love that you remind us, Brooke, that even you wake up with the feelings of discomfort with all the things that you've received through doing your own work and being able to coach yourself. I love that transparency that you gift us with.

I think it's so important to remember that we do this work, and it does make our lives better, and it does make us more successful. And we come so far, and we're still human. We still experience all of the things that aren't perfect in our life, and all the areas where we do have shortcomings, we don't show up in the best version of ourselves.

And if we can just always have our own backs in that process, I think that's what keeps us moving forward, because otherwise, we just curl up, like you said, on the couch before you found my podcast, and we just cry about it. And that doesn't help anyway. It doesn't help your stepdaughter, it doesn't help you.

But when we can see like, hey, this is a challenging situation, this is bringing up all my stuff, then we can step in, and you had mentioned you wanted to talk about this a little bit, and I think it's a great way for us to end, is just how you've, and maybe you relate it to your relationship with her. How has becoming more of an emotional adult, now, none of us are emotional adults all the time.

No, right?

But how, and what we mean by that, you guys, is like just taking more responsibility for how we feel and how we think and how we show up in the world. How has that helped in your marriage, in your family life, in your being a step mom?

Oh my gosh, night and day difference. And it doesn't feel like it all the time, but I believe that I'm able to show up for her in a way that will make our relationship possible. Maybe, maybe not sooner, but I believe that I'm helping be a positive role model for her by dealing with tough circumstances, being able to be vulnerable.

That's something I try and practice, but choosing how I want to show up rather than allowing my emotion to dictate how I show up.

Oh my god, such, that's so beautifully said, because sometimes we just want to act like the crazy people that we feel like we are in our head.

Do you want to see crazy?

I'll show you some crazy. Or we could just put it right there in our brain where it belongs.

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

That's so good.

Well, I love, love, love your story, and I'm so happy that you and Jake are both in scholars and that you're doing this work together. I think it's so amazing. And I love that you've shown up at the hardest days and done the hardest kind of work as an inspiration to everybody else.

It's such an honor to be coming up on the end of this year and seeing how much work you've done and how far you've come. And now I'm so excited to really start seeing you explode in terms of your business and how much all of these things you've worked on will keep re-presenting, but you will have that meta-skill to be able to deal with it, to really make your dreams come true. It seems silly now.

We're just kind of like, oh yeah, that was nice that you lost weight. That was nice that you got over that terrible past of yours. Now we're going to go on and make this huge business for you.

But I feel like all of the things you've done are so important. They're all those touch points of success that you've had. But more important than that is the skill set that you've learned of how to manage your mind and your emotions.

And so that's something you can't. It's like once you know it, you can't not know it. So I have no doubt.

I know that you're kind of in this position right now where you're still struggling with doubt around your business. I don't have even a shred of doubt for you. Like there's no doubt in my mind that you're going to be incredibly successful.

And I can't wait. We should have another call next year and talk about how many clients you have and how much money you're making. Maybe I'll have you on my 100K podcast next time.

That would be amazing. And I just want to say thank you, Brooke, for doing this work, because I don't know how many thousands people I can speak for, but you really changed my life for the better and helped me have tools in my tool belt that I didn't even think were possible.

I love that. Well, it's my honor, truly my honor, to have you as a student. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

Make sure you give Jake a big hug for me, and I'll see you on our next Self Coaching Scholars call.

Sounds great.

All right, darling. Thank you. Bye.

All right. So next up, we have Krista St. Germain. I'm so excited to have her on the podcast to share her story with you.

So welcome to the podcast, mama.

Thank you so much for having me.

Of course.

I feel like it's like a full circle moment.

Yeah. How so?

Yeah. Well, because I've listened to your podcast for years, literally years, and it's changed my life so much, and Self Coaching Scholars has changed my life so much, that to actually be on your podcast and be in a position where I'm part of the goodness and the inspiration is mind-blowing.

Oh my gosh. That's so fun. I love hearing that.

I feel that way every day right now.

I've had so many of my dreams come true.

It's like walking, and it is totally like that full circle moment. It's like, I've been thinking about this for so long. This is so amazing.

Yeah.

So, why don't you tell us a little bit about... Maybe you said you've been listening to the podcast for years. So, let's talk about your journey from finding the podcast to joining scholars to actually going through coach training.

Yeah. Okay. So, I don't know what I Googled to find the podcast, but somehow I found it some sort of personal development kind of deal.

And at the point when I found it, I was really just trying to figure out how to be happy, and I was reading books about how to be happy. And I felt like all the circumstances in my life were such that I should be happy, but I wasn't and I couldn't really figure out why. And so, I really connected with your podcast.

And then also a lot of the teachers that you would talk about every 10th episode, were teachers that I knew and loved. But the way that you phrased things, you kind of took them and put them in this way that just simplified it and made it make sense to me. So I got hooked on the podcast, no problem.

And every Thursday, that was the first thing I would do. I would get up, check my phone, find a new episode. And while I was getting ready for work, I would listen to the podcast.

And so, time went by, I got divorced while listening to the podcast, which was a huge help. Yeah, and totally not your fault. That's great.

I was like, how's my divorce?

Yeah, no, actually, but the podcast material really helped me keep my mind right during the divorce and then after. And then I got remarried. And then last august, my husband was killed by a drunk driver.

And yeah, last august, 2016. So I was kind of spent a few months just in that tidal wave of just grief and processing it. And right about the time that I came up for air, you announced Self Coaching Scholars.

Okay, but wait, wait.

Yeah.

You gotta back this bus up a minute.

Yeah. So you had already been exposed to coaching. So you already kind of knew how to manage your mind.

What did you do to get through that? because I will tell you, what I think is so interesting is that you have this story, you have this tragedy, this experience, but it doesn't define you. And you don't present as a victim, which you easily could because of this experience in your life.

So can you just talk just briefly a little bit about how you've been able to move on from that?

Well, I've done a ton of writing that has helped. But I think the biggest thing is just realizing that, I didn't choose these cards, they were dealt to me. And that's my circumstance, right?

I get to choose how I want to think about what's happened to me. And that is where my power is. And that is what creates and shapes my experience.

And so that's where I have focused my time and energy is, how do I want to think about what it was that happened? And it's interesting because I went from, you know, I'd heard you say that, you know, nothing in your past shouldn't have happened, right? We know it happened exactly the way it was meant to be.

And how do we know that? because it happened. Right.

And I struggled with that for a long time. And then at some point, I just decided I don't have to believe that there's a right or wrong way to approach that. There are just ways to approach that.

And I get to decide which way I want to approach it. So somehow over the past year or so, I've gone from, I don't know why it happened, but I'm going to deal with it the best way I can, to I think it is possible that it did happen for me. Wow.

That's an option for me to believe.

I love that. I love that.

That's so well said.

I think a lot of times, when we're trying to believe something, and this goes for me as well, it's like it would be nice if I could believe that, and we don't quite yet believe it. That's a beautiful way of presenting it to our brain. It's an option.

It's just an option. I don't have to force it on myself, but it is an option for me to consider. Yeah, beautiful.

Love it. Okay, so then you decided to join Self Coaching Scholars at some point.

Yeah. So I was already trusting you because every Thursday morning, you delivered a podcast, and every Friday, you delivered an email. And I'd already gotten great value out of it.

But so when I found out there was an option, there was something that I could actually use. And I did the math, and I thought, okay, what she's offering totally makes sense from a value proposition standpoint, too. So what do I have to lose, right?

And I'm ready. I feel like I'm ready. And at the same time, I was thinking about new career choices, because I've had this realization that life is short, and am I doing what it is that I really wanna do?

And so at that point, I had applied to go back to school. I was thinking I'm gonna get a master's degree in family therapy. And that was in December, and then Self Coaching Scholars started in January.

Wow, okay. So you started in scholars in January. Amazing.

Oh yeah. Yeah, like early adapter, right here.

I love it. It's so good. Okay, so then you were gonna go back to school and become a therapist, and you just started scholars.

And so tell me what that process was like going through scholars. First of all, let's talk about it this way. Why did you join scholars?

What were you hoping to gain from it?

I knew how much value I had gotten from the podcast in just listening, just absorbing. And I knew that when I actually had a methodology to apply the information to my life in a purposeful, focused way, I just knew that it would make all the difference.

Wow, that's great. So you started applying it, you started working on yourself. And when were you supposed to start school?

I would have started school in august of 2017. However, I also had to take a prerequisite course. So I did go ahead, there was one degree, one course I still needed at an undergraduate level that I did take in the spring.

So let me ask you this.

So when you do your work in scholars, what is the stuff that you most struggle with? What do you have to spend your time working on? Like, for example, I feel like my main issues are, I deal with a lot of anxiety, so I spend a lot of time focused on working on my anxiety, and I have a lot of self-doubt, which everyone thinks that I'm lying when I say that, because I do my work on it, so it doesn't seem like I have a lot of self-doubt.

What would you say are the issues you work on mostly when you're doing your work in scholars?

I think not worrying about what other people think, not changing who I am to try and control other people's opinions of me. Perfectionism, not trying to be perfect. You know, actually, because I can take forever on an email, right?

Yes.

Yeah, I actually have to, the whole concept of B minus work is so needed for me.

That's so good. So, let's talk about that a little bit because you've made progress in that area of not caring what other people think. And I have so many students, and I'm sure that there are so many podcast listeners that struggle with that as well.

What have you learned that's helped you, and how has that shown up in your life?

Well, the biggest thing I've learned about that is that I can control what other people think. You know, I can put the best email out there in the world, and it doesn't really matter because what people think is not up to me.

Right.

And so, any effort I spend trying to control what other people think of me is wasted. plus, I get to choose how I want to feel about me and how I show up in the world.

Yes. So good. So good.

I love that. Any time I spend trying to control what someone else thinks of me is time wasted. If I was on Twitter, I am on Twitter.

But if it was me on Twitter tweeting, I would tweet that.

That's so brilliantly said.

So good.

That's awesome.

So then tell me, so continue with your story. So you're in scholars, then what happens?

So I'm in scholars and I decide that my one thing should be weight loss. So I had gained maybe like 12, 15 pounds since Hugo died. And so I thought, well, that's one place I can just focus on and get control over, get back to where I want to be.

And so I had set a goal for myself, which felt a little unrealistic. And holy cow, like I kind of blew right past it.

Wow.

And yeah, I know, right? So I lost 26 pounds and I was just, I guess, shocked. I was really surprised at all of the work it gave me a chance to do.

Right.

And I was surprised at what the feeling of fat adaptation is like.

Yes.

Like, and how much easier my day can be when my food is not that exciting, and how much mental energy I have when I'm not worrying about how I look or what food I'm going to eat.

Right.

because that is a full-time job.

Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I mean, I did, I knew, but I really didn't know. And I mean, and I still sometimes have moments where I do, but the percentage decrease now of the amount of time and energy that those thoughts are troubling me is just so much lower.

Yeah.

And I love that you say that you just had, you just wanted to lose 15 pounds because I think a lot of times, we think if we're, I had Angie, I recorded before this, she lost 100 pounds. So when you think you're 100 pounds overweight, it makes sense that you would be thinking about wanting to lose weight all the time. But I think for some of us, like just the 10 extra pounds can be so tormenting.

And one of the reasons why it's so tormenting is because we feel like we shouldn't be worried about it on top of worrying about it, right?

Yeah. And it just felt uncomfortable in my body. I just felt like I knew there was this place.

And if I was there, that physically my body would feel better. You know, the way my clothes fit and the way I carry myself and...

Yeah. I love that.

I'm happy to have that as a non-issue or as much less of an issue now.

Now, what kind of did... Maybe this didn't happen for you, but did you have a lot of emotions come up for you once you started not using food to deal with emotional things, or was that a non-issue for you?

Actually, it was more boredom. Boredom was a big reason for me to eat. And sometimes confusion, which is I found really interesting.

