Episode 44: The Unlimited Value of Coaching

Welcome to the 100% Awesome podcast with April Price. You might not know it but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think and that my friends is 100% awesome!

Hello podcast universe. Welcome to episode 44 of the 100% Awesome podcast. I'm April Price and I'm excited to be behind the microphone today. You have been on my mind a lot the last couple of weeks. And so, I have been inundated with podcast ideas on my walks, and in the car, and in the shower, these ideas of things that I want to share with you keep popping up and they're stacking up and so I'm really excited about the next couple of months on the podcast. I hope that you'll get a lot out of it and I'm so grateful that you're here sharing this space with me.

And, speaking of being excited about the podcast, I hear from so many of you that tell me that you listen and then re-listen to the podcast, and that you take notes on it and I just want you to know that there is a transcription of this episode and all the other episodes of the podcast that are there free for you to download from my website. So if you ever want a transcription that you can study, you can just go to my website aprilpricecoaching.com and click on podcasts and there you're going to find all the episodes, and there's a transcript attached to every one of them. They're just there for you to use to help you as you create the life you want. So you're welcome.

01:50
So you guys I'm so excited because last week I hired a new coach, and that experience has really made me reflect on why I invest in coaching and why it is so valuable to me. So, over the last couple of years I have invested thousands of dollars in coaching, actually thousands of dollars that I didn't have until I found coaching. But it is the money that I would invest again and again if given another opportunity. So, as part of the Entrepreneurial Program at the Life Coach School where I got certified, we have to submit a report about our business every Monday morning, and at the end of the report they always ask us a question to help us reflect and think about so that we can provide even more value to our clients.

And yesterday as I was submitting that report the question was, why has coaching been valuable for you? And as I sat there thinking about all the value that I have received from coaching, I realized that I would trade any amount of money to know the things that I know now because of coaching. I realized that I would pay it all again 10 times or 100 times that to know the things that I know now, the things that I have learned through coaching that is how valuable it has been for me. It has changed my life in such fundamental ways that I would invest it all again and even more so to keep the knowledge that I have.

So today I wanted to talk to you about why I value coaching so that you can have the opportunity to understand why it is the very best investment that you can make in yourself and in your life. And I do this honestly because I love you because I care about you. I sometimes think about what if no one had ever told me? What if Brooke Castillo had never started a podcast and what if Jodie Moore had never started a coaching program? And what if no one had told me that there was a way out of suffering, that there was an answer to every problem in my life?

03:49
And so I want to be sure to tell you, so that you can know too. So I want to start today's podcast with a story, and this story is something of a Price family legend. So some of you already have heard it, but it applies so well to what I want to tell you about the value of coaching that I want to share it again. And like most of my stories, you will quickly notice all of the things that I have done wrong and I'm okay with that, really, because whatever I have done has been my best and admittedly sometimes my best isn't all that great.

But regardless it was my best, so here we go. When our third baby was born my oldest son Caleb was only three, and then our next child Olivia wasn't even two yet. And so we had this three year old, and almost two year old, a brand new baby and we were in the thick of baby and toddlerhood. And it was such hard work, it was exhausting work. It was the hardest work I had ever done. Now, just so you know I'm making a case to justify my actions that I'm going to tell you about here in a minute, but what I want you to understand is that I was tired. I was SO tired! We just moved into a new house where Olivia, our second child had a room for the very first time.

And up until this point we had lived in a little apartment in San Diego and so she had slept in our room. And so we moved into this new house, Caleb had a room and I put Olivia in a room with Savannah who is just our new baby. And because Olivia was used to sleeping with us she did not love staying in her room all night. Right? And so the baby would wake up in the middle of the night to eat, and I would just get her fed, and burped, and settle back to sleep, and then Olivia would show up in my bed and interrupt her sleep again. And roll over, and kick us, and cry, and all the things, and so between the new baby, and this toddler, I wasn't getting any sleep and I was desperate. I was desperate for sleep I tell you.

