Intro: Welcome to The Masterful Coach podcast, with Molly Claire, where coaches learn skill mastery, business mastery, and life mastery at a whole new level. If you’re serious about creating a meaningful coaching business that makes a difference, you’re in the right place. And now your host, master life and business coach, Molly Claire.

Hey. So great to be with you today. I hope you've been enjoying the amazing interviews the last several weeks. It was so fun to interview these phenomenal women business owners, and I thought this would be a great time to bring you a little bit of variety that you could enjoy listening at this time of year when way too many of us can create too much busyness. So I hope you've enjoyed that and I'm excited to be here today with you talking with you about how to create easier transitions in your life.

Right now we're transitioning into a new year. Most likely many of you have some kind of change you're wanting to implement. Maybe you're wanting to lean into your business and grow it even more. Maybe actually, you're gonna pull back on your business a little bit and lean into other things in your personal life or other areas. Whatever that shift is for you that you'll be creating or whatever transitions will inevitably come during this next year, I wanna give you a little bit of perspective and help you think about how to make the transitions in your life a little bit easier, as a business owner and as someone really wanting to create a meaningful life and business balance.

Before we dive in as you're listening to this, if you've been following me at all on email, my newsletter and Instagram, you know that I'm actually in the middle of a 21 day reset. So, I decided early on this year that I would commit to blocking out three weeks over the holidays. That I would put a pause on my business. And part of the reason I've been including all of you in this by email and even talking with you right now about it is that it's very challenging for me to really set aside that much time to reset.

And this is something that I've always worked on and I'm so committed this year, and by including you and bringing you in and speaking about it and sharing some thoughts, encouraging you to do it, it's really in a way helping me to stay accountable to myself and really solidify for me the value in taking this pause. So as I'm talking to you right now, in fact it's the beginning of December, and I know you'll be hearing this as we're going into the new year, but I bring this up because I hope that all of you are giving yourself a little bit of space to pause in your life as you transition into a new year.

There's a lot of power in moving into a new year, a new phase. It brings this sense of renewed possibility and hope and excitement, and I think we should all really capitalize on that and take the time to think about what you want.

Okay, let's talk about transitions. So I know that whenever summer would come, when my kids were younger, I always had this amazing plan for how it was gonna go when they got outta school and everything was gonna be organized and they would have chores and things would be clean, and everything would be balanced and amazing. And then the actual day would come that the kids were home for the first time and nothing seemed to go as planned, at all.

Everyone was a little bit out of sorts. Everyone was trying to figure out the new routine. I was trying to figure out the emotions coming up for me in managing all of that and rearranging my priorities. And what I found is that first week that the kids were home and sometimes the first couple of weeks were just kind of a wash.

It was this period of time of figuring it out, and as I really understood that and saw that and planned for that transition time, it made a huge difference. And here's why. When I was thinking if I make these plans, everything will go perfectly and everything will be smooth and everyone will be happy and everything will be clean and organized - and that didn't happen of course - I was arguing with reality. Then I'm in a space of, "This shouldn't be happening. This should be different."

This frustration and really this resistance to what was happening, and I think this is the case for all of us, right? When we expect things to go a certain way and they don't go that way, we can oftentimes push against it and resist.

And I believe there is a strong tendency to do this anytime we are making a transition and here's why. Transitions are us moving into a new and somewhat unknown space. We're not really sure what to expect with what's coming up, and as humans wanting some sense of certainty, wanting some kind of guarantee.

Oftentimes what we do is we try to create certainty by making plans, maybe even by making a plan that we think is a no fail plan. And we invest so much in that because you believe that is where we will find relief and peace. And while I think it's a positive thing to make plans, I think it's also extremely useful for us to remember that when we are transitioning into a new phase in our life, a new phase in your business, whatever it is, there are always going to be unknowns. There's always going to be a figure it out, settling in period.