Yeah.

So, but nothing overly painful. It was really just a matter of figuring out the difference. Am I actually hungry?

Would chicken solve this feeling right now? Is what I want really in the pantry? And...

That's so good. If chicken won't solve it, it's so rare that chickens won't.

I'm not hungry. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's true, right?

That's so good.

Okay. So, then at some point, you decided that you want to come to coach training. Tell me about that decision.

So, I had coach training in my mind for a while, but I was thinking of it as like a side hustle. I was thinking, wouldn't it be fun while I get my master's degree and go back and work towards therapy to do this life coaching gig on the side? But I would never do that for a career.

I would just, that just might be a fun thing to do while I'm studying and getting my license. And then the more I thought about it and the more I wrote about it and the more models I did on it, the more I realized that it really was the coaching that I wanted. But what was in the way was the fear that I couldn't do it.

What would other people think? What if I didn't do it successfully? And therapy in my mind was the safer path.

You know, it's a degree, it's respected. People will, you know, respect me for being in that line of work. And it's safe.

I know if I go to school, I'll come out with a job. So it didn't challenge me as much. And so it was really just a lot of models, to be honest.

That's so interesting. So when you were, because I think a lot of people could fall into that, but be unaware of that, right? So were you aware of it because you were doing this thought work on yourself and you were noticing those thoughts?

Or was that something you were always kind of aware of?

No, I'm not exactly sure at what point in the thought work it became obvious to me. I started kind of just feeling like I was on to myself. Like I didn't want to look at it exactly, but I was kind of peeling it back and starting to be on the cusp of admitting it.

I love that.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So like I knew it was there and I knew it wasn't quite congruent, but it just took a lot of writing it out.

Well, just the question of, you know, if I knew I couldn't fail, which one would I do?

And your answer was coaching.

Oh yeah, totally.

because?

because, and I love my therapist.

Yeah.

So, I'm not bashing therapy at all. But what I loved about coaching was that it was more to me, more empowering, more future focused. And it was, I like the idea of someone holding a mirror up to you and saying, you're not doing it right, you're not doing it wrong, but here's what you're doing.

And here's how it's impacting your life.

Oh my gosh.

You said that so beautifully.

Love it. Yeah. So it's helpful.

It's not just, oh, that must be so terrible. because while empathy feels great sometime, I needed more than empathy. So what life coaching gave me, therapy didn't.

I love that. So you came to coach training. Did you decide that you weren't going to go to school and get your masters before you came to coach training?

I did. I decided, yes. So I was already coming to coach training though, right?

Like I even booked my return trip. I booked this crazy early flight on my return trip because I was thinking I was going to need to be back in time for class.

Got it. Yeah.

So this was like in June, maybe and somewhere June, July, I really did the work. And I decided, no, I need to be all in or I need to be all out, one or the other. And this one feels better and I just need to do it.

Oh my gosh. It's so cool. Okay.

And so then you came to coach training and you were amazing. And now you're going through the certification process to get certified. What do you think about that decision now?

Where's your head? because you should be, you're right along the point where you should be completely freaking out.

Well, I have recognized that completely freaking out is a normal part of the process. So I am right on track. But you know what?

I don't think it should have happened any differently because I think I needed to go through that decision making process. But I wish I hadn't been so angsty about it, you know? because now it seems so obvious.

Oh, that's interesting.

It seems so obvious now. It's still scary, right? It's still scary.

It's still going to challenge me. I'm still going to have to manage my mind and my thoughts and use all of these tools on myself, right? But it was the right decision for me, and I have no doubt that it was the right decision.

I love it. So tell me about your future. Tell me what it's going to be like being a coach.

I'm still excited about it. So I'm just, I'm working still with Doty on my niche. I had picked one, I think maybe at training, I just wasn't quite ready for the actual niche that I want.

But what I really want is to work with women who have lost their husbands unexpectedly. And I, yeah, right. I just feel like life coaching has been such a gift to me in that area.

And there's so much there, so many tools that these women need, right? They need them.

I love it.

And so, yeah, I'm ready.

It's so powerful too. I mean, I think when you've gone through something like that, it's so much more amazing to work with someone who can totally, absolutely relate in a true way. I don't think that's absolutely necessary, but I do think it's really, really helpful.

And so I love that for you. And I think that your story is so amazing. I love that you started in the podcast, and then you went to scholars, and then you went to the certification, and now you're really determined to become a coach.

It's kind of like that dream progression that I have for anyone who has something amazing to offer the world. And I am just totally astounded by what it takes to go through that process. You know, I've been through it myself.

It's not for the faint of heart, let's just say.

Yeah. The differences in me now versus a year ago feel tremendous to me.

Yeah. I bet, I bet you have really done this work, and really, I mean, to do the scholar work, and then to do the certification work is really, that is no joke. So I'm really excited for you too.

I think your niche sounds amazing. I think there'll be many lucky women to be able to work with you. And I'm so happy to be able to share your story, and I'm so happy that you're part of the school and scholars and a coach, and I know that your story will be inspiring to other people.

So if people want to get in contact with you, you probably don't have a website yet, or do you?

I haven't, the domain name has been purchased, but if they go to it right now, there's nothing there, but it will be coachingwithcrista.com.

I love it. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you, are you open to them sending you an email?

Absolutely.

Okay. So how can they get in touch with you just in case they want to know more about your story or?

Sure. Right now it's st.germain.krista.gmail.com.

St. Germain.crista.

Got it. Awesome. All right.

And we'll definitely put that email in the show notes if you guys want to get ahold of Krista. Krista, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing your story. So amazing.

I am so glad to watch your career take off from here, my friend.

Awesome. Hey, you know what I need to do? I need to send you a video of me jumping out of the plane.

That was courtesy of your June, your dare of the days.

Please do it immediately.

I got to send you that.

All right, my friend.

Okay, Krista, thank you so much. All righty, bye. All right, bye-bye.

Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. I'm so excited to have you here. What we want to talk about with you today and what we want you to share with the people that are listening is what it takes to succeed.

And we're going to start with where you started and what you wanted to be successful at. And then we'll jump to what are the obstacles that were in your way of achieving that, and how did you eventually succeed? And here's where I want to kind of give you some insight.

Is there are, let's speak to the people that are out there that were where you were when you started. And let's kind of speak that language to them because you can identify probably with where they were, and let's kind of take them on the journey. because my intention with this is to show them that it's possible and that we're not special snowflakes.

So anyway, welcome to the podcast.

Tell us a little bit about you and your story and where you started.

Sure. Well, again, my name is Jeff. I started in the personal development in terms of being interested in making a better life for myself way back when I was 14, 15.

And just that's always kind of been a thread throughout my life, even though I haven't really been involved in that industry. I've always kind of focused on trying to create a better life for myself. And so I've had some ups and downs and successes in business and successes in my personal life and then a lot of failures and falling forward and a lot of challenges along the way as well.

And I think when I was younger, I was able to pick myself up a lot faster and easier. As I got older, for whatever reason, I started to kind of play smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

Yeah.

And pretty soon I was playing really small. I was really super unhappy with my life and with my surroundings. And instead of doing something about it, I started kind of medicating myself with social media and drinking and all this other stuff, just to kind of drown out the anxiety about not living the life that I had dreamed about when I was a kid.

Instead of doing something about it, I thought, well, I'm just going to kind of drown out the voice in my head that I should be doing something more with my life with all this other stuff and try to fill up that space instead of doing something about it.

Yeah, that is so well said. I think that there are so many people that can relate to that, where they find themselves in a life that they don't want and don't recognize. And instead of taking action to change it, they, what I call buffer, self-medicate to be able to just handle it, right?

And I think a lot of people would say they don't know how to change it, right? So they're in this position, they're medicating, they want change, but they don't know how. Were you there?

Where were you with the patients?

I was absolutely stuck. I had no clear vision. And it's not like I hadn't tried to find a way out.

I mean, I've done the fireworks, I've done all the events, I've listened to the audio programs. I mean, I've really tried, but there's so much information that I never really had a clear path. I kind of wallowed around in a lot of information thinking that maybe, you know, something would happen and a magic switch would flip, but nothing really happened.

And so I kind of felt like in this stuck spot with no way out and wanting a way out, but not really feeling like I've got somebody to guide me out of this particular spot. And so, you know, I remember when I was 40, I'm 46 now. I remember when I was 40 going, Oh, 40, it's a big birthday.

This is the year I'm going to break out and break through and life's going to be different. And then 41, it's like, well, you know, this is going to be the year that I'm going to break out and have the breakthrough. And every single year after that, I was like, this is going to be the year.

And the more time went over, I was like, I was just getting more frustrated and more depressed about the situation because the birthdays weren't having any effect. It wasn't the magic of getting through those birthdays that was helping me have the breakthrough. And so I was getting just feeling even more stuck and feeling like my best years were behind me.

And that was, you know, stacking even more frustration and even more fear and anxiety on top of the fear and anxiety that I was already feeling.

Right. So let's talk about, because I think so many of us can relate to getting to that place, especially when we turn a certain age, we're like, how in the heck am I 45 years old? And none of my dreams are coming true.

And this isn't the life I imagined for myself. And so then we start drinking or we start Facebooking or we start overeating. So tell me the effect of the drinking on your life at that point.

You're already living a life you don't want to live. And now you're adding that to it. Tell me the effects of that.

Yeah, I thought that was the answer. You know, I thought alcohol was the answer. You know, I feel all this anxiety and angst and pain and we're in frustration.

I thought, hey, let's drink. It's going to solve that problem. And so, I had kind of tricked myself into believing that was actually helping me, you know, because sure, it was kind of buffering the anxiety away, but it was creating additional problems.

And in looking back, it was really keeping me stuck in that anxiety. So it wasn't helping me at all. In fact, it was actually just keeping me stuck in that box that was making me feel bad, which made me want to drink, which was making me feel bad.

It just was kind of this ongoing cycle. And so I got to a point where I thought, I really, really desperately want to change this because I saw that it was keeping me from being able to achieve any new goals. It was keeping me from feeling good.

It was keeping me kind of stuck. And I really wanted to change it. But by this point, I had been drinking now for about 12 years, 12, 13 years.

And I got into the habit of drinking in so many spots and so many places that it was very difficult to break out of that habit. And believe me, I tried lots of different things. I tried carrying a coin in my pocket, move it to the other pocket after I had one drink, and that never worked.

That didn't work?

That didn't work. Oddly enough, that did not work.

I had a rubber band on my wrist. I would pull every time. All these little tricks and things, but it never worked.

And I would get more and more frustrated and angry at myself that all this stuff wasn't working. And then to drown out the voice of anger and frustration and self-loathing in my head, I would drink. So it just kept that cycle going and going and going.

Let's talk about that for a second because I think that voice that justifies the drinking is sometimes hard to hear because it sounds benevolent. It sounds like, oh, it's just one drink. It's fine.

It's normal, right? And when you're not struggling with drinking to the point where you're non-functional, it's so easy to justify it. But the problem, which is what you've alluded to with justifying it, is that it takes away all of your motivation to change your life because it's making it so your life is tolerable because you can escape through the alcohol.

So tell me how that sounded in your head.

Well, it's interesting. So half the time I was kicking myself and my butt in my head, I thought, I'm just going to beat myself up happy. I'm going to beat myself up to a better life.

And so I didn't understand that there was a positive motivation behind it. And then the other part of my brain was saying, you know what, you deserve to relax in the situation. You deserve to take a break.

You've beat yourself up enough. Now let's take a break and have a Pinot Grigio.

because it sounds pretty.

Yeah, it sounds great. And you're going to be able to relax and take a deep breath and connect with friends. And there's this entire story about what drinking meant to me.

So I've created in my mind this really tense feeling on one hand, and then the other hand, my brain is going, I'm going to let you release that through the drinking and through the alcohol. And I'm going to give you that relief that you need after all the time you've just spent beating yourself up.