05:48
And so I devised this plan, I decided I'm going to turn the locks around on the kids doors so that I can lock them from the outside. And then in the middle of the night when Olivia got up to come in our room she wouldn't actually be able to leave her room. I'll just lock them from my side from the outside, and I thought that if I did this for just a couple of weeks that she'd break the habit of getting out of bed, and climbing to ours, and she'd just learn to stay in her own bed. And I thought this was like a genius idea, but of course, I was sleep deprived so who knows. Anyway, that's what I did. I turned all the locks around on the kids doors and it totally worked. She didn't come in our bedroom anymore. I would find Olivia sleep on the floor by the door in the morning and I was able to get a little bit more sleep. It's all going perfectly until one day after lunch, I was putting the kids to nap. I was in the girls room reading Olivia story when I heard a little click, and Caleb who is only three at the time had been outside of the room kind of playing around, and he had turned the lock and locked me in the room.

So I went to the door, was like "Knock, knock, knock! Caleb! Caleb! Come and turn the lock. Come on let mommy out." And then I heard him next door in his room banging on the door crying because he had locked himself in his own room as well. He'd gone around just turning the locks on the doors and then locked himself in his own room. So there I was locked in this room with Olivia and Savannah, and Caleb was locked in his room next to me and none of us can get out. We are stuck. Now, keep in mind this was long before cell phones, this is the dark ages and, David was out of town at a conference. And at first I was like "okay no problem, I can solve this. These are not complicated locks." They're just like the little house locks and you just have to flip the little mechanism inside. And so I'm like "okay I'll be able to do that." I go look through the closet trying to find something to flip that little mechanism, but I don't even have a metal hanger in this closet. There were all those little plastic kinds of hangers for kids clothes and they're like all cute and matching, but none of them are cute enough to undo this lock.

And we had a 72 hour kit in that closet in the girls room, and I went through that thing but there wasn't anything in the entire kit that would open the door. There were granola bars, and raisins, so I had food, but there was no way to open the door. And I tried for hours to figure out a way to pick that lock, and turn that little mechanism, and we were on the second floor, so I even thought about jumping out of the window. But, not only was I afraid that I would get hurt, I also wasn't positive that the front door was open. And so then I thought what if I jump out and then I can't get back in to get to my babies. And so for me this was one of those watershed, come to Jesus moments, where I suddenly realized how powerless I really was.

08:58
I was trapped, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I needed help. I needed someone else to turn the lock from the other side. I couldn't do it from where I was. I was stuck and in so many ways this is exactly how I see coaching.

We are all stuck inside the story of our own head. The story our brain has sold us. We have tried, and tried, and tried, to figure a way out of our pain. We know it shouldn't be that hard, right? We know what needs to happen even, but from where we are we can't turn the lock and find our way out.

We need someone on the outside to shift things just a bit in just the right way so that we can escape the story our brain is telling us and get out, get out of our suffering. So for me, stuck in this room. Eventually, the neighborhood kids came home on the bus and as they walked past my window, I opened the window and I yelled for one of them to go and get their mom this is one of my finest moments. So then a neighbor friend came to the house, and I'm like talking to her through the upstairs window about my predicament. So, then she went home and she got the little flat headed key that comes with all of our houses and unlocks all the inside doors. I took the screen off the window and after a couple of tries she was able to throw that little key through the window and I was able to get out.

Now, I want you to know that even though I was stuck, and even though I had tried everything I knew to get out, I still in that moment didn't want to ask for help. I still didn't want to call down to the neighborhood children and ask them to go get their mom. I didn't want anyone to know that I needed help, and that I had spent the entire afternoon locked in a room by my 3 year old. I was ashamed, and embarrassed, and there was even a part of me that thought I might get in trouble for turning the locks around. And I didn't want anyone to know that I was powerless, and pathetic, and probably failing at all of it. And in fact if David had not been out of town, I might have just stayed there until he usually got home at night, because I was so embarrassed about it. And this is no different than what we do when we have pain, or suffering, or heartache, or difficulty, in our life. We don't want anyone to know, we're a little bit embarrassed, that we're suffering or that we've caused our own suffering.

11:27
Maybe we've created the mess, or maybe some other person has left us trapped, and we wish we could just figure a way out on our own. We think if we ask for help, it will say something about us, or our abilities, or our failings, or our many many shortcomings. And so, we just stay stuck, far longer than we need to. A coach is there without judgment to show you what you cannot see. To give you the tools you do not have to give you the simple tool that it will allow you to unlock any problem in your life and set yourself free.

