#19: From Striving to Alignment: Returning to the Pace God Intended with Colt Charlebois

Ambition can build a beautiful life, and still leave the soul tired.

In this episode of Be Still & Live, I sit down with kingdom-minded coach Colt to talk about burnout, the red line we don’t notice until we’ve crossed it, and why choosing stillness may be one of the bravest leadership decisions we make.

Colt shares how chasing money, image, and approval led to exhaustion—and how a simple realignment (coach, speak, write) brought him back to work that felt life-giving. We explore the hidden drivers of burnout, what stress does to the nervous system, and how rhythms like breath, morning devotion, and Sabbath restore clarity and presence.

Rather than glorifying hustle, we ask deeper questions: Who am I becoming? What pace am I called to walk? What if rest is part of the strategy?

If your calendar is full but your spirit feels thin, this conversation is an invitation to slow down, listen, and return to a pace you can sustain.

Be still and live.

Connect with Colt: 

Website 

Instagram 

New here? Start with episodes 1-3: “Take Back Your Life”, "From Hustle to Healing",  and “5 to Thrive.” 

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Transcript

Aiming For Success And Meaning

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Now, you know, I'm not just a man trying to become successful. I'm trying to be successful in my peers' eyes, in my mentor's eyes, in the eyes of God.

Welcome To Be Still And Live

Gillian 0:10

If your days feel full, but your heart longs for more meaning, you're not alone. Between the screens, the schedules, and the never-ending noise, it's easy to lose your sense of peace. But what if the way forward isn't found in doing more? But in learning to slow down, to simplify, to be still. Welcome to be still and live. A podcast for individuals, couples, and families longing for calm, connection, and a more meaningful way to live. I'm Julian, speaker, coach, and founder of Soleil Health and Wellness. And I'm here to help you create space for stillness and step into a life that feels whole and good again. Today's conversation is for anyone feeling stretched thin by ambition, responsibility, or the pressure to keep going, especially when life looks successful on the outside, but feels misaligned on the inside. I'll be joined by Colt Charle-Bra, a kingdom-minded coach who works with driven leaders navigating burnout, busyness, and what he calls the red line. Together we'll explore what it means to slow down, ask better questions, and learn the pace God is inviting us to walk one day at a time. Let's begin. Welcome to Be Still and Live. I'm so grateful you're here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Oh, thank you. I'm pleased to be on the show today, Jillian.

Who Are Kingdom-Minded Leaders

Gillian 1:34

Colt as I was spending time on your work today, just um reading through your website and such, something that stood out to me was how clearly you name your role, not as someone who hands people answers, but as someone who helps them discover what already lives within them. And this really resonates with the whole message of be still and live in this podcast. And what I'm trying to share here, which is that clarity doesn't come from striving harder, but from slowing down enough to listen. You work with kingdom-minded leaders. Can you explain what that is?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah, for the most part, it's they're business owners. They own small businesses, they own medium-sized businesses, but they don't just want to turn a profit. They want to make a difference, they want to make an impact. And for most of my clients, they're Christians as well. And in their in their perspective, in our perspective, there's the kingdom of God is coming on earth as it is in heaven, as the Our Father prayer says. And so they want their work to be an extension of what God wants to do in our land. So for them, it's it's a higher bar, right? There's a lot more pressure sometimes because there's a moral pressure. There's a pressure to uh to do things perfectly, to do things well in God's eyes, and to make a difference and keep everything afloat. So that's what I would call a kingdom-minded entrepreneur.

Gillian 2:53

I love that, Colt. And this work is so important. I see that, and I see that men really do need to pull together to have this unified vision of what it looks like to be entrepreneurs that have this purpose that they have in common. You work with kingdom-minded leaders who have achieved a lot and often find themselves asking questions like, and you mentioned this on your website, why do I feel unfulfilled? How do I get off this busyness treadmill, you call it? Or questions like, is my marriage or my inner life going to survive this pace? So before we talk about leadership, burnout, or the red line that you call it, I'd love to begin where you so often invite others to begin, which is where are you finding peace in your life right now? Is there something that you're doing in your day-to-day life that allows you to come back to that place of stillness and peace?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Absolutely. I mean, foundationally for me, it starts with a morning devotion. And I have uh an amazing pastor. He's also Korean. And if you've ever known a Korean pastor, there's a prayer call every day at 5:30 a.m. And so, you know, he's relented for us a little bit. He does it at 6 a.m. But I have this place every morning where we get on and we're able to pray and just re-center ourselves around that piece. And so whether I'm on the prayer call or whether I'm you know doing it alone in listening prayer or stillness, having that time to connect with my father in heaven, you know, for me is is the thing that brings me both back to center so easily. So uh I would say that morning devotion, and then throughout the day, I have to carry that stillness. I have to carry that peace no matter how fast I'm going, no matter how many things are coming at me. So the moving at the pace of Jesus for me in my mind, it's like he's never seen running in the Bible, he's never seen running in the gospels. And so as you can see, this is very central to everything I do. But I want to move at the pace where my heart is at peace the whole time.

Gillian 4:56

Right. And that's a beautiful place to be. And I feel like this is something that we're all striving for, is to experience that peace within our daily life. But it's often challenging to do.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Not given. It's not a given, we'll have that.