Right, right. And that's just this perpetuating cycle because what happened with me is like, I would wake up in the morning and just feel terrible. And I'd say, okay, I'm not going to drink anymore.

And then seriously, by five o'clock, I'm like, it's fine. It's one glass. And it never was one glass for me, right?

It was always more than that. Okay, so did there come a time when you decided you wanted to quit drinking or were you just going to cut back?

I was going to cut back.

Okay.

And the reason I was going to cut back is because stopping was impossible.

Right.

In my brain, stopping was impossible. So I was surrounded by a lot of people that drank. I didn't know anybody that had actually stopped drinking.

I knew people that I thought were drinking just a little bit, not as much as me. And I thought, if I can just get to that point where I only drink when I go out to dinner, or I only drink when I go out to an event, that would be awesome. because at the time I was drinking every single night, half to a bottle of pina gregio.

And that was just completely wrecking my motivation and doing anything with my life. So I just wanted to kind of pair it down where I felt like I was in control and could drink a little bit instead of being a crazy drinking person who drank all the time regardless.

Okay. So you have the same obstacles that most of us have to drinking, which is drinking is normal and it's fun and everyone does it, right? Which is the story line that we tell ourselves in our brain.

And the other story line is if we can't drink, there's something wrong with us. We should be able to drink socially like these other people are able to do, quote unquote, right? And so I love what you said because I felt the same way, like stopping was impossible.

Like I couldn't even imagine that I could live in a world where I never wanted to drink again. So if someone is in that position now and they're thinking that same thing, right? I would never want to quit.

It's impossible for me. Why don't you explain how you got to the other side of that? Like what took you there?

What were you able to do? And maybe some ideas on how you're not, like I said, any different than anyone else who wants to do this.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'll tell you right now, the me now and the me, like right now it's difficult for me to see how far that I've come. I mean, I do see how far that I've come, but I remember when I first started trying to stop.

I mean, literally to the marrow of my bones, did not think that not only would I quit drinking, but that I wouldn't have the urge to drink. I know people that have gone to different organizations and they've stopped drinking, but it's always like a white-knuckle.

Yes.

It's always there and it's gonna pull me in. And I thought, you know, maybe even if I quit drinking, it's gonna, you know, have this pull. And to be now where I'm at, where I don't even have the urge and I can be around it.

I was just at an event last night and I was holding somebody's drink while they went to the bathroom. And I thought, how crazy is it that I'm holding this fruity drink here that before I would have like, you know, snuck a couple of sips or maybe the whole thing. And now I'm holding it like it's just a glass of water, a bottle of water.

I have zero desire. There's no magic over this alcohol. So that's a great feeling.

But in terms of the process, really for me, it was kind of a stair step process because I had different thoughts about every type of drinking that I was doing. So drinking at home, I had a specific type of thought about it's the end of the day and I need relief and to relax and it's gonna help me. So stopping drinking at home was a different process for me or a different thought process for me than stopping drinking when I'm going out to eat.

That's expected and I want their tip to be bigger. So I want to have the alcohol. I had all these reasons why I needed to drink when I was out.

Right.

You could just tip them more.

No, no, no. No, it had to be at 20%. So I need to get the alcohol up there, right?

It's the same thing with going to a friend's parties. They knew that I drank a certain type of Pinot Grigio because I drank for so long around everybody. So they would actually have the bottle.

Well, this is a gift. They're thinking about me. They love me.

I have to drink this whole bottle. Yes, of course. So every part of it was a different process, but the great thing about it was when I stopped drinking at home and I realized that I could stop this part of it, I realized, oh, I can stop the next part of it and then the next part of it and the next part of it.

And pretty soon, I got to the point where I was, you know, maybe having one drink a week and then maybe one drink every two weeks. And then finally, the last month, I had one drink that month. And then I got to the point realizing, you know, I just don't have a desire for it anymore.

It's all around me and it still is all around me. But the actual desire and urge for drinking just completely left me and it hasn't come back. And the interesting thing is I had a conversation with somebody the other day and they said, you know, I see that you stop drinking, but you feel like you could have a drink.

And I said, you know, it's interesting. I absolutely feel like I could choose to have a drink and drink that drink and not, you know, start drinking again. But at the same time, I actually don't have any desire to even have that drink.

Like if I was a wedding and somebody said, you know, here's a drink you have to have the champagne to toast with, you know, I feel comfortable saying, I really don't care to have it. I can toast you with water, toast you with anything else. I mean, I super appreciate it, but I don't even have the desire to people please enough to take a sip of champagne at anything.

I just don't have that desire.

Oh, that's fascinating. That right, because not only do I not want to drink it, but I don't even have the desire to people please enough to drink it for your sake.

Ooh, that's so good.

So why do you think you were able to do it? Why do you think you were like, what was the hardest part? And why do you think separate you from maybe someone else that has gone through my program that's still struggling?

Oh, man, I think well, first of all, I was I was absolutely committed.

Okay.

Another reason, I mean, on top of not liking how I felt after drinking and feeling like it was keeping me stuck, I don't like having things in my life that I feel out of control with. I want to I want to feel like at some level, I have control over things. I'm not a control freak, but I just I want to feel like if it's something that I'm putting in my body, food or alcohol or anything like that, that I'm making that active choice.

It's not something that I feel is happening to me. And I knew because you and Rachel and other people had stopped drinking that this is something that was absolutely a possibility and above and beyond that, to have the ability to not want to want it anymore. And so that's really where I wanted to go.

So I was a thousand percent committed to the process and really put in the time and effort and energy to do it. And I tell people, look, it wasn't, it took me six months. It was absolutely not easy.

Right. But I didn't expect it to be easy. I didn't expect it to be an overnight thing.

I expected to fail forward. I kind of expected it to be a brand new skill that I was going to learn. And it was.

Yeah.

And as I saw progress, I went from drinking every night to drinking a couple times a week to once a week. I realized I was making progress, and that kind of helped me continue making progress and being able to check in and ask questions and be on calls and get questions answered. It just kind of helped the process until ultimately the urge was completely gone.

Yeah. I mean, I think that that is, for answering the question, how to be successful, I think being 100% committed to something is a prerequisite because you are going to fail along the way. Right.

And I remember even during your process, you had nights where you went out and somebody did tell you to hold their drink and you did it yourself, right? And not making that mean that you weren't going to make it, not making that mean that you were, you know, somehow needing to drink every night again, right? So I do think that that's a huge piece, is that 100% commitment.

And also, it sounds like you believed that it was possible. At some point, you saw me, you saw Rachel, you saw that we had done it. And I think the other thing is, I know for me, when I saw Rachel, it's like she didn't make it look so miserable not to drink, right?

I'd seen people that had quit drinking and they just looked miserable. And so I think that's another huge piece.

Absolutely. because I had this picture in my head of wide-knuckling it. It was a miserable experience.

Like I'd be able to not drink for the rest of my life, but it was going to absolutely be miserable. And while I wanted to stop, I was really concerned about it feeling terrible for the rest of my life. But seeing the example of people that not only had stopped drinking, but it wasn't making them feel miserable, that was huge for me because that's exactly the result I wanted.

And knowing that there was a process to go through, regardless of how long it took, that I could actually go through the process and see that result just absolutely kept me going. And like you said, yeah, there were times where somebody would have me hold a drink and I'd drink the drink and then go get another one. Or somebody would buy shots and I'd take the shot because I felt obligated at the time.

But I didn't really beat myself up over that because I knew that this was all a process and I knew I was committed to the process and I was ultimately going to get to the end result. Took six months, but it was absolutely worth every day of those six months to achieve it.

Oh my gosh, so true. It took me about six months to, I was drinking throughout that entire time, but now it seems like it was just a blink, right? because now I feel like I have the rest of my life to be free.

It's kind of like what you said about being in control. I used to feel like I drank against my own will. It really felt really like I don't want to do this, but I'm doing it.

I don't want to do this. And I knew that I would just regret it. And so ever since then, I've been thinking about like, my husband and I were thinking about going to Bora Bora.

And I was like, we're just, there's not a lot to do there. So you're just going to be on the beach. I'm like, maybe I should just go to Bora Bora.

And while I'm there, they drink, right? On the beach. And I feel just like you do.

I'm like, but I don't want to. I don't want to have to go to a place where I need to drink in order to enjoy myself. So that kind of brings us full circle.

Now you're in this life that you kind of have stopped buffering in, which what I've noticed with most people is once they stop buffering, drinking, self-medicating, and then they're left with their life again. Oh, there was a reason why I started drinking. Now I remember what it is, right?

So tell me how you've been able to kind of reconcile that and live in the same life without the drinking, and have you made more changes in your life because of it?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, because I really did. I'll tell you right now, the big thing for me that helped me stop drinking, and it's kind of the big thing about what you coach on completely that changed everything for me was not trying to escape my feelings and actually feel my feelings because, like I said at the beginning, I've been through lots of different personal development programs and done all that type of stuff, but it was always about kind of escaping your feelings and try to get happy, happy, happy in the moment. When you talk about being able to feel anxiety or feel any emotion, that really changed everything for me because when I realized that I don't need to buffer with alcohol, then food came up and other things came up, and then it really got me into the process and the practice of just feeling all these feelings that I had that were coming up because I was no longer in buffering.

That really started to change my life because I started to be able to deal with the things that I hadn't been dealing with and needed to be dealt with in my life to move forward instead of filling up that space with alcohol and food and social media and every other distraction that I tried to move into after I stopped drinking. And so now my life is bigger and fuller. And yes, there's other things and other challenges to handle, but now I feel equipped to handle them because I'm not afraid of the feelings that come up as I'm moving forward.

And so now instead of playing small and scared and in this little box, now I feel like kind of the world has opened up and I have a ton more opportunities without feeling like I have to hide from them with alcohol or food or anything else.

Yeah, that's so beautifully said. And here's the thing I want to say to you and to all of my students who are doing this work. When you do this work for yourself, it benefits you so much in your life, right?

because you get to change and you get to feel better and you get to achieve more. But you also add so much by your example, by who you are and how you're showing up in the world. And so I know that there will be thousands of people that will listen to this podcast and be inspired by your story simply because you wanted to be better at your own life.

And I think that's a message. It's not just, you know, all this self-help stuff we do, all this work we do on ourself. People can stand on the outside and say that it's indulgent.

We just want to have a better life and it's all about us. But it's really not because even what you're saying, like showing up for the people in your life and people are asking you about it and wondering about it and seeing, hey, it is possible to do that. And so I just really admire you.

My hat is off to you for doing this work. It's not easy, like you said, it's tough work, but I'm so happy that you get to enjoy your own success and that you get to share it with everybody else. So one of these days, I'm going to talk you into being your own over drinking coach.

And so I know that we will have lots of clients for you. For sure. So if people want to get in touch with you, what is the best way?

They can actually go to my website at jeffgardenerlive.com and I'll have some contact.

jeffgardenerlive.com. And there's an email address in case someone wants to email you or chat with you. Oh, yeah.

And I'm more than happy to chat with anybody about anything.

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and being an example of what is possible.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Sam. Welcome, Eleanor, to the podcast. I'm thrilled that you're here.

Before we started recording, Eleanor told me that she's in Sydney, australia. And so she said, I should come over. So I think I'm going to go over there for lunch tomorrow.

I actually, one of my dreams next year is to take the family to australia and New Zealand.

Oh, fantastic.

So if we do that, we will swing by, because you'll know all the great places to go, yeah?

But my house.

Well, your house looks amazing. We're on video, so I was able to see her beautiful garden. So that's how we got talking about that.

Okay, so we are going to talk about your personal success and the accomplishments you've had recently. And I want to start with where you were when you started this process, and what were the changes that you wanted to make?

