Empathy, Humility, and Growth: David Waldy's Insights into a Fulfilled Life

Do you ever feel like you're running on a hamster wheel, trapped in a cycle of anxiety and self-doubt? This episode's special guest, David Waldy, The Fierce Empathy Coach, has been there too. However, through the power of mentorship and coaching, he transformed his life from a struggling anxiety-ridden phase to a fulfilling journey. His story is a testament to the profound changes that can be achieved with courage, self-reflection, and the guidance of a coach. We explore David's transformation, the significant role of a coach, and the importance of investing in one’s personal growth and development.

David is The Fierce Empathy Coach. As an integrative business & life strategist, personal coach to high-performing men, and keynote speaker, David provides support, solutions, & strategies for owners & leaders who want to calm the chaos, realign with results-driven habits & systems, & intentionally cultivate lives & businesses filled with peace, purpose, passion & profit - all without sacrificing their family, health, or wellbeing.

David Waldy | Fierce Empathy
Free gift from David

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

to work for a couple of hours. I break for an hour and a half for lunch. I eat lunch with my family again, I go back and work for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I'm done around five o'clock and I get to do all of this from home because I built myself an office Dotted all these things, right? Mind you, I'm writing this out as I'm working 80 hours a week, 60 pounds overweight, dealing with suicidal ideation, wanting to end my life, to find myself ending up in the mirror because I can't stop having panic attacks and anxiety attacks ready to end it, because I feel like I'm failing everyone to fast forward. After that exercise and my commitment to this process, I don't wanna get too stuck in the weeds over on that side.

Speaker 1: 0:49

About three years later, I was sitting in my living room and, as some of us like to do, I was going through old journals and I came across this page and at the top of the page it says my perfect day I do. This was about I don't know. I'm getting emotional now. This was about three years ago now. I remember sitting in my living room and I opened that journal entry and I start reading. I start weeping, literally bawling my eyes out, Like my kids are like Daddy, what's going on, Is everything okay? And my wife's like Babe, are you good? Like what's going on. I'm sitting in the middle of my living and reading this and every single thing that I had written out.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Was true.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Was true, yeah, it had become my reality. And the peace and the fulfillment and the joy, the excitement for life, all of these things that I had craved for years, that I thought were an impossibility, because I thought there was something messed up in my head or something neurochemically or hormonally or whatever. There was something wrong with David Walde.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Well, there's nothing wrong with you.

Speaker 1: 2:14

There's nothing wrong with you, it's simple ownership and finding help and support from people that are wiser than us. There's no way, I believe, heidi, that I could have. I shouldn't say there's no. I'm sure there's a way, there could have been a way, but what I found, especially and you know this in coaching and mentorship, that that coach in my life, that mentor in my life, what she meant to me is that, even though she had blessed me right which I still blows my mind it caused me to compress time. Yes, it compressed time and that's why, still to this day, I hire coaches, I hire mentors, I pay to be a part of conferences and programs and masterminds is because I now understand the value of paying for speed, if I can have someone ask me those tough questions.

Speaker 2: 3:04

And hold the space for you.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Yes, and you do that marvelously. You hold incredible space and so that's just a sidebar for anybody listening. If this resonates with you, get on the phone with Heidi. If you need someone to walk alongside you. This woman will hold space for you and she'll ask you the tough questions. But that's a quick aside, sorry, commercial break.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Thank you very much and just to point out, I do it in a gently rebellious way which will remove your overwhelm, not in the. I was listening to yours thinking, oh man, that sounds super overwhelming and I can see what she did. But for my clients I do that in a superbly rebellious way which allows you to do it without the overwhelm. It works doing it that way, but I just had to turn that around because it never worked on me and it wouldn't work on the people I work with now. But it's really fascinating and you are an absolute testament to the process of coaching with a really good, strong, highly skilled, courageous coach, but also to yourself, because it takes courage.