Closer Than You Think

Gillian 5:08

No, it isn't. You speak directly to people who feel hollow even after doing all the right things. And this is something that I speak to as well. I usually meet people in that space of the disappointment they feel after they've done all the right things, they followed the program, and they're feeling unfulfilled. You remind them that they're closer than they think. Can you explain what this means to you?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, I think I've always had trouble marketing. You know, one of the things is that I work primarily with high performers. But what draws a high performer is high performers' language. Do more, grind, hustle. That's the antithesis of everything I stand for. And so uh I've always struggled with what the marketing message is because I believe that, you know, coin a friend's term, but the idea is rest to success. Like, if we slow down, we can actually achieve more. And when I think of the people that I'm working with, uh I'll use the analogy of a golf swing. A lot of times people are out on the golf course and they're hitting the ball and it's flying to the right every time. They call that a slice in golf. It's cruising to the right every time they hit the ball, and they don't know why. When a golf coach comes alongside of them, they're looking at the mechanics of the swing. There's a lot of different pivot points in a golf swing. And so what they realize is if you just pull the shoulder back, you know, drop the shoulder a little bit, bring the hip back, all of a sudden the ball starts flying straight. And so that's why I say they're closer than they think, oftentimes, to the breakthrough that they're looking for. They're coming up against that rev limiter, the red line that they're hitting. And there's usually just a mindset shift that they need in order to really break through in dramatic ways.

Gillian 6:50

Yeah, I agree with you. And and often that mindset shift is surrender, isn't it? Like we overthink things to death and we get so anxious and stressed out because we feel like we're doing it wrong or we're comparing ourselves to other people, or we're trying to keep up with the pace or the hustle of the world around us. But it seems that when you step into that space of stillness and you, you know, have that time committed to your devotions in the morning, and you're pulling that stillness into your daily life, that you just flow a little bit easier. And that's what I call surrender. It's stepping into that space where you don't necessarily have to control everything. You need to be in touch with the one who does have control and who will guide your next step.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

While I would agree with you, the word surrender is very foreign to many of those I work with, even if they're of the, you know, the faith nature, they understand the concept, yes, we must surrender our lives to God. They're driven entrepreneurs. So I have one client who's told me, you know, every day I wake up, Colt, it feels like I'm running on a treadmill with a bandsaw at my heels. What a picture. What a pic to live in that type of tension and energy. And as a coach, I hear that and I'm asking myself, is he really getting to where he's gonna be? Getting to where he thinks he's gonna get to, right? Is he on the right path? Is he at the right momentum? If you're living in that level of stress, are you accessing your best resources?

Surrender Versus Striving

Gillian 8:14

So we're kind of conditioned to believe that that's the way it's supposed to feel. Like we wear that as a badge of honor, don't we?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Oh, I did. I mean, I'll tell you, so I think I was I would have identified with the word driven for the majority of my life. And you can get into the nuances of why and how. I think there's a lot of insecurity growing up. Dad wasn't in the home, and so I looked for a lot of affirmation from others. And there was a friend I had in high school who his dad was a successful entrepreneur. And, you know, he got a lot of, he'd drive a brand new Jeep to school. Sometimes he'd take dad's Corvette. And, you know, to be honest, as a young man, he also attracted a lot of the good-looking women at school. And so I came to the conclusion to have everything that I want in life, the cool toys, the cool adventures, and and the mate of my choosing, so to speak, there would have to be something that attracted them all. And to me, the common denominator that I witnessed was money. If I could just become successful and have resources, everything else will fall into play. That was the lead domino. And so the drivenness to get that was what led me to my ultimate demise, I suppose, but or breakthrough, however you want to look at it.

Gillian 9:28

Can you share a little bit more about your story? Because I know you you did mention to me that you did have a breaking point where all of that crumbled. You pursued the money, you pursued all of that affirmation, but it didn't lead you to the best place. Would you mind sharing that story with us, Colts?