Well, I've been listening to the podcast for a while, and I really liked it. And then when, but it was, it seemed to me that you had, you were talking about weight loss and about becoming a life coach was neither, which was really my desire. So when Self Coaching Scholars came available, I was in straight away.

I thought, this is perfect. She's reading my mind.

Nice.

And I, there were two things that I entered into the scholars for. One was because I'd been at home with the children for six years, and I really wanted to pursue something outside of just being a mom. And I was wanting to find out what that was and how I was gonna do it.

But you knew it was not being a life coach.

Right?

Or losing weight.

Actually, you know, I've started to think about, if I did become a life coach, what would be my niche? Oh, that's hilarious. So maybe in 10 years time, we'll be laughing about this.

You'll be like the most successful life coach. I love it. You have, do you want to know what my niche would be?

Or maybe I shouldn't give it away. Someone else might steal it.

Yeah, so you don't want anyone stealing your idea because there's only one of you that can do it.

Tell us.

I would be, you know what, if someone else wants to take it, that's fine. To coaching people through childbirth. Oh, love it.

To make the most of their childbirth.

Did you do natural childbirth?

I did. I did two national childbirths, and it was amazing.

On.

That is a terrible idea.

We laugh about this in our household because my water broke, we went to the hospital, and I felt that first contraction. And I looked at my husband, I said, hell no.

This isn't happening. It's not gonna work.

And then it was so painful, but what happened was, I guess I went really fast. When they finally tricked me, I was already like dilated to eight. And I knew I wanted to, so I hadn't done any of these natural things that you all do that make painless horrible.

So anyway, I had my baby pretty quick, so it worked out. But my sister had natural childbirth, and it just looks painful.

just saying.

I was ready for anything, but it worked out.

All right.

That's another story.

That's a whole nother story.

We got a little sidetracked.

I love it. Okay, so you wanted to join scholars, but you don't want to be a life coach. You didn't want to lose weight.

What did you want to work on?

So I'm a singer. Before I had children, I was a singer. I was a performer in Vietnam and in australia.

And then I'd completely given it a break and just gone full-time mom. And now that they were getting more independent, they were, you know, I didn't need to change diapers anymore, things like that. So I wanted to perform, but I didn't know which direction I was going to go in and what the plan would be.

It was just, it was a very kind of fuzzy, just perform somehow.

Got it, got it. And you'd been listening to the podcast for a while, so you'd wanted to jump in and kind of plan some direction for your life and start going after it, it sounds like.

Yeah. Okay. And the other problem was I thought I was going to die.

Which is just a minor side note.

I was convinced I had cancer, and I was going to the doctor. I mean, I had a reason, like I was doing some renovation, and I breathed in some of the wall that was being dust, that was being sanded, and I just convinced that that one exposure had given me lung cancer. And so it sounds funny now, I say it that way, but it was taking over everything in my mind.

I was getting to a point where I was non-functional.

So that is so interesting to think about, you guys. When we think about the model, and we think about thought work. I had a similar experience this one time where I thought something had gotten caught in my throat.

I was like totally convinced of it, that there was something wrong, and there was something caught, and I was going to end up choking, and they needed to get it out. I went to the doctor, and he was like, there's nothing in your throat. And it was like I was so bent on it, like I had gotten this thought error in my mind.

Oh, really? That I made them, I said, you have to check it. You have to, like they did all this invasive stuff to tell me there was nothing wrong with me.

So I understand that. You get this idea in your head. Yeah.

And do you still think there's something in your throat?

No, no, no, no, no. They got, they checked it and it was fine. And once they did the x-ray and showed me, then I was fine, but I was like bent on it.

I was like, I don't know about it.

So, okay, so that was just a minor note. So you were like, listen, I want to do, I want to know what to do with my career, but then I also need to make sure I'm not gonna die.

Yeah, we can fix those two things for me, and that's great.

Please help. So then what happened? Tell me after you joined scholars, because, and the reason I want to, you to talk to us about a little bit about how you applied what you learned in scholars, there's just a lot of people in scholars that want the kind of success that you have.

They want the kind of results that you've been able to achieve. And so I kind of want to, that person that may be struggling or just started, I want to kind of give them some insight about why you were able to be so successful. So what do you think that was?

I think the times when I've seen the most amount of results is when I've just been sticking to every day, the same time of day doing the work that's set out. It's pretty much as simple as that. And the times that I've been like, oh, I don't think I need to do that.

I see no results. It's pretty much like, do the work, get the results, don't do the work, get the results. Don't do the work, don't get the results.

That's so great.

And that I guess that I carry it around with me all day long, trying to, through this new filter of when I go through life, I'm carrying the model with me so that there's this little tool that I have in my bag that helps me deal with everything that comes up because there's circumstances I can control and there's other things I wasn't expecting. But now I've got some way to actually work through it.

I love that. So tell me, what were the hardest things for you as you kind of ventured into this journey and started kind of prying away some of this thinking? What were the obstacles you faced?

So the hardest thing, what, doing the work?

Yeah.

Well, the hardest things came up when I had to finally, and it was about almost six months in that I had to finally deal with some thoughts that I'd had there for a very long time. And I didn't even know that they were even there, even though I thought them on a daily basis, but to actually pull all of those thoughts out. No, I had to do this because another side note was that my relationship almost fell apart right in the middle.

And I used this work to completely rebuild our relationship to the point now where we're unbelievably happy. But in order to get there, I had to deal with some very painful thoughts.

Yeah, you know, we've talked about that a little on this podcast with some of your fellow students is that some of the work that we have to do on ourselves to change our lives is on thought work that we don't even recognize as thoughts because we thought them for so long. Yes. They're just part of who we are, right?

So it's very challenging to be able to kind of step out of your brain and look at your brain. And I think that's one of the biggest differences that I'm seeing in my students that are in Scholars versus my students that just listen to the podcast is because having or even having a coach, right? Someone that can give you that perspective and show you, Hey, did you know that that too is just a thought?

So yeah, right.

It's kind of like, you know, you're a fish in water. You don't recognize the water all around you.

So well, and I guess you got to be responsible then, is that if this is not a fact, then I have to take responsibility for this. And you have to humble yourself in a sense of, Oh, it's not everyone else's fault. After all, I can't blame anybody.

Now I'm going to have this is up to me.

Yeah. Which is, which is maddening and empowering all at once.

Exactly. It's good news and it's terrible news.

It's good news because then you can change it. And it's bad news because what happens for some of us is we end up blaming ourselves for something we've been suffering with, right?

Instead of, oh, yeah, that too.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, I think that art of really making sure, like when I coach someone to make sure that like, hey, I'm giving you responsibility for this, but do not spend the next three days beating yourself up over it either, because then that doesn't serve any purpose either.

You know, really taking responsibility and making that change is what does it. So tell us.

It's interesting you should say that because Suzy sent. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead.

I was, while I was in the really the thick of, I really didn't understand why I was doing what I was doing. And I had to talk to you and you said, what's the thought behind it? And I was like, I just don't know.

Tell me, can you fix it for me? And then susie sent me this email saying, you've got to be compassionate for yourself and watch yourself with compassion as opposed to constantly judging yourself. And this is the way through.

And when I could, I was able to see myself as if it was just somebody else was when I actually got some insight.

Yes, that's so powerful, right? because we're so hard on ourselves from within our own lives. And if it were someone else going through it, we would be like, oh my gosh, let me hug you.

It's gonna be okay.

Yeah, right.

It's so true. Having that self-compassion is such a huge shift. So tell us, since you've been doing the thought work and making these changes, what has transpired with your career?

Okay, so I made the decision that I wanted to create a show for preschool age children, and it's called Cheeky Tunes Song and Dance Party. And I've written 12 songs so far, and I've done a business plan for it, and I've got my logo. I'm right in the middle of like in creative mode at the moment.

Love this.

Love it.

It's so exciting, actually. I'm starting to just, when I start talking about it, I start to shake with excitement because I'm so proud of everything that I've done, and I just love every minute of it.

I love it.

So what do you think?

So I actually was just in Scholars on Ask Brooke, and people are talking about feeling frozen and stuck and not able to be creative and not able to do what you're doing right now. What do you think?

Well, I asked you once, what do I do with the thought I'm stuck? Oh no, what do I do when I feel I'm stuck? And you're like, well, that's just a thought.

And then you said to me, I'm never stuck. I flow just like water. And I was like, okay, I'm going to use that.

And that's been my motto for the last sort of six months, is that I feel, oh, I'm stuck. No, no, I don't get stuck. I flow.

And I've just been flowing.

That's so good. And two, and one of the things that I think happens is when you don't allow yourself to think the thought, I'm stuck, and you flow, and you start, then you start building the momentum, because now you have these songs written, and now it's starting to become real, right? And so that becomes, oh, I just got chills.

And that starts motivating you to kind of take it to the next level, and then the next level. Now, you're still scared, you're still feeling all that stuff, but you're able to manage it. It's good.

All right. So let's talk about your impending death.

So I had to get myself to a point where I had explored all possibilities of what could happen in life. And eventually I have to, the solution for me was to get, make friends with uncertainty, because that's what I was trying to do, is that I felt so uncertain. So at least if I knew I was dying, even though that's awful, I could be certain of that.

And so I had to sit with terror and dread for long periods of time, which I had to, is an interesting way to say it, because I got to, was actually the best thing I ever did, because I feel this sort of sense of doom coming over me. And before I'd be like, okay, I hate this feeling, this is an awful feeling. And I'd start to resist it by telling myself, everything's fine, you're not dying, everything's fine, you're gonna be fine.

But it didn't work. I still felt the doom, it's just now I had some nice sugar coated over the top of it. And so I actually went, okay, we've got doom today, let's try doom and terror on and see what that feels like.

And so I just sat and felt that wash over me. And while I'm feeling it, I'm thinking, this is a nasty feeling, but with in a very calm way.

Yes.

And then the more I was able to do that, then at least I didn't feel any panic about the fact that the doom feeling was there.

Yes.

And so the panic was going. And then doom sort of found its place in my body where it could come and go quite quickly. That sounds a little, I don't know if that sounds wishy washy, but that was my experience is that I've felt that and I can do it again.

It comes again, I'll just feel it again. So that's the worst thing that can happen is that, say for instance, I got a diagnosis, I would feel probably a sense of terror and doom. And I'll sit with that until for as long as it needs to be.

That's the worst thing that's going to happen to me, is how bad I'm going to feel about whatever's happening.

Wow, that is so beautifully said and so hard for us to comprehend, right?

Yeah.

No, because like, let's talk about this for a minute. This is so big because we think the worst thing that can happen is dying.

Yeah, right.

But dying, you're dead. So then that's not so bad, right? You don't even know that you're dead, right?

So, the anticipation and the worry about it and the doom and the terror that we're feeling about it that makes it so awful, especially if it's not even true. because the truth is, if you guys really think about it, the truth is, any of us could die today.

Exactly.

And if we start thinking about that, we're going to feel awful.

We don't want to be certain about it.

That's right. That's right. So gosh, I think you said that so beautifully.

I know that a lot of my students and scholars and even just my podcast listeners really struggle with worry and fear and anxiety about health issues, about their life and their health and all of those things. And I think the way that you described how you dealt with that is literally life-altering for people, if they can get a hold of it. The last thing any of us want to do is feel really negative, terrorizing emotions.

But that's exactly what we need to do in order to not hold all of that emotion and resistance in our body and create physical pain from holding all of that anxiety and all of that worry in. So, I love the way you did it.

Well, that's what I was doing, is I was getting chest pain. So, I'm like, well, look at this chest pain. This is cancer because of what it was.

It was resisting my emotions and it was manifesting itself in my body.

That's so common for so many of my students. They're feeling so much pain in their body. And part of it is because they're resisting the pain that's there physically and emotionally.