Okay so that's number one. That is the first thing I want to explain when I talk about the value of coaching, your coach can show you the way out. They show you how to find the way out of every problem you find yourself in. So one of the things that I love most about the coaching tools that I learned at the Life Coach School, is that they truly solve every problem. There is no problem that doesn't fit into the model. Even this very last Friday night when David was getting home from work, he stayed in the car I could hear him in the garage taking a phone call from someone in our congregation who was very upset. She was so upset I could hear her through the walls of the garage, and when he came in he kind of just looked at me, and I said 'there's no problem that can't be solved right?" That is what I have learned. I have learned the simple tool that provides a way out of every painful situation you are in. At the end of every podcast you hear me say "the way things are is not the way things have to stay." And I truly believe that, no matter what room you are locked in, you don't have to stay there. You don't. There is always a way out and it is easier than you think.

Okay number two, another thing that makes coaching so valuable is that it gives you permission to move forward. It provides a way to stop arguing with the past, to stop arguing with what is, and to love whatever is and whatever future is coming. So many people live their life with regret. They keep arguing with what is, and I was one of those people. For heaven's sakes! I had a blog that was called The Two Regrets and it was a blog about my life!

13:48
The way I define my whole life was by two enormous regrets. It's really hard to move forward from there. It's really hard to move forward when you're dragging all these regrets around, or arguing that you should be different, your life should be different, and that it wasn't supposed to be this way. We spent so many years thinking it wasn't supposed to be this way, trapped in a room of it shouldn't be this way, it was supposed to turn out differently. And it doesn't change anything because it was. It did happen. It was supposed to be that way and you can stop arguing with it. As Byron Katie says "could it be that all along we have lived the life we were supposed to live." Coaching allowed me to make peace with all that was and is, it allowed me to see that nothing has gone wrong, and now I can choose what I want next.

When we lost our house and had to short sell it, I spent so many years in anguish about it. I had so much shame about it, and thought that David and I were humans who had failed at life. Kept arguing that it should have been different, and we should have been different, and we should have made different decisions, and that good people don't do this, right? And from that shameful embarrassed place I could never move forward and say okay, now what? And coaching allowed me to just accept what is in my life and ask myself what now? It gave me freedom for the first time in many many years.

Okay, number three, another reason that coaching has been so valuable in my life is that it has allowed me to put down my weapons of war. Now, I know that sounds a little dramatic, but for me it is absolutely how I feel about it, and I see this in two ways.

First, it allowed me to stop fighting with the people in my life. Now let me say I am still human, and I have given you lots of examples on this podcast of how I still think thoughts that create a little war, or make me defend myself. But now I see every time how to stop the fighting, how to get to peace, how to say I'm sorry, and try again. And that wasn't ever available to me before coaching. I was always angry and I couldn't ever get to peace.

16:06
I felt like everybody was out to get me and I couldn't win. Coaching taught me that there's only ever a fight because of how I'm thinking about it. There's only ever conflict and anger because my human brains constant instinct to protect itself from danger, and I can be onto that. I can be onto my own brain, and I'll have to fall for that. And this awareness of course is still growing in me, sometimes I see it early and I can change the way I'm thinking about it. Sometimes I see it in the middle and I can reverse course, and sometimes I don't see it till after as we know.

But now I always see it. I always see where I create the war, and coaching has also allowed me to put down the weapons I use against myself. I no longer have to beat myself up, or disparage myself for the things that I mess up. I see myself as I am, both flawed, and awesome. Both broken, and whole. Both learning, and also thriving. I am all of it, instead of just seeing myself as a list of failings, I see myself in the middle of my learning process and I am proud of what I am learning and the ways that I am growing. That is a huge change for me.

Okay, number four, another valuable thing that coaching has taught me that goes along with that idea, is the idea that we are supposed to be having a 50/50 experience. We are supposed to be having negative emotion. Now, I know maybe this seems obvious to you and from the first lessons about Adam and Eve, I should have picked up on this. But I spent so many years thinking I must be doing it wrong, and there must be something wrong with me, because I was sad, and discouraged, and anxious, and frustrated, and I thought I had to solve for all these things and I could never solve for all of them. I thought if I could just be good enough, or positive enough, or loving enough, then I could be happy. And I was always just like trying to beat myself or run myself to death so I could finally get to happy. When I found out that I wasn't supposed to be happy at least not 50% of the time, I could just breathe again. There was freedom from a room that I didn't even know I was locked in.