The Treadmill And The Red Line

Colt’s Burnout And Identity Shift

Purpose Clarified: Coach, Speak, Write

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Absolutely. Uh I started in, I'd done a few jobs beforehand, but I've always kind of had an entrepreneurial heart, wanted to, I started my first business when I was 16 years old, trying to get the mountain bike and snowboard gear that my friends all could afford. So I would come to school with catalogs and sell them stuff at the catalogs, get a little profit to buy my own stuff. But later on in life, I got into the real estate industry at age 25. And it's that's young for a real estate agent, but I was convinced that I was going to become one of the best in the city and really make a name for myself. And I joined a company that had written this book called Millionaire Real Estate Agent. And it was the blueprint and the model on how to earn a million dollars. And Jillian, for me, like earning a million dollars was the thing that, you know, the lead domino. If I could just get a million dollars, then I'll learn how to get to 10. But that took care of all of the base problems in my mind. That million dollars would do it. And so I launched into this career and I'm studying the model. And truthfully, I'm I'm a good realtor, and I would say I had a reasonably successful career in comparison to any job I might have attained in marketing or such like that. I I had gotten to the six figures at some point. But while I entered that phase, you know, of the career, I just kept like thinking I was failing all the time. Because as soon as I got to a new threshold, I would look to the person beside me who was doing more, you know, and think, I got to do more, I got to do better. And that weight began to stack up as the years went on. Long story short, in the midst of this, I went through a um a personal crisis where this is where I entered a faith relationship with God. You know, began this wonderful thing. Let's just cried out to God. I said, I got I can't do this anymore. I had tried flipping houses, I was distracted with a few things. I ended up owing like$100,000 by the time I was 28. And that was a spiritual experience for me. I said, Lord, if you're for real, you really gotta help me out. You gotta give me some guidance here. And I'll quit business if you want me to, but ultimately I just want to do what you call me to do, put me on this earth to do. And the unique thing that that began there was that I met some mentors, Christian mentors. These guys were successful in business, successful in life, well respected in the city. They were men that I would have paid to have lunch with. And yet they were pursuing me. They were showing me and uh pursuing me in ways that my dad didn't know how to, right? Teaching me things about business, about the faith, about life, and really raising me up. And it was it was an incredible experience, but the drivenness was still there. And so now, you know, I've I'm not just a man trying to become successful, I'm trying to be successful in my peers' eyes, in my mentor's eyes, in the eyes of God, right? And so I take all of that drivenness right into my relationship with God and find that here I am serving God, and I come to a complete burnout. Now, if you would have told me what burnout was, I would have thought, you know, take the weekend off. Don't be a schlup, you know, like get back to work. You you can do this, right? It's just it's a mindset thing. But truthfully, I couldn't get off the couch for like three months. Wow. And it it it came not because I was working 90-hour weeks, it came because I got very clear on what God was calling me to do. And the further I got from that truth, that clarity, the more the stress, the burnout, everything ensued. It was really interesting. So early in my my faith walk, I prayed a lot, God, what's my purpose? What's my purpose? What's my purpose? And through a series of events and some wonderful coaching that I was receiving, it became very clear three words coach, speak, and write. And I was so jazzed up, I was so excited to hear this. I dove right in and started coaching some other people in the office. And again, at the time I was in a real estate office, all of them double their businesses in one year. Double the amount of sales, double the amount. And the most interesting thing for me, it didn't feel like work. There was no grind, there was no hustle. I was like, this feels like play. How can this be? And I what I wish the story was that right at that point I made the decision. I went all in on coaching. I started a coaching company and here I am today. But that wasn't it. You know what crept in? That still, that that little annoying voice that says, you don't have the credibility to do this. You haven't earned a successful track record to go be a business coach. Despite the fact that I just helped five people double their business in 12 months, despite all that, I thought to coach the people I really want to coach, I'm gonna have to go back and earn a track record. And so I made this compromise. I call it the Abraham Effect. If anybody's ever read the story of Abraham, God gives him this vision. He goes about his own way to go to make it happen. I'll let you look up the story, but um it doesn't end so well. Well, I should say it ends it ends well, but not without a lot of grief. So I'm in this story and I make a compromise. I'm going to now build a sales team and I'm gonna coach my team members. Now, my coach, my my spiritual father, everybody kind of gave me a subtle warning against it. However, I still pursue it. And what's interesting is that the team, you know, over the course of 18 months, sold almost a hundred, just sorry, just over a hundred homes, 101 homes. And we grossed just shy of a million dollars. It was kind of the first stepping stone to everything I had always dreamed that I wanted. But yet the closer we got, the more burnt out and more frustrated, more resentful to myself. The more I resented being locked and stuck in this, you know, this thing I had committed to. I had promised all these people that we were going to do this thing together, and I didn't want to be there. And the catalyst was one of the guys in the team, after you know, he had had a couple good years of success, came to me and said, Colt, he was very nervous. He didn't want to share this because we had a great relationship, but he said, I feel like I need to go off on my own. The thing that I feared the most, okay, was happening. The team didn't want to be around me. The team was being disjointed, right? One of my top I had two top guys, one of them's leaving. I don't have the energy to rebuild this. My biggest fear comes to light. You know what happens inside of me while he's sharing this? I can't understand the emotions, but I am holding back a smile. I don't want him to think I'm a lunatic, but I like joy is coming up in me. And I'm like, what is going on? You know? So, but I was being released because I knew I wasn't gonna do it. Long story short, that's where it led to a three-month burnout. And um, and after that, I started to learn, you know, in that time of barely being able to function, I didn't know that, you know, after week one, week two, week three, I'm ever gonna feel better again. Like it was a little scary. Um, but equally blissful because there was no shiny object I could chase, right? No thing that I could drive towards out of my own need for approval. And in that space, you know, the Lord revealed to me the secret to my own stillness. And it was right in Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. What a revolutionary concept. If I don't want, I won't ever be driven. And so I'll pause there for a minute. I mean, lamenting on this big story. Any thoughts, questions, anything that's oh my gosh.