Yeah. I think you being able to demonstrate that you overcame that is so inspiring to so many people because a lot of people when they talk about success, they talk about I made all this money or I was able to achieve this huge dream. And I think for some of us, we just don't want to be in panic, doom and terror all day.

That's our sex. Exactly. Right?

And that's a real genuine thing. And I think for women like us, we have good lives, we're married, we have children, we have plenty of money, we have all these things going for us. And then we're feeling panic and doom, and it doesn't seem realistic, and then we feel guilty and upset at ourselves for doing that to ourselves.

So then it's just compounded, all of it, right? We feel like we don't have a right to be freaking out about things. So I love that you're like, listen, this is what I'm feeling right now.

This is what's going on for me, and I'm going to embrace it. And as you were talking, I was thinking about this one time when my son got in a car accident, and I was so upset about the car accident, and so freaked out about the car accident. And I woke up and I went, oh no, was that real?

Did that really happen? And instead of shutting down and trying to pretend like it wasn't happening, I did exactly the way you described it. I just opened myself up to the terror and the doom and the awfulness of all of it, and it still felt terrible, but not as terrible as resisting it.

Who knew that doom could feel better than resisting doom?

And it's so true.

It's like, you just, Pem and Chodin taught me this, you know, like you just open your heart to the worst that can happen, and all of a sudden the worst that can happen isn't as bad as it used to be.

It's still bad.

Yeah, it doesn't make it fun.

No, it doesn't make it fun at all. So before we end, just briefly tell us a little bit about your relationship and a few of those changes that you were able to make that made your relationship so much better, because maybe someone could maybe borrow some.

Okay, so basically, I thought that I was happy in my relationship. I thought we were happy and that we were great, and I had all the evidence to believe that we were fantastic. And yes, this thing happened, that I started to get feelings for somebody else.

And when this happened, I really lost it and I didn't do the work. I just reacted and resisted the entire time, and tried my best to basically to just be good. Like, don't answer the phone, don't talk to him, don't set off all of these rules that I was going to follow.

And then I just completely broke all those rules. And so it was, I think you could liken it to eating, that I don't want to eat this particular thing, and so I'm not going to eat it, and then you're eating against your will. And so all of a sudden, you've just finished a whole chocolate cake.

And so that's basically what it was like for me, is that I lied to my husband, and I went out to see this guy, and I tried to kiss him. And then I came home and it basically was a mess, and my husband knew there was something wrong, and I just told him what had happened. And that was really dark time for the two of us, that he was considering just telling us to part our ways.

He was unbelievably hurt, unbelievably disappointed, and it really rocked his world, and for me as well. But for me, I was like, what is going on? Why, how did this happen?

Why did I do this? And I couldn't understand my actions, and I couldn't understand my thoughts. And so I jumped on a call with you, and I told you what had happened, and you said to me, what is the thought that caused you to do this?

I was just like, I know you don't like it when your students say, I don't know, but I don't know. Can you please just tell me?

Like, is this a test?

Do you know?

And then you were just like, no, you just have to do a thought download and find out. And I was like, is that it? I really was hoping you were going to solve this for me.

Oh, that's fine.

And so I just spent about two hours at night when the kids are going to sleep doing a thought download, but this time not trying to put nice thoughts in my thought download of like, look how awesome I am at doing a thought download. I was just putting, writing down everything that came to mind and that could cause an action like this. And some stuff poured out that it relates all the way back to when I was a teenager, my thoughts about men, my thoughts about myself, my thoughts about sex.

And I started crying and writing and crying and wiping the tears off the ink. It was an unbelievably painful experience and a beautiful experience that I'm so grateful for because I was so able to see everything that was in my mind and just like taking everything out of the drawers, I just took everything out. And then I had to do the work of questioning every one of those thoughts about am I going to continue to think that and what am I going to think instead?

And that took some real time because there were a lot of thoughts. And also I could start to have some compassion for myself because I realized that there wasn't just one thought that had caused all of this. It was multiple, multiple thoughts that even by themselves, anyone would go, well, you don't really think that, do you?

But I was thinking that. I was thinking things like, I'm trying to give you an example that's not our way. But I'm damaged goods.

Like I've had too many relationships in the past and therefore I'm damaged and I don't deserve to enjoy having an intimate relationship.

Right.

And so I went through it. I did run a model on each one of those and I circled them and I wrote Poisoners Live.

Yes.

And then decided what I was going to feel next. And so from then I was like, okay, I've done all of my new models. Now what's going to happen?

And so, and then we packed up everything and went to America for three months on a road trip, the whole family took the kids out of school. And we were just our family together. because part of it was that I wanted my husband to really take part in our family.

So that I wanted to block off everything. And I invited him to do the work with me. And he was just, I don't believe this, but it's my thoughts causing my feeling, it's you causing my feelings.

And I was like, okay. And so I was like, okay, he's not going to do it, I'll just do it. because I can only present so much to him.

So and so I just did the work. And every time one of those thoughts came up, I was able to see it for who it was. It's like someone who has been living in your house for a long time.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like, wait a minute, you're not a part of this family. What are you doing here? And so I'm like, you can leave now.

So just keep on letting them out.

I love it.

And so, you know, I love I love that your husband didn't want to do it, not that I wouldn't want him to do it. But Marion Williamson taught me a long time ago that it only takes one person in a relationship and it's whoever is most sane at the time, which I always think is my husband.

He's always the most sane one.

But it sounds like the work that needed to be done was yours, right?

Absolutely.

And that's the work that got done. And that's why, my guess is that's why your relationship has changed so dramatically, even without him doing...

Yeah, like he seemed to change things, but not because... Like, I've just asked him, like, it used to be he didn't do something, and I would just have thoughts and resent him. And now I've tried something on, is, would you please do this?

And surprisingly, he does it.

Isn't that funny?

Would we want our husband to be like, I want him to want to do it without me asking?

Exactly, it should be obvious. And now I'm going to put all this resentment, and I'm going to go and, you know... Any...

It's funny, like, I did something on about Brooke, about how just recently I decided our sexual... Can I talk about sex, or is that too... Of course, yes.

So, I wanted to bring our sexual relationship to another level. And so, I did this work, and I realized that I had this thought about, just... I just do it anyway, even if I don't feel like it.

And so, I was like, okay, that's the answer. And I said to him, you know what? I'm not doing this anymore unless I feel like it.

And he was shocked and stopped talking to me for three days. Oh, yeah. What's your problem?

I'm just being honest. And I'm like, this is abuse. You can't just stop talking to me.

And then I did some thought work. And I wrote to him. I'm like, why is he not talking to me?

And then I realized, oh, I was trying to change my actions. But what I needed to do was change my thoughts of, of why am I thinking these thoughts of, I don't feel like it. If I want to change our relationship, I should deal with that thought of, why is it you're always thinking that you're too tired and you don't feel like it?

And get yourself to a point where you feel like it more, as opposed to blaming my husband.

If that's what you want, if that's the end result you want. What I loved about that-

If that's what you want.

Yeah, that's right. What I loved about that experience, watching you kind of go through that, is you posted to Ask Brooke and I read, I read your post, but I wasn't, because sometimes the post comes through on my phone, so I wasn't home and able to respond to you. And then by the time I got home, you had already come back with another post where you had really done this work on yourself and kind of come to that answer to yourself.

And I was like, oh my gosh, that is such a deep, awesome, amazing work. It really shows your growth in terms of your mental capacity, your mental health and your skill set in being able to manage yourself. So that was like, holy cow, well done.

You're not even trained as a coach, and you're using all this stuff so brilliantly on yourself that you're able to really coach yourself at the highest level. So thank you. Kudos to you.

All right, my friend, I know that we could go on talking and talking, but I just want to say that I think a lot of what you've said here today will impact a lot of people. I think they'll be very inspired. Is it okay with you if someone would like to reach out to you, ask you a question, maybe ask about your business, something like that?

Is it okay for them to email you? Would you like to put your email or?

Sure.

Okay.

I could put my Chikichun's email, but I haven't set it up yet. I'll give you my other email. So it's E for Elephant, M for Mary, L for Larry, C for Charlie, 95 at hotmail.com.

hotmail.com, mama.

hotmail.com. I love it. I love it.

All right, if you guys want to reach out to Eleanor and just give her some feedback or ask her a question or anything, that's her email address. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you so much for working so hard in scholars and being one of our success stories.

I know that you're gonna inspire so many people with the work that you've done.

So thank you.

Yes. And I want to hear all about what happens with your career and your job and your business and all of it. It sounds amazing.

I can't wait. It's just gonna keep getting better. Talk to you soon.

See you later.

Well, hello there, Clotilde.

Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much.

I'm so thrilled that you're here. And I'm very excited to talk to you about your success and what you have done in terms of coaching yourself and getting some success in your own life. But why don't you first just introduce yourself a little bit?

Tell us a little bit about you, and we'll go from there.

Sure. So my name is Clotilde Du Surier. I am French.

I live in Paris. And I am married. I have two children.

And my main line of work is a food writer. So I've been a food writer for 12 years, and I've had a food blog called Chocolate and Zucchini for 14. So I discovered your podcast in the summer of 2016, so a little over a year ago.

And within about three weeks, I had listened to everything that you had. Oh, my gosh. I didn't know that.

That's crazy. And seriously, just within two weeks, I felt like you had changed my life. It was just extraordinary.

It was a huge shift in my thinking. I was also consuming personal development content from other people, including Jess Lively, whom I know you know and like.

I love Jess Lively, yes.

And I feel like the conjunction of your work and hers is just the perfect combination for me. But so this was just of huge interest to me. And when you announced that you had a program at first, you know, I was thinking, well, it is a lot of money.

You know, I was wondering about the investment. I had some experience seeing therapists in the past to kind of overcome things that were, you know, just life stuff that had been, you know, that I felt I wasn't digesting well in a way. And so this was kind of like, well, is this in addition to it?

Is this a replacement? So I left January passed by. And so I did not join in January.

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought you were...

No, I missed January. And after just a couple of weeks, I was like, no, I just can't not be a part of this. So I joined in early February.

And I thought that my podcast had, your podcast had changed my life, but the work, you know, having accountability, having access to all of that material and really being encouraged to be in contact with it on a daily basis, just moved me to a whole new level of just understanding. because you can, the podcast is super helpful and there's just so much value in it. But when you can ask specific questions that relate to your specific situation, because we all understand, you know, in theory, but then you're like, no, but listen.

And it's always what you say, you know, people tell you, no, but you don't know my husband or you don't know my life.

Right, right, I'm a special person. Yeah.

I'm a special.

And so understanding the specific ways that it applies to your specific situation was really life changing. And also just hearing you. So I can never attend the calls live because I'm in France.

And so the time difference makes it really challenging because I have two young children. But I listen to all of them, all of the ones that you do. Now, there's just too many total for me to listen to all of them.

But I listen to all of the calls in which you coach. And just listening to you coach is, I think it's a little bit like learning a foreign language. It's like an immersive situation.

The way that I learned English was to live in a country that spoke English. And I feel like the way that I absorb your teaching is through listening to it on a daily basis and applying the work.

So let's talk about where you, when you first started, what were you most wanting to work on? What were you most struggling with? What were the goals that you had?

So, my main hang up was about kind of like this balance, this balance between being a professional. So I have a career that I love. My husband has a job that he loves also, that is a little more, it's less flexible than mine.

We have two young children. And it's always that dance of who does what, who carries the heaviest part of the load. And it was this thing where I could tell that I was confused by a lot of things.

I did not know how to just be happy in that situation. I guess my main hang up was not having clarity around what I wanted to do, what I needed to do, what I was doing for myself, what I was doing for him, what I was doing for my kids. And so kind of like keeping tabs on things and just a lot of confusion and unnecessary suffering around this.

It was really weird.