18:24
Okay, and the next one that goes along with this is the freedom that coaching offers us from judgment. I learned because, I could stop judging myself, I no longer felt a need to judge others. I realized as I accepted this like, new perspective about myself that I really am doing the best that I can, even when it's not that great. And so is everyone else, that is a beautiful thing. I realized that my earth life learning experience was just that I was learning, and so was everyone else. What they don't know yet, they will learn and I don't have to be the one to point out to them. What I don't know yet, I will learn and I don't have to judge myself for not knowing it yet. This is true freedom coaching lets us escape the trap of judgement.

Okay, number six, coaching is so valuable to me because it has helped me be honest and see the truth. Now, what do I mean by this? So, one of the most valuable things we learned through coaching is that we are 100% responsible for our experience, for our feelings, and for the experience we have in our life. I spent so much of my life blaming my experience, and my results on other people, and the way they treated me. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm responsible for other people's actions, but I am responsible for how I think about those actions and what I make those things mean about me. When we make other people, or the circumstances in our life responsible for our emotions and our experience, we are in a sense locking ourselves in a room we can't get out. They've locked us in and we have to wait until they are different, and unlocked the door for us. When we think they make me feel this, and this, and this, we've locked ourselves in. And I love that my coaches always call me on this, not because they don't love me, but because they do right so that I can free myself. They are always trying to show me the way out, and that is by taking responsibility for my own experience.

So the other day I was talking to my coach about something that was happening to me, that I felt was like out of control in my business, and I was like really upset about it. I was getting all worked up, and I was using my hands, and I was working myself into a frenzy and she said "Okay stop. We don't have time for this. You need answers and we're not going to find them indulging in self-pity."Like, so helpful right? Coaching shows you the truth. You're not gonna find answers by indulging in self-pity. I love that so much. I am responsible for all of it and coaching shows you how to own your experience without blaming yourself for your experience. Owning it gives you power. Blaming yourself keeps you stuck in the room forever. Good coaches show you the truth.

21:26
So, I was thinking about how last year I had to do some physical therapy for some back pain that I was having. And my physical therapist would always have me work on my posterior tilt. He's like "you got to contract those muscles so that you're putting less strain on your lower back." And so he would have me do these exercises and even give me these exercises. Then he would like walk across the room to help somebody else, and then he'd say "okay, finish these exercises and then we'll finish the treatment." And so like I would be doing the exercises and from across the room he would yell at me like "posterior tilt! posterior tilt!" Like he could tell when I was doing the exercises and I wasn't all in. He could tell when I was cheating a little bit. He could tell when my posterior tilt it wasn't what it should be.

He called me on it every single time, even when I thought he wasn't watching he would come out from the other side of the room "posterior tilt!" Like he always knew and that's how I feel about my coaches as well. They always know, they call me on my stuff. They want me to have the best life possible, they want me to have the best results, they want to reduce my pain, and they know that the way that I do that is by being honest with myself and taking responsibility for all of it.

Okay, number seven, coaching has been so valuable to me as a mother. It has changed completely the way I mother, and what I think about myself as a mother, and this in turn has changed the relationship I have with all of my children. For example I used to base my success as a mother on my children's results, on their outcomes on what was happening in their lives.

23:06
And this was such a painful way to see things for both me and them. For me because it made it hard to just love them completely, without being tied to their outcomes. When I made their choices means something about the way I was doing my job, or how I was measuring my success, then all of that, how I was doing as a mother, was suddenly out of my hands. And it made me really terrified of the choices that they were going to make. And not only that but it felt terrible for them, because not only did they have the responsibility of making their own choices, they also had to worry about their mother's emotional well-being, and that's a lot of unwanted pressure. They have enough on their plate without having to be responsible for whether or not I was a good mother. Coaching allowed me to stop worrying about my children and their choices. That isn't my job. My job is to love them and to teach them. Their choices are theirs, and they will make the exact ones they need to in order to learn the lessons that they came to learn.