And in that period, in that phase, there are always going to be a lot of thoughts and emotions coming up that you never expected or anticipated. So as you're thinking right now about moving into the new year, these are some of the things you can be thinking about. What is your plan for this transition and how will you build in that space for things to not go as planned, for things to maybe be the opposite of what you thought they would be? How will you come into it with a mindset of figuring it out as you go and being willing to have all the thoughts and feelings come up along the way and not allow them to control your experience of the situation?

I wanna share one more story with you that is about very impatient 16 year old Molly, I guess 15 year old. So when I was learning to drive, I was learning on a stick shift and it was very frustrating for me and I probably had some fear there too. I remember when my older sister was learning to drive, and at the time we lived in a place where there were very steep hills, and I remember her learning and us having to put the brakes on and have my mom and my sister switch places because we were on this, I mean, unbelievably steep hill. And it was really challenging for her to get that perfect balance between the gas and the clutch. And we were slipping backwards and it was a pretty scary experience that I remember. And so I had all this fear coming in, right? And also I was pretty impatient and I didn't really like not knowing how to do this. I didn't really like that.

It was challenging, and it was very easy for 15 year old Molly to go to the place of, "I can't figure this out. I can't do it. It's not working. It's too hard." And I was so impatient that my mom actually handed off the task of teaching me to drive to my stepdad. So my stepdad, Mike, very even keeled, very patient, very easygoing, and he just, he had the patience to do it with me.

So Mike and I go in my Volkswagen Jetta to the high school and we're driving around and practicing, and I kept practicing starting the car. So those of you listening that have never driven a stick shift or a clutch, the tricky part about it is that you have to put your foot and push ever so gently and masterfully on the accelerator, or the gas, while very slowly and methodically taking your foot off of the clutch.

And so there's really, uh, somewhat of an art form to this because the only way you can really know how to do it is by getting the feel for it, by experiencing pushing on the gas and letting up on the cluth. And feeling that sense of when the balance is exactly right. And it's challenging also, in part, because every single stick shift is going to be different.

Every single car is going to have a little bit different feel of how much pressure you're putting on the accelerator and how fast, and how slowly and gently and methodically you're pulling off the cluth. So this balance, as you can imagine, is pretty challenging. And up the ante and up the frustration when you don't get the balance right and the car just dies.

And so I just vividly remember this being in the parking lot. Thank goodness that my frustrations, my emotions coming out, did not even phase my stepdad. But I would try again and again and again, and the car would die, and the car would die, and the car would die. And so many of you, I know you can relate to this when you're transitioning.

Maybe it's figuring out that balance in your business and your life. And you're trying to lean into one while letting off the other and setting boundaries. And it doesn't seem to work and it can be so easy to go to that place of, "This isn't gonna work. I'm never gonna figure this out."

The same thing can be true if you're transitioning your business to a different way of marketing, a different way of sales, whatever it is that you're doing. Even maybe you're just starting your coaching business. This is a transition and it's all new. Here's what I want to offer you. Just like it took practice for me and it took from me as a 15 year old, the willingness to try again and again and again, and actually get the feel of it by experiencing what that smooth transition looked, the exact same thing applies to you.

Whatever changes you're making in the new year, whatever transitions you're making, remember, you can't know how to do them until you're actually doing them. You might not be patient all of the time. It might not be easy all of the time. It might not work a lot of the time, but I promise that as you make that commitment to go back again and again and again and figure out the way this transition can be smooth for you, you will figure it out and you will get there.

That's what I've got for you, coach. Hope you have an amazing, beautiful transition into the new year full of all the ups and downs and the craziness of. And I look forward to talking with you very soon. Talk to you then.

Outro: Thanks for listening to The Masterful Coach Podcast. If you’re ready for complete support as you build your coaching business, check out Molly’s collaborative community, The Masterful Coach Collective, it’s a place where you’ll have access to the best experts in the biz, community support and guidance as you build your perfect business 90 days at a time. Visit www.mollyclaire.com for details.