Rest To Success And The Slice

Gillian 17:45

Well, I I relate personally to so much of what you're saying here, Colt, and I know so many people can. This idea of you talked about in the beginning of um, if I could just, if I could just get to that million dollars, we live our lives this way. We're kind of trained to pursue life this way. If I could just find the right partner, if I could just land the right job, if I could just have that home and that family, if I could just, you know, reach those, that dollar amount so I can retire. But if we live our life constantly chasing that carrot, we're constantly feeling that sense of unfulfillment. But when you're in a relationship with God, you really are encouraged to go inward and to feel that sense of fulfillment in the moment that you're in with every moment that you walk into. Instead of pursuing something, you're cultivating that stillness and that peace right where you are. So my husband and I talk a lot about this. We call it pursuing order instead of pursuing something outside of yourself, looking at the most important thing to focus on first and building on that. And what I teach in Soleil Health and Wellness is start with that space of stillness. Start with cultivating that relationship with your creator. And when you surrender to that relationship, you will be given the next step forward. And when you live in that relationship of trust, where it's back and forth, back and forth. And with every step you take, where God catches you and shows you that, you know, He's got you, then you have you have the ability to take those bigger risks. But that doesn't happen until you build those muscles to be able to, you know, lift the weight, the weight that we're expected to live, the more that God puts on our plate. So I really appreciate your vulnerability and sharing that story because I think it's far more familiar than we're led to believe, especially in this midlife phase, you know, 40s, 50s, when you expect to feel like you've arrived, right? This is the point where everything gets easy. This is the point where everything makes sense, and we start to cruise. But I think the opposite happens. We have this inner friction where we're like, okay, I did all the things, I got all the things, and then we start to freak out because we're not feeling the way that we wanted to feel when we arrived.

Sabbath, Stress, And Brain Science

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Yeah. And the great threat of all this. So again, I'm working with entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and such. And the great equation that we're talking about here is they launch into their business because they want the freedom, right? They want more time to pursue what they're passionate about. Maybe they've had a corporate experience where they just felt like just so stuck in this exchange for money. And they say, you know, I want to do something I'm purposeful and passionate about. And they're good-hearted people. And yet they find themselves living in this red line day to day. They go to work and it's stressful because they have cash flow challenges. A team member didn't show up. Uh, they got clients that are upset about a delivery and they're trying to mitigate all that. And they go home and it's stressful there too. Because, I mean, their partner has expectations, their kids have needs, and time, they just feel pulled in all directions. I'm trying to do this wonderful thing. It's not just for me, it's for everybody, but yet I don't feel capable of it. And so scientifically, you know what happens here? The brain under stress transforms. Right. So the the prefrontal cortex, this is the area, the faculty that we need to solve our modern day crisis, right? Our modern day threats. We believe we're busy and it's an external challenge that's it's, oh, it's this client, it's this team member, it's this cash flow, it's all outside of me. And so the stress comes on, the prefrontal cortex, which we need to start, you know, reasoning, give us perspective on things. It's stripped of its resources because we're in that fight or flight mode. Some say the fight, flight or freeze, right? You've heard the third one. But in that place, like I either gonna book it, I want to hide, I wanna medicate with something, but certainly I can't access the resources that I need to solve this problem. And I think that's where God's design is bringing us. Back into a place of rest. You know, we look at uh right in the beginning of the Bible, Genesis. God creates the world, right, in six days. And what does he say at the end? You know, he looks back and he says, it is good. You know what he doesn't say? He doesn't say it is finished. He takes inventory on all that was created in that time and finds joy and finds pleasure in it. Now, I don't think that God stopped on the seventh day because he was burnt out and he needed to rest. I believe he did it for us as a model. Right? Hey, this is how I want you to exist. I want you to create for six days. And then I want you to have a day that is solely devoted to recalibrating with me and looking back on what you've created, not getting all your groceries done, doing the meal planning for the week, packing all the kids' lunches, getting all the workers up and put it it's it's like, no, there has to be a day where I'm just finding joy in what's been accomplished and staying rooted in that. And so, yeah, if we can understand how to live in that stillness, restore it at least once a week, find it once a day, and then carry it as best as we can throughout the day, the higher chance that we're gonna be finding more joy and fulfillment in the work that we do.

A Quiet Reset Interlude

Culture’s Pace And God’s Design

Gillian 23:27

Before we continue, I want to offer you a quiet pause. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, mentally cluttered, or like your mind never truly rests, I'd like to invite you into a quiet reset. Release the mental level, and release the mental level. Enough for yourself the gift of space and clarity. Thank you for taking that on us. Now let's return to the conversation. Absolutely. I I couldn't agree more, Colt. You said God's bringing us back to his design, and I I believe that is so true. We're feeling it as a society. We're feeling that something isn't working, and people are awakening. They're realizing, hey, we can't keep, we can't keep doing this. Something's off here. And I really truly believe that God is allowing us to feel this way. We're we're aching right now as a culture because we need to, we need to come back to that space of listening, that space of stillness where we're able to tune into our creator who knows what we need. And when we're able to do that, we return to that place of stillness and restoration. But again, we have that freedom to choose him and his way, right? We can continue doing what the way that we believe we we should pursue life. That is our choice. Or we can choose to pursue him. But when we act on that pursuit to choose to choose God, we feel, we feel a sense of peace, we feel a sense of joy, we feel that sense of fulfillment. And it's something that's undeniable.

