Molly Claire 00:45

Hey, coaches, we are going to have such a great conversation today. Melanie Fay and I are here to talk with you about resilience–resilience as a coach and all the things that that means. So it's going to be a great conversation. Welcome, Melanie. 

Melanie Fay 01:01

Hi, Molly. Thanks for having me. 

Molly Claire 01:03

This is so, it's so exciting. I love these kinds of conversations because I think that, you know, as coaches, those of you listening, I feel like sometimes we speak a different language. Like the world we're in as coaches and what we do is so different from many people and isn't it nice to be able to have these deep conversations where we're kind of speaking the same language and deepening our understanding of all these topics too. So today, Melanie and I are both going to be sharing our thoughts about resilience. What does resilience even mean? How does our ability to be resilient come into play when it comes to running a business and failed launches and all of that, what does resilience mean for you as a coach in terms of being able to show up for your clients in a steady way? And what are the ways in which we can create a container for our clients as coaches to increase their emotional resilience? So those are the things we're hitting on. These are things that I, you know, dive deep into in master coach training. And Melanie, I know you, I mean, I can say personally that you have been one of the most important people and practitioners in my life to help me build my resilience without a doubt. So I mean, I can't think of a better person here to be talking about it with me. 

Melanie Fay 02:26

Thank you, Molly. I really appreciate that. So I'll start us off. I actually looked up the definition of resilience because it is such a grounding thing to do and could be so helpful. So the two definitions that come up when you just Google search resilience is one, the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness, and two, the ability of a substance or object. And this is the one I love: the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, elasticity. And I am really appreciative of those two definitions because I think they speak to two very different places in ourselves about what resilience means. And so what I mean by that is in the first place, the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. When I think about that definition, I start to think about what we talk about in terms of the nervous system. So I'm a tapping coach. I use tapping to help the nervous system get reregulated. Breathwork does this. All the things that are becoming more and more, especially in personal transformation communities, these tools that we're using to help our nervous system come into a more regulated state for the stress to not build up inside us. And what we know is that when we have these tools to help work with our nervous system, our embodied response to outside stimuli, or even to our own thoughts, that we have this opportunity to stay more level, more present, to keep our prefrontal cortex online. And that is one form of resilience. It's this ability to withstand and recover quickly from difficulties. In this case, our nervous system is experiencing the world, right? Why does something matter that happens in terms of inside ourselves? It matters because we feel that it matters. It impacts us because we feel that impact. If we can soften or mitigate that impact, then we can protect our system. And so our system is more resilient. It lasts longer. And I love this word toughness, right? Because toughness is a really interesting word in terms of resilience, because I'm going to just, since this is less of an interview, and it's more of a chat among friends, ladies and gentlemen. That's right. When we talk about this word toughness, I almost want to say that's outdated, or yeah. 

Molly Claire 05:15

I'll say it that way. It strikes me as that, too. So I was like on the edge of my seat, I'm like, what's Melanie going to say about toughness? Because that was kind of how it strikes me. Yeah. 

Melanie Fay 05:25

So toughness, this is what I would say, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to say it. Toughness, if it's what we have available to us, can save our life, and does, it does. That's that muscle through, that's that I'm just gonna pull up my shoelaces, my bootstraps, my bootstraps, yeah. And I'm gonna do it, and I know in a way, I'm sort of going into that piece with sort of a lighthearted tone, and I actually don't mean that, because toughness deserves respect, right? It is a true form of resilience. 

Molly Claire 05:59

Mm-hmm. 

Melanie Fay 05:59

And. And here's the “and” that I think is so important for us as coaches and also what I think coaches do is they create an and. Right, our clients… maybe all they've had is toughness and their bodies and their minds and their psyches are feeling the effects of having to get through. Once we add tools–different modalities of working with the thing that our client or ourselves has always had to get through–then toughness becomes less necessary. Toughness is a last resort, but it's one that I deeply respect and we have these new avenues of resiliency that look like tools that look like what thoughts am I thinking that look like how am I regulating my nervous system? And we could go on and on about the specific modalities there. But I'm gonna pause for a second let you talk Molly because you know, I could go on forever

Molly Claire 06:57

Well, this… I think this is such a great conversation and a few things that came to me first, as I was, you know, in that definition, talking about the ability to kind of bounce back, come back. What was it? The first definition again, what was the words? Was that it bounced back? 

