Season 5 Episode 4: Coaching at 40

When is it time for a Life Coach?  You’ve got a big, beautiful and full life.  But what if you want more?  Or you aren’t even sure what you want?  In this episode of Coaching and a Cup of Tea with Mummabear, Master Certified Life Coach Melissa Wiggins talks with EmpoweredLife coaching client, Hope. Grab a cuppa and listen in as Hope shares why she made the commitment, her experience with Empowered.Life and why she's coming back for a second round.

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Melissa Wiggins:

Hello, lassies and lads, welcome to Coaching and a Cup of Tea With Mummabear, and I'm so excited because I have one of my favorite clients ever. I'm so pumped she's here. I have Hope and I would love for Hope to just give us a little introduction about who she is and how she ended up in empowered life.

Hope:

Hi, coach.

Melissa:

I love that you called me that. It's great. I'm just like, "I love it. I am coach. That's right."

Hope:

I've met coach several years ago when our kids were in kindergarten together. So I knew of her always was attracted to her infectious personality, followed her on social media. And then recently I got to turning 40 and saw her EmpoweredLife stuff and coaching. I was really intrigued but scared and a little like, "Should I do it? Should I not do it? Do I want it? Do I not want it?" So I think for me, I was just looking for some purpose. I was looking for not winging it. I wanted to get intentional and be me and kind of ask myself what do I want and see what that did and kind of focus on me and not the survival mode of young kids.

Melissa: I love that you say that you were scared to do it because I remember when I signed up for my first coaching and it was $10,000, and it was a massive investment, same as empowered life. And I remember just being so scared. And it's like, when we talk about in the program, right? Our feelings can win or we can win, right? So I always think about, if I want to win, I can feel scared, but I also have to do it anyway, right? It's like that's how I get to win and not allow my feelings to win. And I love that you say that you were scared because I think that a lot of people are scared when you invest a big amount of money, right?

Hope: Yes. And I think I was scared of what I would find, what we would talk about. And then I was scared probably at the time of people pleasing. What are people going to think when I tell someone I have a life coach? Jacob is, "Oh, is there something going on?" But it's all about me, right? It was all about what I want for me, no one else. And just pouring into who I am and what's next for me as my kids get older and I'm trying to find goals. I didn't know how to write a goal until I came to you, for real.

Find the FULL transcript here: Season 5 Episode 4: Coaching at 40

Transcript

Melissa:

Hello, lassies and lads, welcome to Coaching and a Cup of Tea With Mummabear, and I'm so excited because I have one of my favorite clients ever. I'm so pumped she's here. I have Hope and I would love for Hope to just give us a little introduction about who she is and how she ended up in empowered life.

Hope:

Hi, coach.

Melissa:

I love that you called me that. It's great. I'm just like, "I love it. I am coach. That's right."

Hope:

I've met coach several years ago when our kids were in kindergarten together. So I knew of her always was attracted to her infectious personality, followed her on social media. And then recently I got to turning 40 and saw her EmpoweredLife stuff and coaching. I was really intrigued but scared and a little like, "Should I do it? Should I not do it? Do I want it? Do I not want it?" So I think for me, I was just looking for some purpose. I was looking for not winging it. I wanted to get intentional and be me and kind of ask myself what do I want and see what that did and kind of focus on me and not the survival mode of young kids.

Melissa:

I love that you say that you were scared to do it because I remember when I signed up for my first coaching and it was $10,000, and it was a massive investment, same as empowered life. And I remember just being so scared. And it's like, when we talk about in the program, right? Our feelings can win or we can win, right? So I always think about, if I want to win, I can feel scared, but I also have to do it anyway, right? It's like that's how I get to win and not allow my feelings to win. And I love that you say that you were scared because I think that a lot of people are scared when you invest a big amount of money, right?

Hope:

Yes. And I think I was scared of what I would find, what we would talk about. And then I was scared probably at the time of people pleasing. What are people going to think when I tell someone I have a life coach? Jacob is, "Oh, is there something going on?" But it's all about me, right? It was all about what I want for me, no one else. And just pouring into who I am and what's next for me as my kids get older and I'm trying to find goals. I didn't know how to write a goal until I came to you, for real.