Speaker 2: 4:15

And first of all, I wanna thank you for sharing so generously, and I mean that as in being vulnerable and authentic and just sharing very personal feelings with us, that kind of courage, that's just. It's invaluable. It's what we need, that connection and courage with each other, because that's what lifts us, isn't it? When we talk about we need somebody who inspires us so that we can believe there is a path for us. When you shared your story, that's what you're doing and that's what I mean by sharing generously. So thank you so much for that.

Speaker 1: 4:58

I love it.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 5:00

I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 5:00

The last thing that I'd love to share is that I love what you just illuminated there and, for everyone listening, the process that I went through, and the process, the methodology, the tactics, the strategies all those things right, I've found that the overwhelming majority of them work, but there's one key.

Speaker 1: 5:21

The one key is having someone like a Heidi, someone that you trust, right, who can ask you the questions that you're not asking yourself yes, questions that I can't for myself, right, and there's probably a lot of people listening to this. We're really good at helping everybody else with all their stuff, but for some reason, right, we can't seem to answer it for ourselves. And that, I find, is the key. Is this interdependence, this healthy submission, to allow someone to speak into our lives, to ask us those tough questions, to rebel against what the world says, that you should be able to go do it on your own and figure it out on your own, or else you're a piece of trash, worthless failure, which is what we've all been conditioned to believe. I should be good enough to do this on my own.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:16

And I believe that that is foolishness. I believe that great wisdom is found in the wisdom of submission to someone else who has walked this road. Don't get hung up on the tactics and the strategies and the methods and that it's gonna take you five years or 10 years or three years or one month None of us can determine that but when you have someone who can ask you the questions you can't ask yourself, you will start to create the transformation that you seek.

Speaker 2: 6:47

Hell yes, imagine, imagine if everybody had a coach. I just and also what you were saying about masterminds, and I'm just reflecting on. I was in this amazing mastermind for late, early summer, absolutely incredible. And we had a get together as like a bonus session a couple of days ago and I was just thinking, you know, it's only one session, it's just like you'll just be really nice to see everyone. It's gonna be awesome.

Speaker 2: 7:14

Oh my God, mind-blowing, like mind-blowing. You bring people together in a well-held space with intention and have one person leading with deep questions. Oh man, I was just like and you know that thing you said about you sometimes hear your voice, the words coming, and they're not to me. That's when the heart is speaking or the body speaking. It's like you're bypassing the mind. And I heard myself at the end and I wasn't really because it wasn't processed through my mind, I was just listening.

Speaker 2: 7:49

And then I was just speaking deeply from you know that deep place of connectedness inside, and then I caught the tail end of it. You know how you suddenly switch back into hearing mode and I went man, that was empowering. Where did that come from? It was just absolutely. And it was that beautiful thing about a mastermind where you it's almost like the energy goes round and you're coaching one person and then everybody's saying the same thing and I had just summarized everybody's that it had come through me and it's so this work, I mean, oh, coaching, mentorship, masterminds, just like bringing each other together with courage, and I mean I've been in some terrible ones where there's no space held and I've learned so much about how not to do it.

Speaker 1: 8:39

Same yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:41

And when you have a good to mastermind or coach, that space held will shift you faster than you can imagine. It's like that question for you who is it? Who do you want to become? It just, and I had the idea, similar thing where, in a counseling session where somebody asked me a question, I just went, ah, and the freedom, it's like this whole weight just was lifted off me. And it's that it's finding that with somebody. And then there's no turning back because what's seeing can't be unseen right. And then you're just, you are on a roll because you start to commit. You know that there is no compromise for you. And then it is that daily commitment.

Speaker 2: 9:29

So for me it's the. I'm committed to leading the gender rebellion. We're done with over one, we're done with pressure, we're done with exhaustion. It does not serve us. And so every single day I'm having to ask myself so how, how do I do this differently? How do I bend time? So one of my favorite things is you know, you wake up with an impossible day, which in my world is not allowed because I don't do busy and over scheduling and every now and again, by accident, impossible day. I'm not playing that game, and it's that. It's that pausing what? Who am I committing to? Who am I in this life? How is the how? It's not changing the world. It's not wanting less. It's actually wanting more. It's making space for more more time with your family, more presence, more focus at work, more meaningful work, more success, actually, not less. It's not downsizing, is it?