Melanie Fay 07:14

Yeah, the capacity to withstand, bounce back to the next one, but this one right now is the capacity to  withstand and to recover quickly from difficult…

Molly Claire 07:21

Recover quickly. That's what it was, right? So when I was thinking about that, I just this week in Master Coach training we've had that we're focusing on the nervous system with Leah Davidson and we're in there and we're diving into it. And something Leah always says is that, you know, sometimes we have this idea that regulation and better regulation of the nervous system means that we're like this flat line. And she's like, that's not true. Actually, the indication of a healthy nervous system is that we're able to come in and out of the states with more ease, with more fluidity, and we don't get stuck in fight or flight state, right? Or whatever. And so I think that's one thing that I want to highlight is that resilience does not, and I'm going to use tough a little bit, but I'll, I'll circle back to my exact thoughts on that as well. But resilience isn't about just being tough or never being affected by anything or, or just being like flat line or not having emotion. It's just kind of this interesting thing. What's actually true is that the more we as human beings, as coaches and for our clients, the more we can be with what's going on in our internal world, the more we can be with our emotions, the more we can make space for them, the more we can make space for the thoughts and feelings that flow up and down and round and round and have the support to do that. That is when we can truly experience more resilience. Because if we're just avoiding things ever being up and down or avoiding anything getting, you know, pushed off kilter within us, that's not really resilience, right? That's not really toughness. That's trying to control things because we don't feel resilient. We don't feel, you know, quote unquote, in control inside. So now I've gone on and on. I have more to say about toughness, but yeah, any thoughts on, on any of that? 

Melanie Fay 09:26

Yeah, I'd like to respond directly to that. But last night I was listening to Eckhart Tolle and the question that his audience member asked him was, can you ever get rid of the pain body? And I just want to preface, I don't usually quote things. So if I get any of this wrong, I apologize to the universe  and to the interview, but I don't think I will because I thought I’d really like to talk about this. So the question was, can you ever get rid of the pain body? And for those who don't know, the pain body is these emotions that come up inside us and sometimes take over. And his first response to it was something along the lines of it's less important if it's possible to get rid of the pain body as it is to recognize how much are you identifying with the pain body? How much are you identifying with what's coming up? And when we say identifying here, we mean in the words that Molly just offered us, it's how, how much space is there around the experience that this painful feeling or this painful perspective, painful thought is coming up in my, in my system. And so if there is space, then we're not just the feeling, we're not just the thought, we're the space around it. And having that space around it is what I'd like to say is the second form, which is also what you just said, Molly, is the second form of resilience, because it's the space itself that gives us the ability to bounce back into shape, right? The second definition is the ability of a substance or object to bring back into shape. So this idea of how much am I identifying with the feeling coming up inside me, or the thought coming up inside me or the experience in me, if I'm identifying with it less, if I'm saying this is there and it's okay, right? This is there and it's okay, which is what Molly was just speaking to this idea of like, if you're trying to avoid it, a resilience decreases where if we kind of are with it or accept it or hold it with a loving space, then that becomes space. 

Molly Claire 11:38

Mm-hmm. 

Melanie Fay 11:39

And what Eckhart Tolle says, which is also what we're saying and what we continuously say, is that when we have that space, not only does it help us bounce back or spring back into shape, not being overcome or broken by that inner experience, and I don't believe in broken, but the experience of broken, when we have that space, that space itself calms the pain body. But another way of saying that is that space itself creates that regulation, nervous system regulation. And there's one last piece I want to say about that, which I'm, this is what I've been kind of really dying to say on this podcast ever since last night, the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape. For me, that is everything, because as a coach, I think what we do is we allow people to be who they are. 

Molly Claire 12:36

Mm-hmm. 

Melanie Fay 12:37

So, when we take that definition, spring back into shape, what we're saying is resilience and helping our clients know that there could be a space, and that space exists, and then feeling the benefits of that space. It's helping them spring back into shape, but the shape that is being sprung back to is them. 