Melissa:

I love that. And now you have an amazing model, which is obviously the best model in the market because I designed it so clearly it's amazing. But I love though. It's so good. So to the listeners, we create goals within one of the modules in our six months together. And we really get very detailed on every single aspect of visualizing the goal, who is taking ownership of the goal? What is the timeline of the goal? However we're going to track it. There's a very specific model that I designed. And yeah, it's just funny that you see that, right? Here you are about to turn 40, but you haven't set goals. Well, you set goals all the time now and I love it. It's awesome.

Hope:

Yes, for sure. I think I was just in survival of little kids and now it's like, "Wait, what's my one year plan? What's my three year? What's my five year? I need guidance." I wanted guidance and some confidence building to help me do it.

Melissa:

It's funny when you say, right, like even joining a coaching program for you, had you in all the feelings of like people pleasing like, "What will my husband think? What will my mom think? What will all these people think." And you and I have talked a lot about the relationship between perfectionism and people pleasing and where that takes us. How do you feel?

            If you had to rate how your people pleasing was with zero to 10 before you started the program versus how you are now in the final month of the program, where would you rate your level of improvement or how much energy you spend thinking about what everybody else is going to think about your decisions?

Hope:

I think it's reduced by half, I would say. I don't know where I am on a scale. I know it's in me and what other people think and all of that, it was definitely a forefront going in. And I think now, it's at least down less than 50% of my energy, for sure. I think coaching has given me a confidence in what I'm... It probably goes back to us finding my values at the very, very beginning and building the foundation and going, "Oh, yeah, that's me. That's who I am." And just owning it and then getting my voice to speak it and then not have the fear of what someone's going to think or say.

Melissa:

Yeah. And I think you've just got to know yourself, right? That's where the confidence comes and it's like, okay, for, for the lesson or how can you be X number of years old and not know yourself? But when you live on autopilot, when you just keep operating and keep going and you don't have the power of pausing, and that's what I feel like Empowered Life, is it's like a six month hiatus on doing autopilot nonstop, right?

            And instead, just pausing and being like, "Oh wait, what do I like, what do I want? What are some things I can do to get myself there?" And sort of bridging that gap between, "All right, this is where I'm starting, Melissa. This is where we're at, and this is kind of where I want to go." And I think most people came into the program, not really knowing like where they were.

Hope:

I agree.

Melissa:

And now I feel like everybody is badass, knows where they're going, what they're doing. I have chills. Even just last week or two weeks ago when we were doing our live event and we were all together and sitting around the table during the thunderstorm that completely freaked you out. It was adorable. But all of us together and that energy in the room, I don't know. It's just hard to explain, but it was so beautiful.

Hope:

It was very comforting. And one of the things I wrote down was, living in... Being a corporate working professional, going work from home and being remote and not having a team anymore. I really felt like Empowered Life gave me this inner circle where I could put my energy in and feel like I was a part of something. I've lost that in my job. And I think that has impacted me a lot to have a voice and some somewhere to go and people to talk to that are on my level and want to grow the way I do. I think that was a big thing.

Melissa:

100%, right? There is such a calm and bond being in a room of people who are growth minded, who are primarily A type people, right? Like we're high achievers, right? We want extraordinary, we want empowered lives. That's what we're seeking. And sometimes we get lost in how can we find that? And it's like Empowered Life gets you back on the path, right?

            You're back on the map. It's almost like you kind of went off course for a while. What is that called, off roading? And you got back on, but you got back on and then there's other people there on the path with you, right? We're together. And I think that's just the power of the group. Having accountability having weekly calls coming together and supporting each other.

Hope:

Yes.

Melissa:

You want to talk about values. That's a value of melissawiggins.life. That is the value of my company is connection, right? It is empowerment. And I believe that we can do that faster and stronger together, right?

Hope:

I agree.

Melissa:

Team. I love team. We're a team. We are.

Hope:

Yeah. It's a support circle with like-minded people invested, right? So there's a commitment. And it just, the more you kind of take the risk and pour in, you're going to get so much out. I think that was the hardest part was going deeper, being uncomfortable. And then it was instant growth when you would get me there. But the hardest part would be committing to that, doing that and showing up in those moments.

Melissa:

And you did though. You showed up, and that is something we talk a lot about in the program, right? What am I responsible for? What do I own? What is my part, right? Those are important questions. We have to ask ourself because it's so easy to put our joy, put our life, and put our happiness in the hands of other people, right? And it's like Empowered Life is about taking that back, right? And saying, "No, I'm kind of responsible for these things. And Melissa told me I have to write down all the things I'm responsible for and shit, there's a lot," right?