Duty, Image, Ambition Traps

From Behavior To Identity

SPEAKER_02 25:29

I I think we, you know, we're talking a lot about the solution here. And sometimes it just, when you hear a lot of solutions from a lot of directions, there's just a smorgasbord of things that they, okay, how do I add all these things to my? Okay, yes, I know I need more stillness, maybe for someone that's listening that's uh uh, you know, believes in God. It says, yes, I probably need a daily devotion or I need a more regular one. Uh, all that stuff is true. I need to add all these things. If we're to step back into the problem for a second, I feel like it gives a little more awareness. You know, you and I have had similar journeys in this, but for someone who may be on the brink of it, we talk about why someone is redlining, why they're so completely stressed out. I see it through three different lenses. When I'm working with high-performance individuals, people that are responsible for, you know, small, decent-sized organizations, just important causes in general. You know, I see this three different lenses that are causing the constant return to stress and redlining. And the first one is that someone is operating at a belief system of duty. And so I had a uh partner at an accounting firm as a client. We'll we'll call him Andrew. And so Andrew's uh very high performing, him and his partners at their firm have over 50 employees. And Andrew is making a million dollars a year in billable hours, as are all his partners, but he doesn't want to do it anymore. The only trouble is he doesn't want to slow down because he doesn't want to be the partner that is, you know, slacking off, right? The partner who doesn't care, who's not as committed, because Andrew is very values-driven. Andrew wants to follow through in his word and he wants to, you know, care for the people he's made commitments to. And so all of the partners presumably want the same thing. They want to work a little less, but no one's able to communicate it because they're all driven out of this sense of duty. So that's one. The next one that causes this perpetual red line is image. Who do I think I need to be? What is the perspective? I'm governed by the perspective of others. And for me, that was a big part of my story. It's like who sees me? How do they see me, especially when I became a Christian, started wanting to look right at church? Like, how is my life? You know, is it am I living purity as a single man? You know, who's gonna ask me questions? Who's in my group? I want people to see me well. And that is my motivation. It's a little off when you get down to it. And the last one, probably the most uh misunderstood one, and I sometimes get an eyebrow raised, but the behavior here is I'm driving out of drivenness. Sorry, I'm driven, I'm driving out of ambition. You kind of alluded to this. It's these are the three lenses that bring us back to red line all the time. How do I stop living in the red line? Well, when I live from a place of I'm an ambitious person, and I give myself a little pat on the back for that, I feel like I got to go conquer every hill in front of me. My health, I gotta go, you know, sign up for the next best personal trainer. I gotta be on the best fitness program, I gotta be uh making the next big sale, landing the next big client. So when I operate out of those three lenses, I'm always gonna find myself in a perpetual red line. And the center of all of those, do you know what the heart what I believe is the cause of all of this life of extra stress and marital breakdown, health breakdown is centered around one word. You actually said it earlier. I believe the cause of all this redlining is striving. When we live out of a heart of striving, and again, we use those three lenses: duty, image, and ambition, we live out of a heart of striving. Nothing we ever do is going to be enough. The bar keeps moving. Every goal you set is never gonna make you feel the way you sh thought you would have felt when you achieved that. Now, my mentor was a professional football player, and he played in the NFL, then eventually came to the CFL here up in Canada, and he was at the Great Cup, and they were winning at halftime, and he steps off the field and he says to himself, I thought I'd feel different. You know, Tom Brady has even said this kind of stuff after winning all those circles, you know. It's just like, I thought I'd feel different. And so how do we feel different is the big question. What's the relationship to stillness that's going to lead us into feeling different?

Gillian 30:05

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but certainly I don't have all the answers, but well, it's it's um having that foundation before you pursue any of those things, being good with yourself, being good with your relationship with God, being okay with nothing, really, just existing, and having that be enough, and knowing that your identity is in God and that you're a child of God, and that in itself is enough. When we start there and we're okay with that, and then anything else is a bonus, then you can lose everything and come back to that space of peace. And I think that's really like that's what we're missing in our culture is teaching people this reality, this truth of who we are, teaching people about their identity as children of God. And when we truly embrace that, it doesn't matter what we build, what breaks down around us, we know that truth. And that's what keeps us grounded.

Stillness Builds Secure Identity

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Yeah, I love what you say. And I'm a thousand percent in accordance with you. This is also what makes my work so interesting and complicated, is that when I'm sitting across from a driven entrepreneur who is just completely worn down with redlining, um, telling him that 23rd Psalm is I shall not want, it's gonna be a foreign language to him or her. And so I've had to find a really interesting entry point, right, in order to start to teach these principles without uh just saying them as plainly as you and I are talking about them today. And in coaching, so we're both coaches, we've had some conversations about coaching, which is a lot of fun before this podcast. But in coaching, low-level coaching focuses on your environment and your skills. What actions are you taking? What are the outside influences? What skills are you missing? That is a baseline for coaching, and all coaches should be doing some sort of assessment of what's going on in your environment, what's influencing you, and how is that impacting your actions and your skills? And so as you upgrade in terms of people being coached, and I like to share all this because there's a a lot of skewed definitions of coaching on the internet. And everybody on Instagram is a coach nowadays and follow their program for breakthrough to success. I believe in the holistic art of coaching, which is questions-based. I'm asking you questions to help you discover what is your path. I can't have the answers of what your God-given calling is and tell you exactly what to do. That's foolishness. I have to help you discover it through questions and through the attempts that you're making to share experiences. So then you get into behavioral modification. It's where, okay, here's the behaviors, here's what I'm thinking. I need to change my thoughts. That is powerful coaching right there. When you start to learn what are the thoughts that are coming in and what are the actions coming out. How are my thoughts influencing my actions? I can start to make some tweaks to the thinking. But here's where a lot of coaching never arrives for most people is it becomes simply about behavior modification and not the identity shift. So someone believes that they need accountability to change. What they're saying is there has to be an external force that is forcing my behavioral change. And I'm not going to be able to stay consistently changed unless that force is in place. Now, I like to think of identity as you know, a runner. So I'm not a runner. Running is the most difficult exercise I ever do. I do do it, and I would like to be a runner someday, perhaps. But it's just, I'm not born to run, as they would say. But what I love about the runner is that when the weather's nice and they have a moment of time, a runner doesn't ask themselves, should I go for a run today? Why is that? It's because they have time and the weather's fair. They go for a run because they're a runner.