Molly Claire 13:01

Oh my gosh. Okay, I wish we had like two hours to talk about this, but so many thoughts. I'm just, I'm gonna say this before I forget because this is immediately what came to mind when you said this, Melanie. And now I feel like I'm gonna cry. Last night, this quote came into my feed and I saved it in my phone. And it says, give a child permission to be themselves. That's the secret. And this is a little bit of a side note, but I was talking with a good friend last night about parenting and just appreciating the relationship that I have with my kids and how I was chatting with my middle son last night. And it was just so fun, the connection we had. And he's very different from me. And it's funny because as he's gotten older, he and I have more similarities than I ever realized before. But I remember so many times when he was growing up, there were so many things about him that seemed so different to me than I am. And thank goodness I was wise enough and trained well, trained well, I use that with air quotes by a mom who very much loved me for who I was to really appreciate his individuality, right? And so I thought of that quote and I wanna come back to what you're saying, Melanie, which is as coaches, as we are able to create a space for our clients where they can grow, improve, expand their own resilience in their life, where we're helping them to have enough space from the circumstances in their life, the thoughts that they have, the emotions that they have, we can create enough space of observation, of acceptance and really the skills to see it. I think it is a place where they can find greater wisdom, they can find greater clarity. And that very space, I think, allows them truly to take up the space to be themselves, to be who they are, like exquisitely in a bigger way than they've ever been before. So, yeah. 

Melanie Fay 15:23

And sometimes also a way to find who we are. Right that ever-evolving piece of what part of what I'm experiencing in myself. We could put it this way, what part of I'm experiencing myself is a form of toughness? Is a form of protection? Is a form of this is me getting through again with no judgment of those parts? But if I felt safe enough if there was enough space around enough self acceptance of who I am–which is what that space creates–what would I find out about myself? How would I see myself? What would I know?

Molly Claire 16:04

Yeah, and it's so funny as you're talking and I just, I keep thinking about these core things that we focus on in Master Coach training, right? In the core of it, to me, one of the biggest wins that my clients experience by the end of the training is they know themselves. They know who they are. They know how they feel. They know how to attend to their needs, right? There is such an ability for them to know themselves, connect with themselves, trust themselves. And it's almost like when I think about the magic woven throughout the whole program of Master Coach training, right? All the curriculum, the work that you do with them in tabbing, the work that Leah does with the nervous system, the work that Krista does that just, it's like everything keeps pointing back to self connection, knowing self, permission to be self, befriending our nervous system, attending to our needs. And it's like, first of all, when we as coaches, when you as a coach can be immersed in that process of better understanding yourself, I truly feel like it is incredible what can come forth from within us. And as the ripple effect or the specific opportunity within that is that when I see my coaches that are trained in this philosophy, right? And they're working with their clients to help that stressed out mom to know herself, to understand her needs, right? Then not only is the coach showing up in the world in such a big way, but this client is now feeling like she can show up in the best way. And then guess what happens? She's then extending that gift to all of her kids and her spouse and the people, you know, in her workplace, whatever it is. And so it's just all this being said, I know I'm kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent here, and yet it's not because when we can care about knowing ourselves, take the time to know ourselves, take the time to understand our emotions, our thoughts, and to make that space as we build ourselves up, there is a resilience that is naturally built within that process. 

Melanie Fay 18:25

Absolutely. 

Molly Claire 18:25

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, I was just thinking, I was just telling Melanie this on another call in terms of, you know, some personal things that I'm juggling and kind of the ups and downs of all of that. And I was remembering a time when I don't even remember when it was now, maybe like a year and a half ago, a couple years ago, it was like a time when I was feeling there were so many things going on around me. It was almost unbelievable. The amount of circumstances that any one of them could have thrown someone off kilter. And I remember being at this moment in time then, where I remember feeling really grateful to be in a moment where I had learned the skills and have the support right for myself personally, to be able to build up my resilience and my ability to have that space that I was okay. I was okay, despite all of this. And I want to just pause here and make this crystal clear that had I not been okay, had that thrown me off kilter, I wouldn't have been bad or wrong. I wouldn't have been any worse, right? And the truth is that sometimes new things do happen and they do throw us off. So I want to make it clear that this isn't a statement about, you know, oh, I overcame this and now I'm proud of myself because I could be this. But what I am also saying is that it is a gift that is attainable for all of us that we can have more and more peace, more stillness, more resilience and what a gift it is. And that the times I can say for myself absolutely that when I do get, you know, in my words, like thrown off kilter, I'm able to bounce back much more quickly, not because I'm a better person than I was before or that I'm, you know, tougher than I was before, but because thank goodness, I've invested time in building some of these internal muscles. Yeah. 

Melanie Fay 20:36

Yes. 

Molly Claire 20:38

Which is possible for all of us and for our clients. 