Hope:

They're all true. And it's so valid and so real when you actually see it on paper. It makes sense. But you have to take the time and step back and think about it and trust it and say, I... One of my aha moments is that I am responsible, right? My feelings, my attitude, my actions, it's all me. And I don't know if it's the people pleasing or if it's the fear of being liked, right? I would want to control someone else's reaction or someone else's feelings or someone else having a bad day. I'd want to take it on. And so the, I am responsible is ingrained in me now of, "Wait a second. That's not my energy. I need to put it somewhere else."

Melissa:

I feel like it is such a brutal lesson, right? It is like, "Wait, what? Are you serious? I am responsible for how I feel and my husband didn't make me mad? What? I chose to be mad?" I remember getting those lessons early on in my own coaching journey and being like, "No, no, no. My husband totally me off. Absolutely, he made me mad." And then being told, "Oh no, Melissa. You are choosing to react that way. You're choosing to respond that way, right? You are giving your happiness and putting it in charge of someone else's hands instead of your own. And it's the best, worst lesson ever.

Hope:

I completely agree. Going, "What the heck?" And then owning it and going, "Okay, it's valid." And then changing or changing our thought, right? Yeah. Another big coaching thing is thought reset, thought detoxing. My brain now, if it gets crazy, my monkey mind starts going all over the place. I can write down a detox and just get my hand back on what's real, what's not, and call myself. So I do a lot more journaling now or just a lot more quick like, "Wait a second." Catch myself before I physically feel anxious and stressed, and then that turns into yelling at my kids or impatient with Jacob, and I'm just so much more aware.

Melissa:

I think when I was designing the program, one of the things that was very important to me was just, I spent a lot of time thinking about what are the things that my typical client thinks about every day? What takes up their energy every day? What consumes them? What things can I design for them, create for them that will make their life easier, right? I feel like we all have these big, beautiful lives, right? The life we dreamed of, where we're married, or we have great jobs, and we have kids, and we have all these different things that we wanted and beautiful life.

            And when we get in these different modes of where things don't feel easy, what are some very easy tools that we can use... That we can think about in our brain, right? And even the votes and the spear and these different tools. I spent so much time thinking, "What would I remember when I'm sitting in my car in car lane and can't get this thought out of my brain? Or if I want to say it a goal, and I know I want to say it, what is a simple way I can do it?" And it's the same with the thought detoxing and the thought resets and all those things. I just really wanted it to be easy and understandable and memorable.

Hope:

You did that. You did that. They're calming. Coaching has impacted me in a sense of I've slowed down. And I think it's the awareness of my thoughts. It's catching myself before I spiral. And I'm slowing down in the moments instead of racing to finish the next thing, comes with all of that, making it easy, memorable, but it's a slower pace. It's a more present mindful kind of coaching too, I think, built into that without, I don't know if you realized that, but...

Melissa:

I think I just think that everybody comes sort of trying to figure out how to be present, how to be more conscious. And I don't think it's one simple thing. I really do think the way the program is designed that it is the brain training elements of it that are intertwined with action, tangible things that you can do. You can't think yourself conscious, right? You can't be like, "I will be present. It doesn't work like that. There's just things you have to do, and it takes time and it takes practice. And the reason why it feels easier to you now, Hope, is because you showed up for the last six months. You never missed a beat. You never missed a video, you never missed a call. You were just all in and it shows in how different you show up now.

Hope:

Yes.

Melissa:

And it's beautiful. I love it. Okay. So what do you feel has been like your biggest takeaway from the last six months? Doing the work essentially

Hope:

Biggest win, biggest takeaway, I think, and we've talked about it, finding this peaceful confidence. One of my values is peace, and we were working on me trusting that and having this confidence of who I am and moving forward. So finding my values really that first, what? Month or six weeks of just kind of reading and thinking and making time, putting time on my calendar or space for myself, I did commit to that, and I was focused on it. So I think once I saw that in me, finding the values.

            And then the biggest win is really the thought resetting and the thought detox, and just getting that mind, like your mind at 3:00 AM going all these different ways, really listening to it was just a big win. And knowing, what do you say? Are your thoughts true? Are they helpful? Are they just really simple questions to say, "Okay, just get me back in line?" It could be anything, worrying about kids and doctor's appointments and stuff like that, or work or so many areas. It just is a very simple habit that I've formed and will do all the time every day.