Gillian 34:17

Right.

The Still Small Voice

SPEAKER_02 34:18

That is the identity, or you know, one of the identities that they live in. A mother doesn't wake up and say, Should I care for my child today? They do it because that is their identity. They are a mother, you know, and so um when you live in that identity of the person that does the thing that you want to do, you don't need accountability. You become accountable to the mission, to the cause. And so the entry point for those that are striving for me is helping someone see who is the person that God is calling you to be in this equation? And how do you step into that identity? Because that's an inheritance. That's available to you. He hasn't called you here to suffer, he's called you here to seek him and transform to the new identity. And so stillness is where most of this work happens. It's where purpose gets clarified. Purpose is the key to unlocking a lot of the mystery for the driven people that I work with. But the truth that I that you and I, I know you're gonna love this, we collaborate on here. And I would say it like this uh a man who is able to be still knows who he is.

Gillian 35:29

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

A man, a woman, of course, who is a person who is able to be still and sit with themselves alone in silence with no out inputs, at first, you know, your skin crawls like a junkie needing a fix. But when you can reach this place where you're comfortable with who you are, you're content in your being, you know who you are. Your identity is much more secure.

Facing The Fear Of Stillness

Gillian 35:56

Yeah. Yeah. And that's and that's when you become the light in the world because people see something in you. You're not trying to strive, you're not influenced by what's going on around you. You just, you just are. You just are. You talk about this motivation to seek God. I really do believe that that comes from the foundation of stillness, of having that identity shift, where you really do see yourself as enough, just being, just belonging to God. And I, from my personal experience, I find that the closer that I get to God and the stronger that relationship is, the more motivation I have to want to seek him. The motivation does not have to come from external spaces anymore. I'm not needing the accountability as much as I used to because I have this natural desire to pursue God and therefore pursue my purpose. So I feel like that's the shift that happens when people, you know, make that shift in their identity. Can you relate with that?

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Yeah, I don't know what your story was in meeting your husband, uh, but oftentimes there is a back and forth dynamic that happens when you're dating your your future uh future partner. And so in this space, it's like we're getting to know God, and there's there's interesting. Now, if you've been burned in the past before you met your spot, like there's some fear, there's trepidation, let alone getting still. But in that stillness is where we build a relationship. We realize, hey, I'm not alone. And Lord, are you with me in this? And as he begins to speak, there's a scripture, I believe it's Isaiah, who's going up the mountain and he to meet with God, and you know, the wind comes and shakes everything. God was not in the wind, the fire comes, God was not in the fire. All these big dramatic things are happening. God wasn't in all of them. And then all of a sudden he stays up there long enough, and there's a still small voice that speaks to him, and God was in it. And I know that God speaks in big things too, at times, when necessary, probably, but ultimately, you know, go back to when you were getting to know your husband, it's like there's this time spent. And all of a sudden, you start spending enough time where you start looking forward to spending a little more time and a little more time. And in some of us in our stories, it's it was a slow bill, right? Now, some have fallen in love, maybe they knew this is the person I'm gonna marry. But if you had any baggage going in, sometimes there's a little bit of work to do, right? But in the present, you look forward to, you know what? When I met Amanda, um, I a lot of my dating experience before meeting her were excitement. And there would be this stimuli, this attraction, this real thirst that tapped right into my drivenness where I wanted to win their approval. And the exchange with Amanda was much different. When I met her, I just felt calm around her. It wasn't that like I wanted to show her the seven wonders of the world. It was just like I just enjoyed her presence. Yeah. I just wanted to be around her more than not. And it wasn't because it was, you know, high octane, it was because it was calm. And um I was very thankful looking back that you know God revealed this wonder to me in the calmness of our relationship because I felt like I was myself. Because I didn't need to be anybody other than me for her approval. She just enjoyed my company like I enjoyed hers. And we were just us. There was no extra to put on.

Dark Night Of The Soul

Gillian 39:37

Right. Which calms your nervous system and allows you to heal. It sounds like in meeting your wife, you you you now have this space where you can feel safe and heal, which is just so wonderful. You were talking about um this idea of stillness, and we've been talking about this for the whole podcast, but I want to touch on the fact that it's so difficult for so many of us, and I know I've struggled with this my whole life, to choose to step into that space of stillness because it can be scary. It can be really noisy. When we get still, that's when our thoughts start to sneak into our mind. That's when things start to spiral. That's when we feel that attack, right? We that's when we notice all of the things that are misaligned in our lives. And it's so difficult to be able to choose that awareness, willingly choose it on a regular basis. But I'd like to talk about this because I feel like that's where we need to start. You need to come to that place of discomfort, to that place of stillness that we we want to avoid, that we're resisting so that we can break through. Do you have any anything you'd like to say about this? Because I feel like that's a good place to start. Because so many people are gonna be like, yeah, I I love what you're saying, but they try it and they just feel this this um discomfort when they pause and step into that space of stillness.