And I think you're one of my most ideal clients. When I think about clients that I love to work with, or clients like you, you're very successful. I mean, you've written books that are very well received, you're very popular, you have a very popular blog, you're happily married, you have the two kids, you have everything.

You live in Paris, for goodness sakes. You're not allowed to complain about everything, anything, right? So the fact that you are suffering in any way is almost like one of those things that, but you don't have this reason to be suffering, right?

because isn't life great? What do you have to suffer about?

I completely agree, and I think there's so much value to helping people, because you're like, if people who don't really have specific reasons to complain, can't actually enjoy their lives, then what hope is there for the people who have real things? But one thing that I want to note is that, one thing that I understood over the course of our work together is that there is something in terms of mindset that is also our own thinking that says whether or not we have the ideal life or not. because I have been through hard things, things that I don't necessarily make public, but like health issues, pregnancy issues, that sort of thing.

And I realized after the fact that I kept a fairly optimistic outlook on those things when they did happen. So I had a basis of just feeling in general like life was treating me kindly. Yes.

Despite those things that were not ideal. So to answer your question briefly, my main thing was that I was thinking, I have a wonderful husband whom I love passionately. I have amazing children.

Why can I not be super happy in my family life? And so doing the work really helped me understand that emotional independence and emotional responsibility was like a life-changing thing. And this was possibly the most life-changing teaching for me.

Yeah. So tell me how it changed you, because I think a lot of people will listen to the story and they'll say, yeah, I'm in the same situation where I can't find happiness, and I feel like I should be happy, and yet I'm not. But emotional responsibility sounds like a drag.

Well, I think to me, there's something I think of it like, especially when it comes to a relationship, it's the fact that you kind of have this idea when you're a little girl that someday, it's kind of like the Prince Charming fantasy where you're like, well, one day I will find someone who loves me very much and whom I would love very much and he will fix all of my problems and who will make me happy. And it's true that it's kind of a drag to think, oh, wait, that's not happening. I'm the one supposed to take care of that.

So that's the initial thought. It's like, no, you kind of want to whine about it. And you're like, no, but I don't want to do all the work.

But then you realize once you know how to generate all of those feelings for yourself, there is really nothing you can't do. And it is incredibly freeing and empowering. And I just feel so light and free.

And one thing that is, I think, really important to know is that once you have cleared all of that clutter in your brain, you make room for so much more interesting stuff.

Right?

And I am more productive than I have ever been. I just accomplish a lot more because I feel like I'm not dragged down by, you know, the tiny little bit of argument that you had just on, you know, at the door, you know, at the door when you were leaving. And then you kind of carry that around all day.

And now that this doesn't happen to me anymore, you know, I just feel, you know, you talk about 50-50, but I have to admit, I'm kind of like, I feel like more of you're-

Don't tell anybody.

Yeah, no, but I feel like, but you know, it's this thing about, if you are okay with this 50%, right? You know, then it becomes an 80-20, but you know, you're-

It's so true, right? because then all of a sudden, you're not upset about being upset. So tell me about your husband.

What's his take on this? Has he noticed a difference in you?

He does think that I'm a lot easier to live with.

Oh, great.

That's awesome.

I had to ask. You know, he didn't actually come out and say it, but I mean, he can't not notice that we don't argue anymore. Which is like, yeah, it's pretty life changing.

So what would you say to someone that wants this change, that wants to be able to step into emotional responsibility and not suffer so much in their life? What do you think was the things that you did and the way that you approached this that really made you successful at it?

So I think there's two ingredients. One of them is that I think I'm a fairly good student in the sense that you give me homework, I will do the homework. I am pretty religious about it.

I can actually show you, this is a whole notebook of my thought downloads there.

Oh my gosh, that's so awesome.

I'm on my second since the beginning of the program. So doing the work, actually applying it, not just doing it in your head, because oftentimes you figure it out in your head and you're like, no, but I know what this is gonna, what's gonna come out of this. And then as you write it, you're like, ooh.

I had not seen that coming. Yes, exactly.

So doing the work, and also I think an ingredient that is helping me is geeking out about that stuff a little bit, getting interested intellectually about this, getting excited. I just, because it gives you this distance of observing your own thoughts and being like, oh, and sometimes I just laugh out loud at the things that I realize. I'm like, you know, I'm onto myself.

Yes.

I'm onto my brain, you know, and it just, you know, if you can, if you can find the fun in it, I think is really, it's really the way to go.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that you can watch your own thoughts and get very depressed.

You have to be able to make fun. And I think that's one of the things that I had not anticipated when before joining the program is I had not anticipated that watching you coach, which would be so fun.

Oh, good.

It's very entertaining, you know, and that's one skill that I really admire is that you actually make the people you coach who come with sometimes pretty heavy stuff. Yes. You make them laugh, you manage to make them laugh about it.

Right.

Right. because otherwise, we just get, we suffer over our own suffering. I told, I think that's really important.

So I know that I don't want to gloss over this because I know that it sounds obvious, like doing the work sounds like an obvious thing to do. And I want to speak a lot to the people who listen to the podcast because I've had so many people that have listened, like you said, listened to every single thing and totally consumed it and felt like they were changed by it. And the message that I've got from so many people going through scholars is like, I didn't even know how much my life could change until I actually started doing the work.

because it feels like you're doing something, right? You're listening to the podcast, you're having insight, you're looking at the world differently in some ways. And I think there are some shifts.

But when you actually start doing the work, which is how you said it, that's when the change becomes so permanent and the regular practice of it. Yes. Challenging, right?

So I bet there's a lot of people that have joined scholars that had the intention of doing the work pretty regularly and haven't been able to. So what would you say to them? What would be your advice to someone who hasn't been able to be as consistent and therefore hasn't seen the same results you have?

I think it's kind of like a meditation practice where you initially you have to kind of keep yourself accountable. It's like brushing your teeth. You know, at first you have to learn to do it and you don't really want to do it.

But then if you don't do it, you feel kind of it. Yeah. And so and then you don't really think about it.

And so I no longer think about it. My days begin with just opening my notebook and doing my scholars homework. And it takes me 15 minutes, but I get so much.

And the benefits are so huge because I start my day on a very clean page, so to speak. You know, because I know, I have dusted the corners. You know, I know what's floating around.

And it's not a matter of kind of pointing at things that are wrong. It's just that oftentimes those things kind of hover and you don't really realize how much they're bothering you before you pull them out. And you're like, no, but this is fine.

You know, I'm going to just run a model on this. And you know, it's fine.

Yeah, it's just like cleaning your house, right? It's like getting up and straightening your house. It's just getting up and cleaning up the corners of your mind and straightening up, and then you feel so accomplished and wonderful after that.

So one of the things that I teach is that if we don't start becoming more aware of what's going on in our brain, we will just continue to live the effects of that, right? We'll continue to live those thoughts that we've always thought, and we'll just keep recreating the life that we've always created. And we all can see examples of that in our life, right?

Where you see 5 years later, 10 years later, they're just living out their current brain programming. So since you've done this work and you've decided, you know, kind of the first part is understanding what you're thinking and then deciding what you want to think on purpose. How would you say your perspective has changed on your future?

Do you have different ideas now about what is possible for you and what are some of those things?

Well, this has been a huge change that I also hadn't anticipated. I just have a sense of limitless possibility. It makes me pretty giddy to think that, you know, there really is, I really believe that there is nothing that I can't do.

And I think this is something that you provide through the program, not just by teaching it to us, but by modeling it for us. And I have never been in touch or in, you know, regular contact, even though, you know, it's very one-sided, but in regular contact with anybody who embodies those ideas of being willing to fail and fail again, and you demonstrate it for us, you know, you explain it. And coming from a French culture, I think that we have a strong resistance to failure.

It feels like once you've failed, it feels like your life is over. You know, you're never gonna try again. And there's a very strong sense of shame around failing because you feel stupid that you even tried and I don't want to speak for every French person in the country, but this is something that I had really sort of integrated into my thinking.

And now I really understand that failing is just... It feels very cliche to say it's just an opportunity to learn.

But then you get it.

You really get it. And it's a lot of things that I have learned along the way is a lot of things that I had heard, but then you really get it. And then you just get to a different level.

So in the meantime, since I joined, I have actually started my own podcast. That is... So I talk about you a lot.

It's called Change Ma Vie, which means Change My Life in French. And it's a personal development podcast. And this is something...

French?

It is in French. changemavie.com. And it's a personal development podcast that has really taken off incredibly well.

I was on television a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And it's something that I started as kind of a side project.

It has become what would have been a full-time job, but I'm now running two businesses at the same time, which is something that I had never thought I could do. But I learned so much about structuring my time and being productive. I never really understood what productivity meant before I applied a lot of the stuff that you teach.

And again, it's the space that you have in your mind when you just clear out everything that would drag you down or hold you back before. Now, I choose to use all of my brain space for things that are actually gross, inducing for myself and for my business and for my family and for my listeners and for my readers. And it just feels like this value creation, I feel like I add a lot more value to the world now than I did a year ago.

Yeah. And that's been one of my messages on this podcast as I've been interviewing successful students of mine is that the work that we do on ourselves doesn't just benefit ourselves, right? It's really and especially for you, it's going to benefit all of the people that you teach and that listen to you and all of the people that were already following you get to see, like you said, you model this life and you are the example of that.

And so one of the things that's most thrilling to me about you is you came to me very successful already, right? You had this very successful life and to be able to take it to the next level is so much fun to be a part of and to watch.

And one thing that I want to speak to is this idea because it was a question that I had really at the forefront of my mind when I started listening to your podcast was this idea of comparing therapy versus coaching and the work that you do versus. And so I know you have an episode podcast episode on this, but what I found for myself is that seeing a therapist for a little while allowed me to really understand what had brought me here. So I feel like it has given me a very deep understanding of, you know, the things that happened to me that were not to my liking and, you know, the things that are just my kind of pain points from my past.

But I felt stuck after a while because I was like, well, now I understand. But what do I, you know, I was hoping that understanding would just kind of magically unlock things. And with what you teach, it's very future focused.

And so it's like, okay, now that I understand, now what next? You know, how do I write the next chapter? And so I think it's very complimentary.

And that I am also able to move forward really fast with the coaching because I'm not encumbered by a lot of past stuff. I'm kind of able to rewrite my past pretty naturally because I have spent time processing it.

Yeah, that's such a such a good point, right? To be able to, because I think that was my experience, too. I think when I first went into therapy and talked about my problems the first time, like the first couple, you know, months, for sure.

It's really enlightening, like to be able to just talk about that stuff and reflect on it. But then to can just continually do that was not serving me. So that's where the coaching can really come in.

I think that's a super awesome point. Okay, so most of the people that listen to my podcast are American. So what is the best way for them to get in touch with you or learn about you?

You have a blog that's in English too, yes?

It is, yes. So my blog is called Chocolate and Zucchini. Okay.

And I have cookbooks out. My latest is the French Market Cookbook that's published in the US. And I have a new cookbook called Tasting Paris coming out on Spring Day, so March 20th.

So Tasting Paris and its recipes that express the flavor of Paris.

Amazing. And tell me about this walking tour Paris thing. Are you still doing that?

I am, I am, yes. So I have a lot of readers who come to Paris and want to see Paris through the eyes of someone who lives there. So I take them on walking tours of mostly my neighborhood, because I live in Montmartre, which is a very charming village-like neighborhood that a lot of people want to come to.

But there's a tourist side of the neighborhood and there's a local side. And so it's a walking and tasting tour. So we go down market streets and we taste different things.

And I discuss the French food culture and the French way of going about food shopping. And it's a chance also for my visitors to pick my brain about what they should not miss in Paris. And it's a lot of fun and I enjoy it very much.

So and how long is that?

It's a two-hour tour.

It's a two-hour tour. And we just come to your website to sign up for that?

Yes, just yeah, I have a contact form. And so people can just place a request and we discuss dates and availability and what neighborhood they want to focus on.