Speaker 1: 10:27

Yeah, it's. It's a beautiful thing when you, when you start to get clear on who you want to become, what you need to do gets clear simultaneously, because most people are asking these questions of what do I need to do to fix my relationship with my spouse?

Speaker 2: 10:46

What do I?

Speaker 1: 10:46

need to do to fix my health? What do I need to do to solve my money problems? Those are useful questions. I just don't think they're the best.

Speaker 2: 10:53

first question no, it's because you just end up with more doing. You don't want more doing you don't. Like there's there's nothing at the end of the to do list.

Speaker 2: 11:04

No, it never ends, it doesn't end and you don't want it to end, because if it ends and you haven't got things to do and then you haven't got life, and then that's no good tool. So it's not definitely not more doing. It is who you are being, is how you move through the world, and how you move through the world matters, and it's that, isn't it? I think that thing about giving everything away and there's nothing for us because we don't matter like everyone else matters more, but we matter immensely, and I think I was reflecting on this. With which are the easiest relationships? For the easiest, best relationships are ones where you've got things clear, so it's an equal give and take and the other person knows how to look after themselves. The other person does look after themselves. You're not having to question, you're not having to think, you're not having to worry. It's like well, you can trust what they say. So when you're like that, think of the freedom you're giving to other people. But I know that's been a long road for me and it sounds like you have a similar path there between service and self love, and I know that's for my listeners and my clients that's. That's a big theme. How do we be of service? How do we be in the world and actually look after ourselves properly when we have this very strong desire to help. And I just share an interesting thing. Before asking I'd like you to answer this as well how you serve in the world without destroying your own well being.

Speaker 2: 12:33

And a thing happened we might mention this when we had our regional chat but I recently was taking a much deeper look at my values. You do this exercise regularly as an entrepreneur. It's something we do and it's kind of like what are my values? My automatic assumption was service, obviously, because it matters very, very much to me. Integrity is one of my strongest values, so therefore service has to be. I'm not going to not do what I say or always want to over deliver. It matters very, very much to me that my clients receive far more than they ever could have dreamt of, and that's always my intention before every session. This session will be even better than either of us could have imagined.

Speaker 2: 13:16

And then recently it occurred to me that service needs to not be in my top values and I dared to remove it. I dared to remove service from one of my top values and it has increased my commitment to service. Now that sounds like a load of nonsense, but it's not, and it's because I was raised in that martyrdom way of other people, other people, other people, and it's, and that's how I crushed myself and imploded my life. Burning out is overgiving. So, actually, by saying service isn't one of my top values and by saying that out loud, I do everybody who's looking to me to lead a service because it frees them from being stuck with that as well what I actually discovered, that my number one value is freedom.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Now, if I'd known that, I could have saved a whole lot of pain before and I can look back through my whole life and see that's what I was yearning for. That's what I was searching for was actually freedom, freedom to be myself, freedom to know that I'm okay, not by doing things for other people, and yeah. So I'd love to know your relationship now with service and how you and then you can tell us what you do with all of this, all the gifts and this wisdom that you have accrued.

Speaker 1: 14:44

So I do believe that success is found in serving. However, put a big asterisk right there. I think a big thing that people confuse is that success and fulfillment are not the same. They're not. They never have been, they never will be, because success directly ties to a sense of accomplishment, a completion of goals. It's really nothing more than neurochemicals firing in the brain where you feel like you have succeeded at something that you set your mind to. That's it.