Guatemala, Perspective, And Joy

SPEAKER_02 41:05

It is wildly uncomfortable at first. I mean, it's like walking in a new set of shoes, or in some respects, being dropped into a foreign country and not knowing the language. Right? It it it takes time before you pick up a few words. Now, part of my recovery journey, I felt like the Lord called me to Guatemala and I went down there. I presumably I was going for two, three weeks. I stayed there three months as part of his plan for me to recover and um started writing a book down there. But part of that is I with enough time there, I started to pick up a few words, started to learn the culture. I wasn't an average tourist going to explore, I was there to reset and recalibrate, so it wasn't a bit a big adventure, but you know, just in the experiences that I had there, I started to learn the culture, the language. And I think stillness needs its own timeline to start to be comfortable and not feel like, you know, I'm gonna panic, I'm gonna, everything's gonna fall apart. This is a waste of time. It takes a while to unspool, as I like to say. Because you're so used to winding up, winding up, winding up. I'm tired, another caffeine, another Red Bull. Let's just keep going, drive harder, push harder, push through the emotions, will your way there. That you have to train yourself to unspol. And one of the three reasons why, the great threat, especially to entrepreneurs, my my mentor, my spiritual father, said to me, He said, You know, Colt, I know that you're in business. One thing I'll say to you is you don't want to join the zipper club. Julian, are you familiar with what the zipper club is?

Gillian 42:34

I am not. This is near to me, Colts.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

The zipper club is those that have a stitches from, you know, their ribcage to their sternum, you know, it's like this, where they've had open heart surgery. He said, All of my buddies that are in business all join the zipper club.

SPEAKER_05 42:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

And, you know, he's like, you just don't want to join the zipper club. And and what he was saying was that you have to have a place and an understanding, a relationship with God in which you can unspool, you can give your burdens to him, you can seek forgiveness, you can offer forgiveness to others. You're evaluating where you've been to a place where you're comfortable with who you are. And so where I believe that most people learn stillness, unfortunately, where I had to learn it. Have you are you familiar with the term the dark night of the soul?

Gillian 43:24

Oh yes, Mother Teresa.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

So, yeah, you know, I I believe that we only really understand the power of stillness for most only understand it when they've been through a dark night of the soul. And I I wish it were a night, but it's more of a season for most of us.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

This is where it talks about back to the 23rd Psalm about you know the shadow of the valley of death, you know. And so as I walk through the valley of death, right? The valley of the shadow of death, sorry. As I walk through the valley of the shadow. Of death, I shall fear no evil. As we go into this place, the dark night of the soul is a place where our identity gets completely challenged. The person we thought we need to be, in my case, I thought I needed to be a successful entrepreneur. And now all of a sudden I've had to transition out of my business because I didn't have the energy to sustain it. I'm burnt out. I don't know if I have enough to live. Money has been my God in many respects. And I don't know what's next. And in that space where I'm not physically capable of getting after it, I face my greatest fear, right?

Gillian 44:37

Yeah.

Practical Stillness: Breath And Devotion

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Am I going to perish my existence? Am I ever going to get married? Can I ever just do the things I love again? And it's in that place where it was a forced stillness, but you're in the valley, the shadow of death. A friend said to me, Quote, when you're in the valley, you gotta remember one thing. It's just a shadow. But everything in my being and in your being, when you enter stillness or forced into it, will feel like, you know, like again, your skin crawls, like there are a million mosquito bites at once, just like, get me out of here.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Right. But in that place, the way you exit the valley is not looking for medication. It's not looking to numb the pain. It's not looking for the next great thing to chase after. The only way to permanently exit the valley of the shadow of death and end that dark night of the soul is to be still. It's to find stillness and find comfort in it. Realizing that despite how loud these alarm bells are ringing, they're not truth. My greatest fears are being whispered or being screamed at me in this season. They're not reality.

SPEAKER_04 45:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

This is just a test. And you can exit it and upgrade, right? You can get promoted through this to a higher level of thinking, a higher level of being. And that's why I say, you know, echo that same statement. A man who is able to be still knows who he is.

Yahweh And The Breath

Gillian 46:02

I believe it. Amen. I I love that you brought up that you went to Guatemala because that is one of the most transformative memories that I had. I went when I was 25 with my mom's cousin who um founded, it's called Wells of Hope. He goes there to drill wells and bring them water. And there's a bunch of missionary work that goes on there. But I spent two weeks in Guatemala that changed my life forever. And the way I describe it to people is these people had nothing. They were so dirt poor. They had, you know, I always tell my kids, their bedroom is bigger than the home that the, you know, two parents, five kids, and a grandmother would sleep in. And the five kids would sleep in one single bed. Unbelievable. And it was mo made out of dirt and sticks, right? But these people were so happy. The children. The children were so happy. They wanted to talk to us, to play with us. They're skipping down the street in shoes that are falling apart if they had any shoes at all. They had they did not. So this is what I see as the difference in a community like that, in a country like that, where they have so little, they have stillness baked into their daily routine. They are literally walking at least a kilometer away every single day to go and get their water down these mountain hills, down to this little stream where they bathe and wash their clothing and get their drinking water all from the same creek. But these people are so happy. Why does that happen? I feel like in the United States and Canada and many other countries in the world, we are so distracted. Our stillness, we have been deprived of these spaces of stillness that remind us who we are. And I guess that's that's kind of where I want to wrap things up is helping people to understand that when you learn to integrate stillness into your daily life, that's where the magic happens. But it has to be intentional.

unknown 48:04

Yeah.

