Episode 81: Transformation Through 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 thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast Universe! Welcome to Episode 81 of the 100% Awesome Podcast, I'm April Price, and I'm so happy to be here on the podcast with you. I heard from several of you this week who told me that the podcast is helping you in your life, and I am so glad. Before I hired my own coach, I listened to a couple of different podcasts for about five months. I actually binged those podcasts for about five months before I believed in what they were teaching me enough to try coaching, and really before I believed in myself enough to be able to try coaching. And I look back, I am so grateful that those podcasts were there to help me start to shift the way I thought about myself enough to be able to get to the next step.

And the next step for me was coaching, right? It was actually hiring a coach, and investing in myself, and in my brain, and making that investment was like a signal to myself, and to the universe at large, really, that I believed that I could get a transformation. That I believed that something else was possible for me, that I didn't have to settle for that half-lived life full of fear, and unmet expectation, and sort of like generalized disappointment to myself, right? Hiring a coach was a demonstration of my growing belief, and so, if you're not there yet with your own belief, I hope this podcast is helping you to nurture the little seed of belief inside of you. And if you're ready to create the changes that you want, and get the life you want, then I encourage you to sign up for my new group coaching program, and really apply the things I talk about here on the podcast in real ways.

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When we actually hire a coach, it's a whole other level of learning, right? As my coach always says, "It's the difference between reading about snowboarding, and strapping on a snowboard and going down the mountain." They are significantly different. There is learning about your brain, and then there is really examining it, and reprogramming it. So, I really do believe that a single shift in thoughts can change your entire life. And I'm going to give you some examples of that today. But when you have a coach, you get those shifts in your thoughts again, and again, every week. My coach helps me shift myself concept just a little bit more, and those little shifts start to add up. As Stacey Beyman says, "Those shifts compound. They stack up." But not only do they just add up, they start to have an exponential effect on your life, changing it in bigger, and faster ways than you thought was possible. Those little shifts, and thoughts compound, and they radically start to change your self concept, which is just your beliefs about yourself, and that changes everything else.

So, today I want to talk to you about some of the transformations that I have received, specifically through group coaching. Some of the biggest shifts I have gotten through coaching have happened to me when I was watching other people be coached. So, one of the things that could happen when we watch other people get coach is our brain is not on the defensive, right? It's not being examined. And so, it's not on guard trying to defend its thoughts, right? And so, sometimes you can have these amazing realizations kind of sneak up on you, and have these really profound "A ha" moments where you can see what you're doing in your life by watching someone else get coached. You start to see exactly what that person is thinking, and doing in their life, is showing up in your own life, maybe in a different way, but that change in perspective helps you change your own thoughts.

So, I know that I have told you many times about when I heard Jody Moore coaching someone about their son, that he was supposed to be sad, and at the time, I was really struggling with one of my teenage daughters. And when she said that, that he's supposed to be sad, I was like, oh, she's supposed to be sad. She's supposed to be angry. I could see so clearly how me wanting my daughter to be happy, which I thought sounded like such a good thing, was making me judge my daughter for doing it wrong. And she could feel my subtle, and maybe not so subtle judgment that I wanted her to be different than she was. I was wanting her to be a different version of her, a happy version. I thought a happy version of her would be better, and that automatically made the version in front of me, the sad, angry version worse. It made her, as she was in that moment, less than ideal in my mind, and she could feel that from me.

So, that coaching literally changed my life. It literally changed the relationship I had with my daughter, almost instantaneously. She no longer had to be happy, and I didn't need her to be. And all the tension just left the relationship, and I was like, "Huh, I was creating all that tension? I was the problem? Right?" I could have sworn that the tension was created by her unhappiness, but it wasn't. It was created by my thought that she was supposed to be happy, like, holy cow, you guys, that was such a profound experience for me on so many levels. Whenever I think that things should be different than they are, I create suffering for myself. And that is the thought that can shift a lot of things in your life. Right? Whenever we want things to be different than they are, we create suffering for ourselves. So, I know you know that story, but I wanted to share a few more of the thoughts that I have received through group coaching that have compounded for me to hopefully show you first how effective, and powerful group coaching can be, and show you some of the massive shifts that you can get in your life through a group coaching program.