Speaker 1: 15:29

The difference here that I would say is that and this is an oversimplification success is happiness, fulfillment is joy. One of them is an undulating, ever-present current that's beneath the surface that you and I, heidi, recognize, just like we talked about before we got on this call, is I woke up today and I'm full of we might label it happiness. That's not happiness, it's joy. Happiness is the celebratory moment because of something happening. Right, you have a loved one who lands on the flight. They've been away for six months and you see them. We use these terms. You're like, oh, I'm overjoyed, right? No, what's happening is neurochemicals are firing in your brain and you're experiencing a release of neuroepronephrine and dorphins. You've got, potentially, some adrenaline, you've got dopamine, you've got serotonin. You're having this explosion of neurochemical talk. It's a neurochemical cocktail, and that is oftentimes what success is. And what's interesting is that I have found that every single person on the planet defines success differently. Every one of us, every one of us define success differently.

Speaker 2: 16:46

You mean in terms of what success means to them, or do you mean in terms of yeah, absolutely, and I think that that's one of the problems, right, because we're using one word and it means a million different things, and I think one of the best things you can do is sit down and go yeah, but what does success mean to me?

Speaker 1: 17:03

100%. It's the same thing with love I love my wife, but I also love tacos. I mean, I know we laugh at it, but it's very, very true Is that? What I find really interesting is you look at other languages like one of the things that I love.

Speaker 2: 17:18

The Greeks do love properly, don't they?

Speaker 1: 17:20

They do. And even Hebrew takes a little bit further. You've got Raya'ahavon, dode, right. Those are three distinct, different words that, when you look in the English translation of what those words mean, we say love, love, love. Right, there's a difference between me making love to my wife, loving my children and loving tacos. Those are three distinctly different forms of one word that we have, especially in the English language. Success, I think, is very similar. But where I was going with this before is that we all define failure the same. Every one of us define failure the same.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Really.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Failure is nothing more than our inability to reach our goals. Let every one of us share that same definition.

Speaker 2: 18:04

I'm just trying to decide whether this is a sad realisation or a good realisation.

Speaker 1: 18:11

If you overlay it in any context, the only reason that we feel like we have failed is because we did not achieve a goal.

Speaker 2: 18:22

And yet so success and failure aren't therefore opposites at all, because success is not achieving my goals Pretty much never.

Speaker 1: 18:36

So this is where it gets really interesting. And I'm speaking. I would say, let me put a big disclaimer here. This is David Walde's opinion.

Speaker 2: 18:44

These are all our opinions. This is a highly opinionated podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:49

What I have found is that success, right, Success we've got three terms we're talking about here Fulfillment, success and failure. So success, how I see success, is a clearly defined aim in life for what you want to achieve, what you want to do, and this isn't just in life. This is at any point in time that you state something that you want to accomplish, you want to do, and when you do it it's a success. When you don't do it, for whatever reason, you are unable to or you have an inability to achieve whatever your mind has conjured up as the thing that you want to do, that's where we feel a sense of failure. However, fulfillment right, Fulfillment and success this is where I think people get really confused is that fulfillment is a state of being where a lot of people say, well, success is just a mindset, Success is just a state of being. I understand what they're saying, but if we simplify these definitions this is why I love etymology, I love looking at words.

Speaker 1: 19:58

I love oranges and all these things. So, in my opinion, success and fulfillment, not failure. Success and fulfillment these are two sides of the same coin, because you can look at the individual who is extraordinarily successful based on the subjective worldview of everyone else. You look at someone like a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk or whoever, and you say these guys are leading Mark Zuckerberg. You have individuals that you look at them and the world says they're successful. Now, you and I both know that's contingent upon a very specific definition of success, but as a collective.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Oh yeah, as a collective, we're looking at certain people and saying they're successful, and then the problem with that is because we don't really know whether they're fulfilled or not.

Speaker 2: 20:46

It's easy to compare and say, well, they're successful, and in order to have that kind of success requires a sacrifice or an intelligence, or courage, or money or something I don't have. Therefore, I can't be successful, which is why I guess a lot of the world wanders around just feeling not good enough. And that's tragic, because actually you can look at people I was really thinking about when you were talking about your relationship with your coach and her asking you to find somebody inspired you, because I really struggle with that question, because the people who inspire me are often just not famous, not well known. You can just meet some people, you know, you meet some people and they just have this presence, they just have this, they like themselves, they love their husband or their partner. Do you know what I mean they've lived a life of? I guess now I'm recognizing is fulfillment, because fulfillment actually and fulfillment sounds to me like filled, you know, like full- your cup is running over.