Melanie Fay 20:41

Yep. I have a thought coming into my head that I'm going to try to bring here. So we're all listening to this podcast right now, but like all experiences, feeling resilience, feeling the benefits of what it is to attune to what resilience means for ourselves is an experience. It's something that we experience in ourselves and then creates change, change that's noticeable for us. So going on this zone of let's say let's call resilience on one side, maybe it's and no judgments of the sides, just different expressions of it on one side. Maybe it's toughness on the other side. It's deep sensitivity to what is inside me and tools to address that, right? Let's say that exists on that continuum and depending on the moment for all of us, the moment we may be accessing our resilience in different ways, we might be tough and moving through the moment or in another moment we might be attending to, but all of this is resilience. This is what I'm really wanting to say once we're working with resilience. I'm wanting to say it now when we're working with resilience towards the zone of how am I attending to myself? We're bringing in a consciousness, a consciousness of caring. 

Molly Claire 22:00

Mm-hmm. 

Melanie Fay 22:01

And I'll just say, a consciousness of love, if we're attuning to ourselves, if we're taking the time to do that, then we're bringing in that consciousness of love, of attunement, of nurturing, of caring for. And so if we're doing that, so here's the continuum of resilience, it's all about surviving and moving through. But if we're moving through from this attunement side of resilience, the attunement brings the consciousness that we are, our loving self, then we are resourced with this space, which also creates, this is the point for all of that I'm saying, change, conscious change. Because resilience, right? Resilience is great in terms of survival, but from a coaching perspective, this is where resilience and transformation meet. Because resilience, resilience takes us through. And that's wonderful. We want to do that. We want to survive. But if we do resilience through care, attunement, these new skills as well, then we also are guaranteed to transform and guaranteed, both in terms of the way we're experiencing the exact moment, the texture of the moment. But as we learn that texture of nutrients, self-love, self-focus, that consciousness inside ourselves of whatever that means, I know I'm using words and we could talk about them in a lot of ways, but that begins to become us. 

Molly Claire 23:36

Yes, yes. 

Melanie Fay 23:38

That's the connection between resilience and transformation, where toughness, and I know it's starting to sound judgmental of toughness, but if we're not caring for ourselves, parts of us will be breaking. 

Molly Claire 23:49

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Like the toughness, because yeah, it can seem like it's the bad side, right? And you really want to be this side, but in truth, right? Like when we can toughen up and go, there are certain situations where that toughness, that survival, thank goodness it's there. Thank goodness we're able to do it, but we don't want that to be the end all be all. That is not, that is one option of how we move through things. And we use that toughness to support ourselves in moving forward and with the hope that also, right? And what can lead more often, not because toughness is bad, but because toughness can actually support allowing that opportunity for us to lead more often with that care and nurturing of self. Right?

Melanie Fay 24:38

Because we want to have the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape. 

Molly Claire 24:44

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So I love that you said this and the way you articulated this and this is why. So you know, you're listening to this podcast and Melanie and I are talking about this emotion and this care, like all this like a flowy emotional language. And I know some coaches are like, okay, we got to get results for our clients. Like are we just going to always talk about like, how do we feel? What do we need? And the answer is how do we feel and what do we need is the platform by which all the changes are made. This right here is what I want to say loud and clear to everyone that when we can attend to our nervous system, attend to our emotions, create a space for ourselves and for our clients where we are. And now I feel like I'm not articulating it well. So hopefully Melanie can clean up the statement from me, but I just, I want to make it clear that actually I'm going to pause and tell a kind of a funny story. So you know, my sister and I, we used to run our business together and I remember one of our clients that came in, she told us that she was afraid that we were, you know, this was her words, like too nice to actually help her get results because my sister and I, we have a similarity, right? And we're kind of smiley and we're really just, you know, we have more of a softer touch than, than many, you know, go get them like pounding their fist coaches, right? And she said that and we kind of laughed about it. And of course, because the work in that container was very much about who are you? What are your values? What do you need? She was of course experiencing incredible transformation. So I think that's kind of the perfect way to kind of bring this full circle and hopefully get this point across that the things that we're talking about here and the things I'm always talking about on this podcast about attending to your needs, understanding self, valuing self and caring about and paying attention to your emotions right alongside the thoughts and the actions and all of it, making the space for that is truly the platform of inner strength, of resilience and the way in which we can create the most profound changes for ourselves and for our clients. And it does in fact result in better relationships, more income, meeting goals, weight loss, all those tangible things. It absolutely has to start here with those internal muscles of caring about and connecting with self. Okay. I pulled it off. Okay. I think it ended up clear. Yes. Well, this is such a great conversation. And in just a minute, Melanie, I'd love to have you offer any, you know, final words on this conversation. But you know, as all of you are listening to this, I just, I want you to imagine for a minute, as you lean into building resilience, your internal muscles of resilience and self trust, how that can really change your experience of growing your business and all the ups and downs, thinking about how as you go into your client sessions, and as you are supporting your client and building their own resilience, how much more strong and steady and certain can you be for them in sessions. And also just thinking about at a personal level, how your experience of your life and relationships can be so much different when you feel more of that internal strength, that steadiness, and more of that self connection. And, you know, I'm kind of separating these into these three areas. But it's like when we think about just that experience of what it's like to be us feeling so much better, feeling so much more solid and expansive, it's you just can't beat that. You can't beat that. Yeah. Okay, Melanie, any last thoughts before we finish up here? 