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And also, secondly, I want to give your own brain some shifts today to help you think about things a little bit differently right now. And so, as I share these ideas, I hope that you'll be able to get your own shifts in some of the same areas, or perhaps you can see how the way I was thinking about it might apply in a different way in your life. But will still give you some shifts in thought that will really help you to change some things. Okay, and so also let me just say that this is by no means an all inclusive list, right? I get shifts every single week in my group coaching sessions. And those helped me build my business, they help me love the people in my life better, and they are continually revealing my own brain to me. But as I just sat, and brainstormed, these are a few of the thoughts that came to mind that were like, that stood out to me, as really good examples of the power of group coaching. And I thought they might really help you in your own life.

Okay, so the first one, one of the biggest shifts I got really, really early on in my group coaching experience was hearing someone get coached about money. Now, at the time, I had a lot of shame about the way I had spent my money, and overspent my money, actually. I had a lot of shame, about my debt, and I had this whole kind of self concept that I was bad with money. And then I didn't know how to be an adult with money and that I was never going to be able to figure it out. So now, in all truthfulness, this might have been something that I never would have brought up in a one-on-one coaching session, right? Because I had so much shame about it, I don't know if at that point in my coaching journey, I would have felt comfortable talking to my coach about it. And that's why it was so valuable for me to hear someone else get coached on it. I didn't have to wrestle with my own shame while I was being coached, and and like I said before, my brain's defenses were down. And so, this coaching session created some really big changes for me.

Okay so my coach was talking to someone about their money, and their story was very similar to mine. The woman said, "We live paycheck to paycheck, and we have a lot of debt, and there's never enough money. I'm always like out of money, even though my husband makes a really good salary." Now, that part of my self concept with money too right? My husband makes a lot of money, what's wrong with me that I can't make this work? I have a serious problem here. So, my coach was coaching this woman, and she said whatever the amount is in your bank account right now, that is just the result of what you think about money. And I was like, "What? No, that can't be right." Right? The amount in my bank account has nothing to do with what I think about money, the amount in my bank account has to do with my husband's salary, and when he gets paid. It has nothing to do with what I think, right? So, the coaching session went on, and she went on to say, like, "Money just sits there. Money can't come or go, right? Money can't do anything without us. Money just sits there. We do things with money. We earn money, we spend money. But money just sits there. And whatever we do with money is coming directly from your thoughts about it."

And then she said one of the most powerful things that made the shift for me, she said, "And that's not bad, the amount in your bank account isn't bad. What you think about money isn't bad." And this is where I got the shift, okay? Because when she said the amount in my bank account was there because of my thoughts, I immediately felt shame that since the amount was bad, and since living paycheck to paycheck was bad, and since debt was bad, then my thoughts must have been bad. And it was all my fault that this bad thing was in my life. But she said, that's not bad, that's just interesting. And that you guys, kind of blew my mind. Because if the amount wasn't bad, and the amount was just interesting, then I could be curious about what I was thinking to create that amount. And if I could get curious about those thoughts that created that amount, then that would be the beginning of having new thoughts about money.

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So, I spent a few days with the idea that the amount in my bank account wasn't bad, It was just the result of my thoughts. It wasn't negative, it wasn't shameful, it was just interesting. It was just the tangible representation of my thoughts. My thoughts come to life, if you will, right? My thoughts manifested in the physical world, and that was just interesting. And I have to tell you, this was the beginning of a radical transformation of my bank account. I can't even tell you how different it is today. The other day I was ordering some Christmas presents, and I had this moment where I remembered a few Christmases ago when things were so tight, and I had to be like super creative about moving like the balances around on the credit cards just to be able to buy gifts. And like try to like accumulate enough empty space on one card to be able to buy some gifts, and then don't have to like time buying gifts with our paychecks, and plan out when I could pay certain bills, so that I could still buy gifts. And it was like this whole, like, stressful strategy that I had to start like in October, and like timing the paychecks to be able to buy gifts.