Speaker 1: 21:51

That's exactly where I was saying If we take. I don't know if we do video here or whatever, but if you have, a cup.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Yeah, we've got this we can YouTube this.

Speaker 1: 22:00

So you have your cup right. The reason that we feel that overwhelm is because we've poured out, and poured out, and poured out, and poured out, and poured out and we've never refilled ourselves. And the problem is is that most people think that that refilling process comes from something out there. I need to be refilled by the books or the movies or the experiences or my spouse or this or that, and although it does have an effect on us right, the deep, undulating, constant, pervasive fulfillment that we seek, I believe, is this is our ability to look ourselves in the mirror and to be fully satisfied with who we are, because we feel not only feel aligned, but we know we are aligned because we know the direction that we're heading. We're looking at what we're doing with our life, we're looking at our health, we're looking at our relationships, we're looking at our wealth. It's not about these things being necessarily quote unquote successful or perfect. They're never gonna be perfect. But are we every single day operating as the person that we said that we would be?

Speaker 2: 23:12

Irrespective of our yes, the how, the how is the process because we never reached the goal anyway. Right? If you do never reach success, you never reach. There's not an end, right? We're always sat between two things. We're sat.

Speaker 2: 23:26

I love this idea of learning to sit with the absolute gratitude of everything we have, while holding the excitement and the yearning for more at the same time, even though they seem like contradictions. And there's a huge difference between that and not knowing what you have unless you lost it. And what a sad way to find out. And but I also want that, and that's a horrible place to be. It's a torturous place to be, to not understand that you have so much. Just like when I said to you hello, how are you? And you just went well, I'm brilliant. I woke up this morning and I love that because that's my kind of like hello, a whole nother day to play with. And I just see I really struggle at the moment with anybody going oh, it's another birthday. I'm like I don't understand. Do you have another birthday or you're dead? It's, that's it, that's your choice. Like, getting older is incredible. I don't understand. I really never understand that whole not celebrating a birthday.

Speaker 1: 24:35

It makes no sense to me, but then I guess that's because Well, this is kind of a way to answer your question you had previously and to touch on that is that I found that when people, when people don't give themselves permission to define their aim in life, to define and create purpose, to cultivate meaning, because they're trying to find it and discover it, which is what we've all been conditioned to believe, go find your purpose, go discover your meaning, go discover your calling, which I think is complete and utter BS.

Speaker 1: 25:06

I just do not, at the core of my being, believe that it is something that you find or you discover them. I believe, with everything in me, it is something that is directly cultivated and created, and part of this is tied to my core beliefs about God being the creator of the universe. If the very thing that he did, the very first action that the God of the universe did, was to create and we are made in the image of God our number one core function is to create, and most people, the reason that they feel so dissatisfied they hate the next birthday, they're lacking the meaning and the purpose is because they're not creating anything.

Speaker 2: 25:46

Hmm, I like that. I always think that in my ideal universe, everybody would be an entrepreneur. Not everybody has in. Everybody has to start their own business. But I mean everybody would. What is the one thing that entrepreneurship forces you to do? Recognize your gifts and have the courage to share them and ask for money in exchange. Like that takes so much guts. Like if I'd known how much courage I would have gone.

Speaker 1: 26:13

And that's the thing, though I love that you mentioned courage, because courage and confidence are not the same. We have to have consistent courage, which requires vulnerability, which means we're putting ourselves out there, which we might fall flat on our face, we might embarrass ourselves, we might feel all these things.

Speaker 2: 26:29

But when you're Mike, I think we will.

Speaker 1: 26:31

You will right, we will. When we do that with consistency, eventually you have a track record where you've been courageous, you've been courageous, you've been courageous and it turns into confidence, because confidence is where you can look back and you can see. I have a track record of proof.