Oh my gosh. So they can come and hang out with you, especially my listeners could come hang out with you. I would love that.

You can show them everything and you can talk about coaching.

We can manage our thoughts.

We might have just really encouraged that other business as well. So have you been able to figure out how to manage your time with your husband and the kids and all of that? Is that all comfortable?

It's just not a problem anymore. It's just my major realization was that I just need to acknowledge that whatever time I take out of my work time to take care of my family is completely a choice. That I could get a sitter to look after them all day, every day.

But I want to spend time with them. And so when my husband comes home and I have been looking after them, I'm not... Resentment is not...

It's completely off topic.

It's like I'm thrilled that I went to pick them up and that we've been having dinner together. And it's just not an issue anymore.

And it sounds like a little thing, right? I mean, that sounds... That is the biggest thing, right?

Those little things in your relationship add up, taking full responsibility.

Yeah, and getting really clear about what you do, why you do it, who you do it for. And then just not trying to be... You know, have your cake and eat it too, like spend time with your kids and also feel like your partner owes you something for it.

Or that you have tallied up a debt in your favor of... You know, it's like this is completely irrelevant. And I'm glad that I was able to make that realization when they're still pretty young and I still have a lot of years to look after them from that mindset.

Well, of course. And then you get to enjoy your husband so much more too, right? When he comes home and you're like, hi honey, instead of, believe me, that was work I had to do as well.

So that's awesome. Okay, so if I want to find you, I go to... What's the URL?

It's chocolateandzucchini.com or cnz.to for short.

Okay, that's what I was looking at. Cnz.to. Oh my gosh, you guys, go check it out.

You just have to see how pretty she is, if nothing else, and how beautiful her food is, if nothing else.

Thank you.

All right, my friend, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. I know that it'll be inspiring to many people, and I'm so happy to introduce my listeners to you.

This has been a huge highlight of my week.

Oh, good.

If not my year.

All right, well, you have a wonderful rest of the day, my friend.

Thank you both, I'll see you soon.

Bye.

All right, Angie, we are recording. Welcome to the podcast. You are one of my very favorite clients because you've lost so much weight.

I talk about you, I brag about you all of the time.

It's so good to talk to you again.

Yeah, I mean, you literally are like, you lost a person.

Yes, yeah.

So, I want you to introduce yourself and tell kind of your story, just the beginning part of your story, and then we'll dive into your success.

So, the way I would introduce myself is by profession, I'm a pediatrician, but I'm also a mom and happily married. But I would also tell you, I was the fat girl and the fat baby, and I spent from nine months of age to 50, really struggling with losing weight, and I identified as that fat girl. And so, now I have to do that a little bit differently because people who don't know me from before don't see that.

They see an average, normal looking person.

Isn't that crazy?

Yes, it is really wild.

They're like, you were never fat, what are you talking about, right?

Yeah, right, right, no idea. Yeah.

So, you wanted to lose weight at some point. Tell me about that.

I think when I think back about it, I think that was like on my daily to-do list all the time, as far back as I can remember. And I would get up in the morning, and that would be on my to-do list.

Lose weight, just like item number three.

Lose weight, what are we doing about that today? And I, like many people who struggle with this, I had periods where I tried things, like I probably did Weight Watchers three times, and meal replacement, and the low calorie foods, and cabbage soup, and hired dieticians. And South Beach, and sometimes I would lose 20 pounds, sometimes I would lose 60 pounds.

But it was almost impossible to keep it off. And a lot of times I call it white knuckling it. I mean, to get to the end line was literally painful and was in like, felt physically in withdrawal.

So that was kind of, it was always there. And I think it really colored everything. So even things that should have been really joyous things, like you and I joke about the pediatrician of the year thing.

It was like, oh yeah, but I'm fat, you know, or what, you know, it's sort of colored and took down the enjoyment of things because I always felt some shame about having failed at this other piece. And why couldn't someone who was so intelligent and otherwise successful figure this piece out?

Especially a doctor, right?

Yeah, so that it was, and I had like, I don't know, 37 books or something on how to lose weight in the house, right? Among other things. So it was continual for me and for my family.

Yeah, and they were all, they're all contradictory too, which is confusing, right? Like one says, don't eat any carbs. One says only eat potatoes.

One says, don't ever eat anything on Tuesday.

Another one's combinations.

Oh, we're right. Right.

Or your blood type or your eye color. I mean, there's so many crazy things. So how did you find me?

So I, among my 37 books, I bought one of your early books on how to lose weight. And I think you've just redone it, but it appealed to me because if you're so smart, why can't you lose weight?

Yes.

And I, instead of like getting stuck at chapter three, I just like zoomed through this book and I said, this makes sense to me. And I got online to find out more about who had written it. And at that time, you were doing an online program called The Weight School.

Yeah.

I thought, this is great. I'm going to do this. And I signed up and I listened to one call and then I forgot about it.

Oh, I didn't know that.

That's hilarious.

I did. So I signed up like in April and I did that. And right about that time, I'm turning 50.

And you know, I'd always been, I've been well over 200 pounds since I graduated from college. And my boys that I had, I'd like start at 220 and I deliver at 240 and walk out of the hospital at 220 again. And so I'd gotten up to like the 260 pound mark.

And that's just been my 20s, 30s, 40s. And so here I am at 50. And I find out that I'm having problems with my hip and I find out that they didn't form normally.

But now I'm starting to fall down. I mean, literally on my face. And I'm trying to do all my normal things.

And I had traveled to Berkeley to visit my son. And I fell twice, including in the airport, like in front of everybody.

Oh my gosh.

I just thought, I knew I needed to do this hip surgery. And I just didn't know how I was going to do major surgery and be this overweight and do the rehab. And I started to think, I'm just going to fall down one day at work and they're going to use all their CPR training on me.

I mean, because I'm just not going to make it. And if I was honest about the days, I mean, I'm good at, I get to work, I get everybody seen, I dot the I's, cross the T's and get home exhausted. I bet.

And then we'll be back together for the next day.

I mean, think about that now, like all that extra weight you were carrying around, the emotional weight and the physical weight, trying to go through your life. That's wild.

Right. And my doctor talking about, well, we may have to start you on insulin, and I was on the cholesterol stuff. So it was really though that that surgery was coming up, and that I committed to do this surgery, and I was going to try to fix that problem.

I really had to fix something.

And this is the hip surgery you're talking about. This is the hip surgery.

So it's six months later, and the one thing I remember from the call was you talking about, the key about success is you have to actually do the class. You sign up to do. Maybe you won't do it the first time, but you can always come back to it.

So I did come back to it. And so that's like October. And so over the next seven or eight months, so surgery is a year away, seven to eight months, I lose 40 pounds.

And that's fantastic. And nobody notices.

What was your weight at that time?

I was 60 when I'm starting. And nobody notices, which was humbling, but it kind of opened my eyes a little bit.

That is wild. Let's just pause there for a second. When you lose 40 pounds and nobody notices, how did that not completely devastate you and have you eating everything in sight?

Well, that was the piece I really worked on in the weight school, was I worked on the emotional eating. And if I'm honest about it looking back, I was binge eating in response to stress. And so that part really worked for me.

I didn't focus so much on what the other things were that I was eating. I really tried to work on the binge eating and not overfilling myself, not overstuffing myself and getting back in touch with that. because I'm convinced that for a lot of people and a lot of kids that I see that are overweight, they're eating above their fullness level.

There is a stop point. So if you're above that, you're never going to stop. That's right.

That's right. And especially if you start eating when you're not even hungry, you have no indication of when you should stop.

Right. Right. So even though people hadn't noticed, that was a real relief to me.

I felt more in control. I didn't feel so out of control. I didn't have those binge things.

So I had done pretty well and then getting through that program. And then I had stalled but not gained, which was huge because that was usually the next. And then you sent out, it was like serendipitous timing.

You sent out this email that you were gonna do small stopover eating master class.

Yes.

And it was gonna start in October and I thought this is fantastic except I'm having my hip replaced. So but we decided to do the interview and I was so nervous because I was worried. And the commitment of once a week for what the call was, hour and a half or two, you know, patient time and do the work and you were very upfront that I was going to have to commit to that every week for six months putting myself first.

And so I so that I wasn't nervous about although I had to think it through and then I said but the day one of your program I was going to be under anesthesia getting a new hip and you know that'll be fine.

Everybody starts unconscious anyway, it's fine.

And so anyway, to this day, I don't know if you know that, but the gals in our group still think I had an advantage being on narcotics when you use sugar and flour.

That's so great. That's great. So I just want to make sure everyone knows so that I used to have a program called Wait School that was an online program that is now integrated into Self Coaching Scholars and the Stop Over-Eating Masterclass that I did was a small group coaching program that is now integrated into scholars.

So I don't want you guys to go hunting for those programs that no longer exist, but it's all the same material. It's the same philosophy. Everything that I teach in scholars is what I was teaching Angie.

And so she's talking about how in the beginning, coming off sugar and flour is painful as you guys know. And so she was not. She was on narcotics when she was going to withdraw.

So it's just a suggestion.

Balanced out.

That's funny.

But I think what I really had learned from the first thing is you've got to show up and do stuff. So if you're looking at those great tools from Stop Over Eating Masterclass, there was really a different thing introduced to us, a theme every month. And I could get nitty gritty and scientific and was maybe worried about some of the things in the beginning of the fasting and the diet changes.

But I had this month off, so I could read every possible book there was on it. And then I'd sit back and say, well, is this any more sensible than the cabbage diet or 400 calorie a day things that, you know, medical induced fasts? So I really committed that even if something sounded weird and wild like meditation, I was gonna do it, or fasting, I was gonna do it.

And I was gonna really try it and really see if it worked for me. And I think that is one of the keys about, that I would say that's very different than ways I approached things before. It's just you have to be consistent and committed and worry, maybe spend less energy figuring out if you're on the right path and just walk the damn path.

Oh my gosh, we have to pause there because I think that that is everything. I think that on any diet, on any program, whether it's my program or whatever, we want to question everything and we want to do everything in moderation, including moderation, right? It's like we want to approach classes and decide what makes sense and what doesn't.

We want to approach diets and say, oh, I'll do this part, but not the other part. And then we wonder why we don't get those results. And so I think your point is so important.

The things that we have resistance to are usually the things we most need to try.

Right. Right.

So you were all committed. You're like, I'm going to try everything, including meditation, which is weird.

Right.

Could be weird. I think it's fantastic. Right.

Of course. It's fantastic now. Yeah.

So and you wanted to lose, how much weight did you want to lose?

So I remember, so I was at 220 when we talked and we were going to do six months. And I'm like, I'm like, I want to lose. I want to get to 185.

And you're like, oh yeah, that's fine. And then you're like, what do you want your goal weight to be? And I'm like, no, 185 is like my lifetime goal weight.

I have no desire to go, you know, to go beyond that. And why did you say that?

because I want to interrupt you here just for a second, because I was just telling you before we started recording that I was talking to my doctor, and she was asking me how to lose weight. And she weighs 165, and she wants to get down to 145, and she's like 5'5. And I said, why not 125?

And she's like, I have no desire. just like what you just said, no desire to be 125. What is that about, you think?

Well, in my case, I don't think it was desire. I think it was, I just didn't think there was any chance. I didn't think it was a real option for me.

And I just thought, if I look back, and so here was this backward-looking thing, which we try not to do, is thinking, okay, that way I can shop in the regular clothing section. I won't hurt so much. Maybe I can come off my meds.

Maybe my CPAP can come down. I just thought life would be different at 185. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no.

That's what you're gonna lose in six months. You're gonna get down to that. But what do you want long term?

And so that was, I know, for a lot of us in our group, something we struggled with. And I'm like, but I'm old. And we want to have a form of metabolism.

And don't I get extra points for whatever?