And my life now could not be more different, and I swear to you, the only thing I changed were my thoughts about money. And all of this started with the idea, with the little shift, that the result I was getting was created by my thoughts, and that wasn't bad, it was just interesting. So, I want you to try applying that to your own life, right? Wherever you have a result you don't love, your weight, your relationship, your money, your business, whatever, know that that result is created by your thoughts. And that's not bad, it's just interesting. And that is the first step to finding new thoughts that will give you different results.

Okay, so another big shift that I got from group coaching happened when I was listening to someone get coached about a cancer diagnosis. So, the woman who is getting coached was understandably upset by her diagnosis, and she was worried about the treatments, and she was worried about possibly dying, and leaving her children. And she said, "I'm just so devastated by this diagnosis." And my coach said, "Well, that's just because you think not having cancer is better than having cancer." Now, listen to that again. She said, "You think not having cancer would be better than having cancer." And the mom was like, "Yeah, I do. I think not having cancer would be better." And I was listening, and I was like, yeah, me too, right? Not having cancer is better than having cancer. And my coach said, "What if you're wrong about that?" She said, "A cancer diagnosis is neutral," meaning it's not good, or bad either way. It's not good or bad until we have a thought about it, and we can think it's negative if we want.

We don't always have to feel good about everything in our life, but we can also think that I might not know what's better than God who designed the curriculum of my life, might know what's better. And we might get all done with this life, and see that actually not having cancer wasn't better than having it, right? And she went on to explain that, of course, our goal with coaching is not to just be happy all the time, right? The goal isn't to just merely skip through life with no negative emotions. But having cancer was there, it was the situation, and that was going to be hard enough to go through, right? Having cancer would provide plenty of negative emotion anyway. And we didn't have to add to that by thinking it would be better if this hadn't happened. Because that thought, "It would be better if I didn't have cancer" doesn't change the cancer, it changes our experience of it. It makes us wish for another version of our life. It makes us miss the version we are living, it makes us feel self-pity or resentment, or mistreatment, or ripped off in some way, and we don't have to feel that way if we don't want to.

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And then she said something that created another huge shift for me. She said, "The T-line protects us from every circumstance in our life." Meaning the T-line, or what we choose to think, protects us from anything that could ever possibly happen in our life. I don't have to feel anything I don't want to, I am always 100% protected from any circumstance, by the way I choose to think about it. By my T-line. Which means no matter what diagnosis I ever get, I get to have any experience of it that I want, depending on how I choose to think about it. I am always protected by the T-line, and this thought alleviates so much stress, and fear, and worry, that is associated with the uncertainty of life, right? It was such a huge shift for me, I realized that I never had to be afraid of any circumstance. I never had to be afraid of anything happening, because no matter what, I am always protected by how I choose to think about it. And that doesn't mean that I won't feel sad, or devastated, or scared, but it does mean that I don't have to if I don't want to.

Okay, now I realize that actually all of these examples that I've given you are maybe hard to understand out of the context of coaching. And even as I share them with you, you might find your brain objecting, and arguing with these new thoughts, right? Like notice how in each case thinking my daughter should be happy, or thinking that the results of my money were really bad, or thinking that having cancer was worse than not having cancer, how our brain is like, "Wait, yeah. Aren't those true?" Right? But that's where we're learning to question our thoughts in coaching, because the thoughts that my daughter should be happy, and that my money situation is bad, and that having cancer is bad only adds to my pain.