Speaker 2: 26:46

Yeah, yeah, confidence is a backwards thing, it's not a forward. You don't get the confidence and then you know, like you're sitting around, when I feel confident, I'll do this, but it's a really tough one. But that's one of the things I'm grateful for, I do think, being an online entrepreneur. I call it Zenpreneurship. You know you, literally it's like personal growth on steroids. I mean it's you're living on the edge of that. I don't want to be seen. I need to be seen. I don't want to be seen, I need to be seen. I don't want you to look at me. Oh, I need people to look at me. It's the most bizarre. Looking in the mirror, in a way, you know you have to face yourself, you have to deal with your stuff. You have. Well, I guess maybe you don't have to. I do. I have to because I'm full of integrity, and so for me it works that way. So I guess that has been also for me, a very fast route to healing and growth, even though quite a painful one.

Speaker 2: 27:41

So, tell us? Sorry, gon, I was going to ask you about your journey into entrepreneurship and what you do now.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Yeah, for sure, and I wanted to button up our previous conversation around service.

Speaker 2: 27:51

You asked us about that. Oh yes, service. Please tell me how you.

Speaker 1: 27:55

So all of that little interim in between, the reason we're driving towards this question around how do we most effectively serve other people and how is that? How is that active and present? Is that that cup analogy again is that, in order for us to be filled, it's not about looking externally for things to fill you. It is about an internal and some people would call it source. I call it God.

Speaker 1: 28:21

I believe that, with everything in me for people that disagree, that's okay there's still ways that you can approach this frame and just understand. We see the world differently and I still love you and I want you to experience this. You can cultivate this internally by doing what I the concept of fierce empathy. The reason that people call me the fierce empathy coach is because it's about creating an environment where people feel seen, heard and understood, but simultaneously, you are willing to ask the tough questions that no one else has the courage to ask.

Speaker 1: 29:01

That's what differentiates people in life. It's not about the quality of answers, it's about the quality of the questions, and so, in order to create transformation in the life of anyone you know this, Heidi, better than anyone is that our job in the coaching and consulting space and working with people is not to give people all the right answers. That's what a lot of people get confused. They're like you're supposed to have all the right answers. I'm like, no, I don't have all the right answers, but I know what questions to ask you to help you get the right answers.

Speaker 2: 29:26

Yeah, and I start from the premise that the person knows the answers, but they don't have access to them 100%.

Speaker 1: 29:34

It's an extraction process. That's all that it is.

Speaker 2: 29:36

It's an unlocking and in order to and to me the question what do you want? The reason why it's so hard is well, first of all, the risk of failure is just enormous and, secondly, it requires courage, and courage comes from the heart. And if you're disconnected from your heart because you're overwhelmed, you're stuck in your mind because, predominantly, most humans are wandering around stuck in their head, then you can't answer the question what do you want with your head? You have to use your heart, and that takes practice and it takes courage, and, yeah, I love that. So now I get you with your fierce empathy, and so I would argue that, in order to create transformation, people have to feel safe, and once people feel safe, from that place of holding someone with love, you can ask the tough questions which allow them to access their own answers, and that done skillfully. Goosebumps, like, literally. You watch people, don't you? You watch people physically change in front of you as they go. Ah.

Speaker 1: 30:40

But here's the secret we can do the exact same thing, to some degree at least. As far as healing is concerned and restoration of relationship. We can do the same thing for ourselves. So the question to everyone listening here is when is the last time you held space for yourself? Yeah, when is the last time that you created environment where, free from judgment, you allowed yourself to see yourself, to hear yourself, to understand yourself? It's a radical form of compassion and self empathy where it says I'm going to step into these shoes and allow you to be seen, heard and understood.