And I just get to love them as they are. As they choose. Now, do I suffer when they do?Yes! I do because I love them, but I don't suffer because of them, or because of what they do, and what I make it mean about me as their mother.

This has changed the relationship because I am no longer operating from fear. I am operating from love and trust that they will live the life they were always meant to live. And when they call to ask for help or advice I can just show them their thinking without being attached to their choice, or needing it to be the right one for them. They know what's best for them, I can just love them and trust that.

So just the other night Caleb called and he said like "I need some coaching." And so I talked him through it, we coach for quite a while as he worked through this decision in his life and we got to the end of it and I climbed in bed with David and he's like "Does he feel better?" And I'm like "Maybe not, but he's on his way." And then I said to David "did you get your money's worth?" Like all the money that I've invested in coaching, that I'm able to be in this place with my children where I can help them from this clean space of not needing to like make sure they're the right choices for them, but that they know what's best. So I was kind of teasing David. I said "did you get your money's worth, because I did." It always pays me back, the money that I have invested in coaching always pays me back, again and again, and I see it so much in my mothering

25:44
Okay, number eight, coaching has shown me that change is only one thought away. And I used to find a flaw in myself, many flaws in myself, and I would think that's going to take years to fix, and in fact I knew that was right because I had been trying for years to fix all these things with no success. But coaching showed me is that change can happen instantaneously, because change happens when you believe something new. And for each one of us that will happen at different rates but it can be fast.

Change can be as fast as choosing to believe something new and it can happen in an instant. And going along with that idea, another thing that has made coaching so valuable for me, is that more than anything else in my life it has shown me my potential. My coaches see and they're continually showing me that the only thing that limits me is my own thinking. They know that anything is possible if I can overcome my own doubts and disbelief, and so that makes my potential as limitless as my willingness to push those boundaries. And that's what they're helping me do. They're helping me push the boundaries of my own limited thinking. And I've seen this in every area of my life, my weight, my money, my business, like you guys, I have a business! That is a sentence I never thought I would say in my life, right! I'm doing things that I never thought were possible. All because coaching was able to show me my potential.

Okay finally number ten, the most valuable thing that coaching is given me is the ability to really apply the gospel of Jesus Christ, which I love with my whole heart, in my life. I have read the scriptures, I have listened to the prophets. I know what to do, I know the way to live. I know I'm supposed to love one another, I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor and myself, and my God but I just don't know how.

27:52
Over the years I tried, and tried, and tried, to love but it was another locked door. I would beat myself against the door, because no matter how hard I tried to love my humanness, my selfishness, my vulnerability, would always get in the way. And I didn't know how to let go of being right, and feeling hurt that I could pick up love instead. And of all the things that coaching has given me this is the most valuable thing that I have learned, how to love.

That love is always a choice I make with my mind. That there's always a way to love through my mind, and this is the key that changed everything else for me.

And I know I've told you this story before but a couple of years ago when I was able to do some deep dive coaching, I just I finally like was able to understand that. Understand how to love. And I remember talking to my friend Dena Rutter after the conference and she was just like "Holy cow you're a different person!" She's like "the love is just pouring off of you." And truly, that is truly how I felt. I felt changed by love because, I finally learned how to access it.

That was a lot, right? But I want you to know I truly believe in the value of coaching. Coaching shows you the way out. Coaching gives you permission to move forward, no matter what. Coaching stops the war with yourself and others. Coaching gives you the freedom to feel terrible to feel negative emotion and be okay with it. And it gives you the freedom from judgment. Coaching made me responsible for my experience and made me a better mother. Coaching has shown me that change is possible and that my potential is limitless. And, coaching has shown me how to be able to access love, real love, and become the disciple of Christ that I really always wanted to be.

And really I could just keep going. I love coaching!

30:08
There is truly no end to the value of coaching in my life and I want you to know that this value is available to every one of you. Coaching is an investment that never stops paying me back, because I have learned that no matter how stuck I feel, or how trapped I may be, the way things are, is never the way things have to stay, and that my friends is 100% awesome. Sign up for our free coaching session and I'll share some of this incredible value with you.

I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever. As your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay

And that my friends is 100 percent awesome!