None of these thoughts change my reality, none of those thoughts change what's happening. Doesn't change my daughter, doesn't change my bank account, doesn't change any diagnosis. The way I think about those things that I cannot change, changes my experience. And notice how the thoughts that gave me shifts aren't thoughts that my brain is likely to offer me on default, right? They aren't going to tell me that everything's awesome with my money. They aren't going to tell me that having cancer is better. They're not going to tell me that my daughter should be sad. Those thoughts are only available to me when I think about it differently. And a coach is there to guide me, and help me find those thoughts that my brain won't give me automatically. And that is so powerful. And I want all of you to have access to that in your life.

Okay, the last example I want to share is probably going to, like, trigger your brain a little bit as well. You might notice that your brain is resisting the thoughts that I'm going to share with you, but I want to offer it to you anyway, because I think for some of you might really, really help you. Okay, so, in this last example, there was a woman who was being coached about her husband's sugar consumption, right? He had diabetes, and so, he was supposed to be on a special diet, he was supposed to be on a restricted sugar intake, right? And she was saying how this was like so life threatening, and how he knew better, but he just kept eating stuff with sugar in it, right? Even though she had asked him not to, and even the doctor had told him not to, he just kept doing it. And she was talking to the coach and saying, like, how painful this was, and how it felt like he didn't care about what she thought. He wasn't listening to her, and he wasn't taking what she wanted into consideration, right? And he was just doing what he wanted. And I was like listening, and I'm like, "Yeah, totally right! Her husband is totally ignoring her wishes, and she has no control over that. And that didn't seem fair." Didn't seem right, it seemed like this is a problem.

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But my coach said, "What are you making your husband's actions mean about you?" Right? And the woman said, "Well, it means that he doesn't love me, or he doesn't listen to me. He doesn't love me enough to not eat the sugary stuff." And my coach said, "Other people's actions don't mean anything about us. Other people's actions are just the things they do. Other people's actions are a result of what they are thinking and feeling. Now, your husband isn't thinking, I don't love my wife, and then eating a donut. He's not thinking, I don't love my wife, and then feeling dislike, and then like going crazy on the cookies, right? This, like, doesn't drive that kind of behavior." And Coach said "We're all just trying to feel better. Eating sugar feels better to his brain for a moment. He gets a little dopamine hit, his brains, reward centers light up, and his brain has deeply ingrained biological reasons that tell him that eating the sugar is very important, it feels urgent, right? And then he gets the urge for sugar. The only problem here is that you are making that mean that he doesn't love you. That's the painful part. What you are making it mean, not the eating of the sugar, but your brain is interpreting it as he doesn't love you." And then she said, "What if your husband's actions aren't good or bad? What if they just are, and you get to make them mean anything you want? You get to think about them any way you want. Right now, the way you're thinking about them is causing you to feel hurt.

And I just want to stop here and tell you about this "A ha" moment I had when she said, "What if your husband's actions aren't good or bad? They just are." And I was like, "What?" Of course it's bad, right? And it's like stretches your brain to think about this for a minute, what other people do is 100% neutral in that what other people do are not good, or bad until we have a thought about it. What other people do is just a circumstance in your life, and then you get to think about it any way you want. Now, that doesn't mean that you should think it's positive if you don't want to, but it does mean that the meaning you give to other people's actions is what makes you feel the way you do. The meaning you give to someone else's behavior is what makes you feel hurt, or cared for, or ignored, or mistreated, or valued. It's the meaning we're giving those things. It means that other people are just doing things, and the interpretation is always up to us.

So, this again created some big shifts for me, because I could see so many things my husband did, or my kids did, or my friends, or my brother, or whoever, right? That I was interpreting in a way that was painful to me. So, this is kind of a silly example, but I told you about David hanging the Christmas lights, right? This came to mind because it's that time of year again, and we just had a discussion about it. And every year I ask him to please not to hang the Christmas lights because I'm sure he's going to fall, and die, and every year he does it anyway, right? And I make that mean that he doesn't listen to me, and he doesn't care about what I think, and he doesn't value my opinion. It doesn't mean any of that. His actions are neutral. His decisions aren't good or bad, they are just coming downstream of his thoughts, right?