Speaker 1: 31:19

But once we've created that safety and I'm at peace with the fact that I don't have all the right answers I make mistakes, I'm an imperfect being, I've done some stupid things we just come to terms with what is, which I think you and I talked about before. Byron Katie's book Loving what Is extraordinary book will change your life when you come to terms with the reality of you, that you are here, you are now. That's it. This moment, no past, no future. This moment you position yourself in that safety to look in the mirror and ask yourself the tough question that you've been avoiding. And that discomfort right, it's not really a discomfort, more than it is. The act of courage is that you are. You are walking on unfamiliar territory and because it's unfamiliar territory because you haven't created it your brain is going to freak out, because your brain wants to keep you safe and in the zone of familiarity. The reason this is so challenging for us is because most often, there's been such a breach of two things you mentioned relationships earlier that when you're in a healthy relationship and this person, like they, take care of themselves, right, what I see is one of the one of the hardest things that this world is facing right now is that you look at the average person, they don't like themselves. If you have a scenario like we'll take me and you Heidi, right, if I don't really like you, right, I might still kind of love you as a human being, but I don't like you, right, that's very clear. If I don't like you, there's a reason and, by extension, if I don't like you, that means that there's going to be a gap, something between us, whether we recognize it or not, right, there's something between us. So what happens if I try and say, okay, I don't know really why I don't like Heidi, but I want connection, right? So just imagine, as we're going through this scenario, for everyone listening, imagine that you've got two versions of you, and that's me and Heidi right now. You can imagine you've got this part of you over here and this part of you over here and you're staring at yourself and it's kind of like what me and Heidi have going on right now.

Speaker 1: 33:41

If I want to restore relationship right or even if I want to create relationship, the foundation of relationship is trust. So the only way that trust can be developed is intentional time together. If I have intentional time with you, heidi, and we start to develop a relationship, we become really good friends. We get to know each other's families and we're pen pals right, we're across the ocean. We're pen pals for forever right, we have a healthy relationship, right.

Speaker 1: 34:14

What's really interesting is that if you were to consistently give your word to me that you're going to do something and you don't do it, that trust is going to start to fracture. When the trust starts to fracture, I no longer respect you. When I no longer respect you, it is a complete fracturing of the relationship. There's no trust, there's no respect. And yet this is exactly what we do to ourselves internally, because we constantly make promises to ourselves that we don't keep.

Speaker 1: 34:51

I'm not going to snooze. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to eat better. I'm going to have that conversation. I'm going to stop sweeping it under the rug. I'm going to stop over committing. I'm going to make sure that I say no. I'm going to enforce boundaries. I'm going to go to that conference. I'm going to hire Heidi as my coach. I'm going to do all these things. And we don't do them.

Speaker 1: 35:13

And when you consistently break your word to any other human being, it's a fracturing of trust. So why would we think it'd be any different for ourselves internally? When you don't trust yourself, you don't respect yourself. When you don't respect yourself, you do everything within your power to absolve those feelings of emptiness by doing what? Taking all of your focus outward and giving and serving and loving and being all things for all people, because you don't have peace within yourself for who you are. That's where I love what you talked about service. That is where I made mistakes. For the overwhelming majority of my life, I did not trust myself, I did not respect myself, I did not like myself, because I was incredible at keeping my word to other people, but not to yourself, never to myself. And when I started keeping my word to myself.

Speaker 2: 36:15

Oh, everything changes right.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Everything changes. So now just to your point. Now, me serving other people isn't from some weird codependent need to do this. So I feel better about life because now I have some form of savior complex that because I did a good thing, I can feel good, because really I don't feel good inside.

Speaker 2: 36:38

So I bet now is it sheer joy and purpose.

Speaker 1: 36:43

It's amazing to serve people since now the cup is overflowing. I don't need them to. I don't need them in that sense, right and that's another dangerous word needing people right? I don't need them to fill something in me. I want it, though, and there's a difference.

Speaker 2: 37:01

I want it from a healthy way. It becomes a choice, doesn't it? Yeah, and then it's yeah. This is such a good conversation. I'm learning so much from you and I always have that. Do you have that thing? Like everybody you meet has something to teach you, 100%, and you.

Speaker 1: 37:19

I've learned a bunch from you right now, too, you just taught me loads of stuff.