Closing Reflections And Next Steps

Gillian 48:04

It has to be intentional because we have distraction. We have the entire internet in our pocket, right? On our cell phones. So I really believe that this is the answer is recognizing the noise in the world around us, realizing it's not our fault. This has been a slow drip, right? Over the last 20 years of this distraction just being layered into our lives. But then understanding that we have a choice. We do have a choice. We have the freedom to choose. And that's where the empowerment comes from. So I I love I love sharing this message with other people like you, especially with men. I think it's it's so important for men, especially who are they are, you know, they were created to provide and to pursue all of these amazing things in life to create a great life for themselves and their families. But there is a fine line. It needs to be balanced with that relationship with God and these spaces of stillness.

SPEAKER_02 49:04

You know what your story reminded me of, Jillian, is in stillness is where we get perspective on what really matters.

Gillian 49:12

Clarity, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

You know, so when we get still, we get clear on what really matters and what's really unnecessary.

Gillian 49:21

So yes, agreed. Agreed. So maybe we can talk about three things that's three areas of life where we can build stillness into a daily routine. Like we talked about the morning devotionals. I have committed to that as well. And I feel like that's where that's where my cup is filled. I try to get that cup overflowing in the morning so that it can flow into my daily life. And another way is just breath work, just breathing. When you feel yourself being stressed out, when you're driving, you know, your morning commute and you feel that stress in your shoulders and you feel like your shoulders are up to your ears, reminding yourself to breathe and to relax, reminding yourself that everything's gonna be okay. And that when we create that internal space of peace, that we're gonna be able to handle that that day a lot better. Do you have do you have a tip for the audience that you can shoot?

SPEAKER_02 50:11

I had my first and yeah, I would I think it was my only panic attack. And what you're saying has become a part of my life because of it. It's like right away, what's important is like breath. Like if someone can go without food, presumably for at least 40 days, right? Uh maybe even water for just as long. Might go without sleep for a few days before you're a complete maniac. Uh, but breath, take that away for four minutes, you know, and we're all in a pretty dire state. So yeah, recalibrate breathing and just bringing life back into your body, the fullness of your diaphragm. It's a big part of my day.

Gillian 50:50

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Big part of how I regulate stress and stay on the red line.

Gillian 50:53

Yeah, it works. It really does. And it's accessible no matter where you are in your life. You know, it could be when you're driving in a car, it could be when you're falling asleep at night, when you first wake up in the morning in the middle of a really difficult conversation, you could always find that space to breathe.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

You know what I found interesting is that uh the Israelites had this word for God, they called them Yahweh. And many believe that breath itself was worship, and that they would say Yahweh was the sound of a breath. And I always thought that was fascinating. Here we are. Our breath itself worships creation, worships our creator.

Gillian 51:31

Yeah. Yeah. I believe it. I believe it. Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna carry that forward, Colt. Thank you. Colts, thank you so much for this conversation. This was just this was just so good for my soul. And I know I hope the listen listeners feel the same way. I would love for you to have the opportunity to share a little bit about yourself and how people can connect with you.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Oh, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure. Um, not a lot of spaces that you can talk with someone about stillness and get excited about it. Yeah. So my easiest way to reach out to me, website Colt.coach. My last name is Charles Bois. It's a great French-Canadian last name, a little hard for people to spell.

SPEAKER_03 52:12

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

But ultimately, um, Colt.coach is the website. And you can find me on Instagram using my first and last name as well.

Gillian 52:20

Wonderful. Wonderful. Andy, are you open to receiving new clients, Colts?

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Yeah, for the right person. If you're an entrepreneur that's building a team and maybe you have people problems, you got red line problems, and you wonder how do I get to this place of purpose where I'm passionate and I'm on fire for what I do without, you know, it all falling apart. Uh, that's my favorite type of client to work with. And I'd be launching a podcast by the time this is out. The podcast might be released as well. So feel free to listen in on some conversations that driven entrepreneurs are having, if that's your jam.

Gillian 52:54

Wonderful. Colt, I'm so grateful to have you here and thank you again for your time. And maybe we'll have to have you on sometime again.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

Amazing. Thanks, Jillian. It's been a pleasure.

Gillian 53:04

Before you return to your day, I want to invite you into a moment of reflection. If something in this conversation stood out to you, if you recognize yourself in the striving, the fatigue, or the longing for clarity, know this: you're closer than you think. Peace doesn't come from pushing harder. Often it comes from pausing long enough to listen to God, to your body, and to the quiet wisdom already within you. As you move forward today, consider this gentle question: what pace is God inviting me to walk right now? Thank you for being here. And until next time, be still and live. Thank you for listening to Be Still and Live. As always, my hope is that this conversation offered you a little more space. Space to breathe, to listen, and to come home to what matters most. If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And consider sharing it with someone who could use a little more space for people. If you're ready for a gym nice, you can begin with the show.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Please please read you to the colour. Even a mic, uh mic, hardness video. You can also find the details in the show notes.