Maybe his thoughts are, "This is easy, I can do this. I don't want to pay someone to do something I can do. I'm not going to get hurt. I know how to use a ladder, it's not that hard." Right? Or a million other possibilities. But the top one probably isn't, "I don't care what April thinks." So when we know that other people's actions are neutral, and we can interpret them any way we want, it allows us to see other people with compassion, and curiosity rather than frustration, and anger. It allows us to put our dukes down, right? And just get curious about what is fueling their behavior. It really is giving us freedom from something we can't control, right? Which is what other people do or say, and it puts us back in control over the things that we actually have power over, which is our thoughts, about what they're doing.

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When we think that other people control how we feel by their behavior, we are absolutely powerless. Then we end up needing them to behave in a way that makes us feel okay, and that is just a very anxious place to live our lives. It makes us totally dependent on their decisions. And this thought applies no matter how difficult, or painful, or negative, we think the behavior is right, whether it's drugs, or pornography, or overeating, or hanging the Christmas lights, it's all neutral. And this is an amazingly peaceful, compassionate space to live in. And it doesn't mean that I live there all the time, but the idea that other people's actions don't mean anything about me, and that other people's actions don't determine my feelings, can create some monumental shifts for you. It's what I call giving people their models back, right? It allows us to step out of their model, and to step into ours where all of our control is. When we really boil it down, what we are always learning, and coaching is where our agency is. Where we always have the right to choose, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of diagnoses, regardless of how other people feel, or act, or what they do, regardless even of our own behaviors, we get to choose how we think about all of it. And really understanding that agency makes all the difference. It really, really does.

Coaching is the most powerful answer to the most difficult problems. Small shifts week in, and week out from my own coaching, and from watching other people be coached is what has compounded over time to create a life I really love. They add up, and they add up exponentially, which I guess is like mathematically impossible, right? But the effects expand exponentially, and start creating changes in multiple areas of your life. I think one of our brains biggest objections to trying coaching is the idea that there's like too many things to change, and it will take too long. But because of this compounding effect of these thought shifts, is faster, and more comprehensive than you realize. It's always just your brain in the way, and once you have a coach show you that there is nothing you can't change.

Okay, I hope that helps you guys. I love coaching, I know you know that, right? I believe in coaching. I would never not have a coach, because it makes my life better in so many ways. For one, coaching always reveals to me that I am the cause, and I am the solution to every single problem in my life, which is pretty much miraculous. I think I also love it because my brain is a jerk, and coaching helps me not believe my brain's negative opinion about me. Coaching helps me do brave things in the world, and create, and take action where I otherwise wouldn't, where before, fear would get in the way. And coaching helps me change in all the ways that I want to, and acquire the character, and attributes that I want to have, not by doing more, but by thinking differently. Like all those things, I always wanted to be, right? Loving, patient, compassionate, kind, those are all accessible to me in ways they never were before. And so, in so many ways I feel like it's helping me become in all the spiritual, and eternally significant ways that I want to.

And I want that for you. If you want it to, I hope you will join me in my new group coaching program Made for More, where you can get coached, and you can see other people get coached every single week. And these thoughts, yes, can start to compound in your life so that you can get the most out of this life, and the next. The only thing in the way of anything you want is your brain. And there is a solution for that, that works every time, no matter what. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

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Applications for my group coaching program Made for More are now open on aprilpricecoaching.com Your brain was program for survival, but you were made for more than that. You were made for more love, and more accomplishment, and more joy right now. And I can show you the simple way to get all of that. Join me in Made for More where we will spend six-months coaching, and reprogramming your brain so that you can get the most out of this life. And the next go to aprilpricecoaching.com to apply. And I'll see you there.