Speaker 2: 37:23

It's extraordinarily interesting to hear your story. You're an amazing person, but that whole story about hearing the intricacies of being on the other side of coaching from a coach like in such a reflective way is amazing. Right, this has been incredible. Please tell people the easiest place to find you and then give us your top tip for dealing with overwhelm.

Speaker 1: 37:52

You can find me anywhere on social media. You can Google me, find my website it's perfectly fine, davidwaldycom and I primarily hang out online on Instagram, so if you want to connect and create a conversation, hit me up on Instagram. I'd be happy to follow you back. Mention, heidi and I love actual connection on social media. It's surprising. I have like 450,000 followers across social media and probably.001% of those actually have ever reached out to me and said anything, and what I tell everyone is this if you reach out to me, I will literally me, david Waldy, respond to you. I will give you a conversation. It's the numbers. The numbers are just. It's not people that actually I've found. Most people don't want to create real relationships on social and let them come offline and create real.

Speaker 1: 38:43

I'm all about that, though I want to be able to find, just like you just said, find new human beings that I can be curious about, because the more that I learn, the more I learn how little I know, and the more individuals I connect with, the broader the perspective of life that I have, the better I am at my career and what I do and how I serve, and the last thing that I'll say is that you know for anyone, specifically from a business perspective I know we talked a lot about overwhelm today the orientation of my business primarily the majority of my focus, is on men and working with men, although I have I've worked with a number of women over the years. I have several clients that are women, but it's primarily in a business context. My entire background is sales, marketing, business development, and so I overlay all of these things by first focusing on building the individual so that they can build the business and scale, and so anyone interested in that love to explore a conversation, of course, but more than anything and I want to repeat what I said earlier For those of you listening right now, you don't know who I am, but there's a reason you follow this woman. There's a reason you listen to this podcast. There's a reason that that you are showing up weekend and week out, and if any of the conversation that we had today resonates with you as it pertains to overwhelm, you don't need to reach out to me. You need to reach out to Heidi. She has your trust, she knows your heart, she knows where you're at. Create a conversation with her and explore it together. I can't promise you that it's going to be a good fit. I can't promise that she's going to want you as her client, but what I can say is this is that you'll never know unless you, unless you initiate that right and have that conversation, because this is a woman who genuinely cares. Heidi, I honor you and the work that you're doing, the legacy that you're creating and the fact that you are so dedicated not only to to living that, your values and true alignment, but I can see the expression of the overflow in your life and the service and giving, and even in this podcast and service and giving, and so thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 40:48

My final tip, as you requested, on overwhelm, is this we begin to understand when we understand that we don't fully understand. Having this humility and I can say that again is that we begin to understand when we understand that we don't fully understand. There's this radical humility that has to be a part of our lives if we're going to change, if we're going to grow, if we're going to expand. It is this conscious awareness that we were not created to do this on our own. We are meant to be interconnected, interdependent, right, I'm all for independence, I'm all for you. Like being operating in your strength and going out and kicking ass and taking names and taking doing whatever you want. I'm also all for you going and living in a van down by the river and painting for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1: 42:02

Every one of us define that success differently, but if there is an area of dissatisfaction in your life, it has to come from this place of humility where you say, ok, I understand that I don't fully understand, and because of that I want to understand more, I want to see from different perspectives, I want to be challenged, I want to grow, I want to expand. And that humility, coupled with curiosity, creates an extraordinary life. An extraordinary life because now you don't have anything to prove, you don't have anything to hide, you're free. But it only comes through this humility, this curiosity and understanding that none of us fully understand.

Speaker 2: 42:54

Wow, I completely agree with that and absolutely love that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing so generously, for being here.

Speaker 1: 43:06

I am going to steal that, Heidi. I love it. I might even use a sarcastic Thanks for sharing so generously Brilliant Right.

Speaker 2: 43:18

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Thank you, Heidi. It was an honour, my friend. Thank you for your work that you're doing and thank you for having me here today.

Speaker 2: 43:25

I appreciate it For more resources to help you gently rebel. Please visit my website, wwwheideymarkcouk.