Melanie Fay 29:00

The way the definition of resilience is coming to me right now is, how able am I to be with what is? And if we take that as the definition, we could also say, what does it feel like for me to be in my life? How capable am I to be with what is? That's the resilience. Resilience allows us to be with whatever it is. And so then how able am I to be in my life, to be with my life? So the gift of resilience is to be able to stay connected to our own life. So if we think about that in terms of goals, which you are taking as Molly in terms of like growing our business and things, I know we're wrapping it up here, but I'm just going to talk personally for a second. And one of the benefits of doing tapping work for me and learning how to care for myself and like literally it felt like shifting momentum. My momentum was so outwardly focused. It took years to kind of shift the momentum towards myself because it was so foreign. Like a car going really fast in one direction, it had to learn how to change directions. And for me, say growing my business where I was a painting teacher as well, all of these outward facing things that were relating to who I was, what resilience allowed this ability to be with what is, which is the scary thing in front of me, which is being in front of people painting a scary thing or now coaching, which is not scary anymore, but it used to be being with people. And then the thing inside me, the desire to do it, the resilience allows for that connection. So resilience allows for me to unfold my life, that desire, because I love what I do and I know the people on this call love what they do. And the gift of what we're calling resilience in all these different ways is that you can take, how is this thing outside of me making me feel? Resilience is the tool that lets me mitigate what it feels like. And then outside gets to connect with what inside wants to do. So it truly is, it's giving us the gift of our own life unfolding and that never ends. That's the other piece that I think it's really important that we say that resilience is not something learned and then there. It's a practice. It's a continual practice and our body will do it for us, but we can help. 

Molly Claire 31:45

That's right. That's right. Well, it's so funny, as you said, that I was thinking about a recent podcast interview that I was on and the person interviewing me asked about fraud complex. And he said, you know, he said when we're leading people through, we're teaching them something and then sometimes, you know, we have our own issues in our life and then we can feel hypocritical or we can have this fraud complex. And I told him, I said, I don't feel any fraud complex because what I'm teaching my clients is we're always engaged in the work and that we will get dysregulated, that we will experience life and it will challenge us. And this is the way we support ourselves within it. And I do very much support myself within that, right? So it doesn't mean that I don't have ups and downs and all the things. And what I'm really touting is it never ends. So let's keep going. It never ends, but life feels different. It does feel different. And I think that's important to say, right? Because I think there can be some philosophies that it never ends and it's always this way, but that's not true. It just, it continues and it does feel different. This has been so great. Thank you so much, Melanie. 

Melanie Fay 33:12

Welcome, Molly, thank you for having me. 

Molly Claire 33:15

It's been awesome and you know coaches as you're listening to this really take to heart pay attention to what resonated for you in this conversation and what are your superpowers when it comes to your own resilience and is there more work for you to do as you pay attention to your own feelings to your own needs and your nervous system as well and how can you continue to make it a priority as you build your business and as you serve your clients how can you continue to make it a priority to build those internal muscles specifically with that care and that intention of loving and nurturing toward self so that's what I want to you know ask all of you to consider and those of you that are of course are interested in taking any of this further you can always go to the work with me page because I feel like we've talked about so much and I'm like I don't want people to feel like what do I do with this right so I want to make sure you all know that master coach training is an early enrollment right now I have a low cost membership now that you may not know about but there are a lot of opportunities to really work on these very important things so that's what I've got for you and of course Melanie's information is in the show notes so you can find her and follow her and I'll talk with you all next week.