Don't I get extra pounds?

That's awesome. Right. So that was really a turning point.

And when I started, I think I still didn't believe that till we were a couple of months into our program where I really thought, okay, I think it's safe. And that's probably part of it. I think it's safe to dream big.

Yeah.

And so then I agreed to 155. I never agreed to 130 or 135, but I agreed to one. You know, I said, okay, how about 155?

And if it's okay-

Which was like 30 pounds less than what you wanted, right? I mean-

It was. And I eventually, you know, I chose 148. And I will say it here that at the time, so I was like at 157 when I said, okay, 158 is going to be my goal weight.

And I spent two to three months getting those last 10, 10 pounds fine tuning. And, you know, and someone asked me, was it worth it? And what I would say is, it was so absolutely worth it.

There is something about picking that goal and doing whatever it takes to get to that goal. And then you can choose differently. And so, you know, now over 10 months, I like 151 a little better than 148, but I can always say I got to goal.

And this is the choice I made, you know, based on my experience.

But isn't that great to just be able to, I want to weigh 151, and that's what you weigh. Like, you know, and then being in this belief system that that would be impossible, that you would never be able to weigh that, right?

Right. Well, and I think there's this whole plateau theory out there and all kinds of things like that. And it is, I think, extremely powerful to do it.

And I have the control over that, or I have the control over what I eat. That was another big one for me. I only have to eat.

And I still will lapse into that, like on a vacation where I think, oh, we're going to go to Italian and they're going to, wait, nobody can make me eat pasta if I don't want to eat pasta.

You're going to make me eat pasta.

Right?

But that was the story I was telling myself about.

Totally. So what was the hardest part for you, do you think?

Oh, what was the hardest part for me? Um, the hardest part for me was what I called the snacking or call it the grab ass piece. Especially at work, because there's an insane amount of stuff at work.

And you can tell yourself the story. Oh, you know, what is a snack size chocolate bar going to mean? Or what is, are a few nuts going to mean in the scheme of things?

But it's part of a really bigger thing, which is, wait a minute, that's not what I'm doing. That's not what I said I was doing. I don't need to do that.

And why am I letting all this consume any time at all? I still think that that is probably the challenging piece is to really work on food as fuel and not letting it be entertainment or anything else.

Yeah. What is different this time? You pretty sure you're not going to gain it back?

I am really sure. I mean, sure enough that I got rid of just a boatload of clothes.

Yeah, you had to keep buying clothes.

I had to keep buying clothes because the first time I got them out, there were like two big under storage things that didn't even fit. I remember crying. It was like I was saving these for when I lost weight, and I missed it.

I just missed the moment. That's so funny.

And so the thing about it that really was sort of challenging is for a while I was afraid I was going to lose sort of my identity.

Yeah.

And what actually ended up happening is I think I'm more authentically me. Yeah. So I got less afraid of speaking my mind and showing up and being front and center, and that was kind of an interesting thing for me to do.

And so ultimately, you had me explore, and I really had to think about, did I like both the job I was doing as a doctor and did I like the organization I was with? And through this, I actually ended up liking everything I did a lot better, but realized I changed my car, I've changed my address, I've changed groups I belong to, I've had to work through transitioning with friends, and when we moved into this house two weeks ago, I realized, oh, I'm four blocks from this other clinic. I could even work for them if that's what I wanted to do.

And that was a real turnaround from thinking I had-

A huge turnaround for you, because you just feel so like you had to do everything.

I had to do this. I had to, you know, I was really sort of wedged and cemented in, and I was absolutely as excited about, I can pick a new color for towels in my guest bathroom. I mean, and it was sort of like your flower analogy.

Yes. You're still locked into things. You don't even consider the other options.

Right, and that's, you know, it's like the work, Joe Dispenza's work, where he talks about, you know, you have these program thoughts, and you just keep reliving your past over and over. And when you use the skills that I teach to change your physical body, not just by the dieting part, which is part of it, but also the mental part, which you did so much of, is that all of a sudden you get to decide what you want to think on purpose. And I think that's why the change, like I have so much confidence that your change is permanent, because you literally are a different person.

The thoughts you are thinking are creating a different person. You're not working against your mind to try and maintain, which is what most of us used to do when we would lose weight real quick and then try and white-knuckle.

Right, you think certain things are gonna be different, like you won't get audited by the IRS or... Or my holy grail was, I blamed really uncomfortable periods on being overweight. And it turned out that made not a damn bit of difference.

Oh, that's so interesting.

But once I lost the weight, I had the confidence to go to my gynecologist and say, I don't want to fix this. It's fixable. And so that was kind of a different thing.

I'm important enough and I'm not gonna blame... I was blaming everything on being overweight. So I don't worry about gaining it back, which is I think is a really interesting thing.

And I think that like with anything you learn, the longer I do it and the more skill I have, so I think it's not a bad thing to gain a few pounds on vacation and have to come home and look at it and adjust. But the more skill I get with it, the less worried I am, because I'm like, I can do this. I've done this before, I have the tools.

The more you practice, right? So what would you say to someone who is where you were 100 pounds ago and doesn't think that it's possible? And I always tell all my students, it's not gonna be easy, nor should it be, right?

Enjoy it being hard because then you'll have that sense of accomplishment. So what do you think, the whole title of this podcast is How to Be Successful. How would you tell someone approaching this?

If they asked you, how can I be as successful as you?

So the first thing is for someone with that weight to lose, is to realize it's never too late. So why at 51, I thought it was, or 50, 51, I thought it was too late is crazy, right? because it's never too late.

And I tell everybody, I got at least 10 years of my life back.

I agree, yeah.

At least, minimum. And what I'm going to enjoy out of it is more than that.

Yeah, because now you're an athlete. You're like off doing all these athletic things.

And not because I have to, because I used to dread it. But I want to. Yes.

And I enjoy sort of the sense of, you know, accomplishment in doing that. And so that's been a lot of fun and I can do it with my husband. So that's been, that's the total bonus.

Yep. So what would I say to do? So again, I think one of the key things is, while you're working on your mind and your thoughts, you've got to also get out of your head, and sometimes you just got to do it.

Okay, so you just got to commit and say, I'm going to do it for this long and then readjust. So I think that skill of saying, you know, for a week, at least for a week, this is protocol, or at least for a week, I'm keeping food records, or at least for this long, and then stick to it. And then, yeah, that particular tool might not work so well for you, but I really think the key to success is less about changing the protocol and more about just being consistent in executing what you've chosen to do.

Oh, that's so true.

You just have got to do it. And so I think my superpower on this was I didn't ever go back up. I visually, it sometimes felt like I was climbing this rock wall and I maybe was hanging and couldn't see the next handhold, but I really just stuck with it till I could see the rest of the route and then moved forward.

And I think sometimes that's the piece you have to do is you just have to tolerate not losing that week or that 22 days or that month and then get back to it and not give up. because you can, it can be done. It absolutely can be done if I can do it.

Yeah, I think, you know, everyone I've talked to on this podcast interview and on this podcast so far, I think that's the trick. Everyone has said you have to be committed, right? You have to be committed for the long term and you have to actually do the work.

Right. And I think that that's this distinction between, I think sometimes we think about doing the work. We commit to doing the work.

It's not the same as doing the work, showing up for the calls, showing up for the protocol every day, showing up for what's going in your mouth every day, those little things every single day, and not letting the mistakes and all of that get you down. I think those are the things that you really demonstrated.

Right. I love the workbook and the worksheets. So for me, the tools like Write It Down and Move On, or Exception Planning, those were great.

I still keep the same food journal every day that I kept throughout the program. And so I could look back and tell you, or if I was having trouble knowing what I was doing, had been doing, I could go back and look, and I know exactly what I was doing that worked at this time. So I loved that piece with that.

But that's hard.

What would you say to someone that says, oh, but filling out worksheets, and writing down what you eat every day, and planning, it all just seems so exasperating.

Pick one thing and do it.

Yeah.

And I was laughing. We just got back from vacation, and I hadn't really cooked much in the new house. The thing I love is I call it bago salad.

So I like those bag salads. Deli lunch meat, and I cut it in half, and there's nothing simpler than hauling that to work. There's no excuse to not do it.

And I had my husband, right? So my husband does my grocery shopping. I had him get the regular lettuce and vegetables.

And I was getting up in the morning going, oh crap, this week, I have to slice the lettuce and the tomato. Oh my God. It's going to take all of three minutes.

What are you thinking? Your mind still tries to put those roadblocks up, even this far into it. You'll have to go out for lunch because you didn't buy the bag of salad because you got to slice your lettuce.

Oh my God. I think knowing that that's coming just really helps you. And knowing those thoughts are coming and it's easier to recognize them now.

Before, I think I felt like they just sort of crawled up the back and got hold of me. And now I think I see them coming. Oh, I see you.

I know what you're going to say. I don't want to hear it, but, you know. And so that just has really helped.

And if you can't do it all, that's the other thing. It's not an all or nothing. That's a diet.

So the thing is, you know, pick one or two things you're going to commit to and do that consistently. And it really does that sense of accomplishment and success will allow you to pick up another one.

Yeah.

And you can pick up another one.

So just before we close out, I want to, I know that one of the things that we used to talk about on our calls was the fact that you were an overweight pediatrician trying to treat overweight kids coming in. How has that changed for you?

It's been interesting. Overall, it's great. Part of it is meditation helped me connect with my patients.

I had a few patients go to other people because I think they assumed that because I was overweight myself, I was going to give them a free pass and say that was okay. And that was never really true about me. So I had to kind of rethink it.

And so the way I sort of presented, so for patients who knew me, they want like you were talking about with your dermatologist, they want to know what I did. And they want to try some of it. And they always say, oh, that's too hard.

And I say, no, it's really not. And here's how I'm going to encourage you to start. For people who are brand new, it's interesting.

I don't have to bring it up, which is kind of an interesting thing, but there's still tons of work to do on healthy eating. And it was kind of fun to get asked. So the surgeon, the bariatric surgeon in town, can't do enough of the surgeries.

And so he put together a group to try to help teach physicians about the sort of no-flour, no-sugar, low-carb diet in dietary ways. And that was really great to be able to sort of do that. And so I still have that experience of saying, hey, I know, I've done it.

It's hard, but it's doable, and it's so worth doing. And it's been a little interesting to let myself be the role model, to realize that sometimes people say that, because you know that I don't love attention.

Right. But I mean, the other theme that I've had through this podcast, this episode has been the work that we do on ourselves isn't just about us, especially when you're in a service industry, which you are, right? And you're showing up and you're demonstrating and being an example of what is possible.

And so, yes, of course, you did it for yourself and for your relationship with yourself, but you have affected, you know, many people in my community and also so many people in your own. So I think that that's just the side benefit, right? That huge contribution that you get to make by showing up, like you said, more authentically in the world.

And so I honor you for that accomplishment. And I know, no, no, for sure that this podcast and all of the other times I've talked about you, total inspiration.

I have to answer my door for a second. But I have to share with everybody, Brooke, for me, you were the right coach at the right time. And I was willing to listen to what you asked me to do and do it.

And I think that that's so valuable. And so I think finding a group or an environment where you can do those things is so important for people. And again, I think that I continue to do all the workbooks and self coaching scholars and really enjoy the growth there and share it with as many people as I can.

It's so awesome. You're like, I like to say you're like a star student, but I don't even have to say that because you see the effects when you do the work, you see the effects in your life. So such an inspiration.

Thank you so much, Angie, for everything you do and for inspiring us. I appreciate you being on the podcast today.

And thank you, Brooke.

All right, take care.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it.

Join me over at thelifecoachschool.com/join.

Make sure you type in the, T-H-E lifecoachschool.com/join.

I'd love to have you join me in Self Coaching Scholars. See you there.

Ep #198: What it Takes to Succeed (Success Stories from Scholars)

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