Melissa:

So I love it. And I love that you use that too. What I see for you moving into another round of empowered life is you using spear more, right? Taking that first part and then doing more self coaching, right? Because I do feel like you have got very good at asking yourself the right questions, right? You've listened to me, do it for so long now and asked you very simple, easy, specific questions that get your brain thinking. And I think going through the next six months, I just see you pushing into that more. And I feel like that's why I put that specific tool in a later module, because I really want everybody to use the thought reset and the thought detox every day, all day to get to that point.

Hope:

Yeah. I think when I was thinking about what I want in round two, I wrote down action and I think it was more of like, okay, I know my thoughts I'm aware. Okay. So let's have the hard conversations that I get nervous about. Let's have the boundaries that I want to set to support my values in this foundation I built. So I definitely thought action and all those areas, like you said, I've learned them and I practice them and I'm writing them, but it's the next step.

Melissa:

Yeah. And how do they impact, my actions and my results and what do I want those to be? And then looking at the goal setting module and all the goals you set there and then seeing like, how does that line up with all these other pieces, right?

Hope:

Yeah.

Melissa:

You're amazing. I'm so proud of you truly.

Hope:

It's great. I'm doing what I can to empower those around me.

Melissa:

I love it.

Hope:

Just trying to make it a part of my day of these tools, and I think it's just the commitment to practice it and invest in it, and I want to give myself the whole year to truly know what to do, but then action it and just really do some of these things that we've talked about are my goals. If I have one year, three year goals, moving on them and being accountable. I think investing in myself holds me accountable for it and puts it at the forefront.

Melissa:

It really does. You are doing the work though. And I think that's what I love about coaching, right? It's like, if you want it, you can have it. You just have to do these couple easy things. It's not overly complicated. It's just making it a priority in order to move your confidence up, in order to look at those goals and know, "Oh, I can write it down, but I also am going to achieve it."

Hope:

Yes, right. [inaudible 00:20:44], visualizing and writing it. And then it's like, "Okay, let's do." And getting there.

Melissa:

I love it. All right. What would you say to someone that is thinking about doing Empowered Life?

Hope:

I would tell them that... Let's see. I'm going to go with why should more women do coaching?

Melissa:

Why should more women do coaching? Yeah.

Hope:

For me, it was how I feel that the moms or the mothers or the working professionals are doing for others, right? So I finally want to say, what do I want, right? That's valid and real. So I think it's investing in that, and you get to answer that question. And I think the coaching part is the safe space for you to kind of strengthen your true self and find those answers with confidence, and empowering you are. Yeah. So, that's one. And I think if you're... I think it goes back to having the group setting and having those around you that want the same things. And everyone's has that same uncomfortable feeling at the beginning. And you don't realize how similar you are until you start talking to everyone and want the same thing. You're going, "Oh, okay. I'm not alone," but it's empowering, right?

Melissa:

Right.

Hope:

You have this sort circle people to talk to about it. And I met Karen who literally lives two blocks from me.

Melissa:

I know it's just so crazy and amazing.

Hope:

You just find these people on this network is one thing. And I think listening to people's stories and coaching, you get different points of views and you don't realize where one connection could just help your story, even though the story's completely different, just finding similarities. And given that opportunity to meet someone you wouldn't meet in a coaching setting is something I valued. And then again, all of us working from home that are working moms or moms that need... Are looking for a group of supportive people. Coaching has done that for me too, to feel like I have a voice or that I have a part of something where I've lost that again at my job. So I was-

Melissa:

Yeah, it's funny, right? You're in a corporate world, but because of the working from home element, right? There's that feeling of the connection piece can often be lost and it can feel lonely. And I definitely have noticed that with you and some of the other women where it's like, it wasn't like I designed thinking about that so much, but it just became a natural byproduct of doing the work as a group.

Hope:

Sure. Yeah. And I think when I came to you and wanting coaching, I was scared, but I just felt kind of stuck and lost. And I came to him like, "I think I'm just having my midlife crisis at 40." Just was looking to cling onto something with purpose or a group of people that my current job has lost with not going into an office and having a team and things like that. Just something I had lost that connection, which is a value.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Hope:

Right? This belonging feeling. So on top of wanting to build up, forgot who I was. I was looking for more than that, I think.

Melissa:

Well, I am so glad, lastly, that you believed in Empowered Life and Coach Mummabear and that you're here, and that you're going to be back again for the next round. And I am just so proud of you. Thank you for coming on and talking with us on Coaching And a Cup of Tea With Mummabear.

Hope:

You're welcome.