Molly Claire 00:45

All right, coaches, I'm so excited to have Brian Bernaman here today. I was honored to be interviewed by him on his podcast months ago, and we've been working on getting back together to have this interview, and we're finally here. You're going to love this conversation. Welcome to the show, Brian. 

Brian Berneman 01:05

Thank you so much, Molly, for having me here. It's a pleasure to reconnect, as you said. It was such a wonderful time having you as a guest, and it's nice to be on the other side as well. 

Molly Claire 01:17

This is one of my favorite things about having your own business and especially doing this type of work that's so meaningful. What a gift to be able to connect with so many good people in the world, right, that have missions that are aligned with what's important to us. So it's just, it's the best.

Brian Berneman 01:37

And, you know, and to be able to actually have the time to do it at our own time, choosing, you know, and at the moment, like in Spain, and I'm traveling, and I'm able to do this. So it's awesome. 

Molly Claire 01:49

Yeah, it is. It's so great. Well, part of the reason I wanted to have Brian here is because, you know, of course, he and I are very aligned in our mission in terms of how we help people. And as we talked about what to focus on today for all of you, Brian brought up this piece of understanding the integration of that work we're doing and kind of the holistic nature of coaching. So we're going to talk about what that means, you know, those of you listening that have a niche that don't have a niche that are trying to figure out what are the skills I need to be able to really help people with. That's what this conversation is about today. So Brian, tell us a little bit about what you see in terms of clients that come to you that have maybe worked with a coach on one area or done something, but they come to you and you realize that what's been missing for them is the bigger picture of them as a whole person. 

Brian Berneman 02:42

Yes, exactly. I think that we had this conversation that it's important to realize a lot of times that we are a whole being with different aspects of ourselves. We have internal aspects like the mental, the emotional, the physical, the spiritual. We have external, like perhaps we have businesses or work with our students, we have family members, we have friends, we have activities. There's all these different aspects of ourselves and a lot of times when I see sometimes people coming to me that they have potentially worked with some other coaches on business or work and they haven't actually worked on anything else other than that. We were talking earlier about the importance of understanding that we need to be able to offer as much as possible this holistic perspective and we need to be able to guide those that we are supporting to make sure that they are integrating everything. For me, consciously integrating everything is so important because sometimes people don't realize that. Sometimes people think, okay, I'm going to work on all of this part of my business and my mindset for my business but perhaps they don't realize how they can apply that to their relationship or to if they have kids to their interactions with their kids. Perhaps they just sit on that perspective and I think that this is so important to be able to bring this view that we need to explore all of it and perhaps yes there's an entryway through one aspect and that's the important thing to understand. Yes, we need that entryway and then we need to expand from there. 

Molly Claire 04:38

Yes, yes, exactly. And I think that that's why when I'm working with my coaches and we're talking about potentially choosing a niche, exactly what you're saying, that's an entry point. And we can be in the greatest service of our clients when we on the backend, within the coaching, know and understand about different aspects of our clients, not only different aspects of their life, different topics, but the different pieces and parts of them, right? The mental, the emotional, the spiritual, all of that. And so I love that. And one of the things that really stood out to me that you said was how, for example, those of you listening, when a client comes to you and you're working with them, for example, on their work life, when you can be well-trained to understand the different areas of their life and the different pieces and parts of them, even if you're focusing on that one piece of their life, you can skillfully continue to show the bigger picture and help them more deeply apply everything in that area to the other areas, right? Truly integrating what they're learning in that area to everywhere else, which is a really big deal when you think about the potential of how we can serve our clients. 

Brian Berneman 06:03

Yes. And also, you know, as you're saying this, I remember one client came once that their focus was on expanding their business. And I started working with her on some childhood trauma. And she didn't understand, you know, what's happening? Why are we doing that? Like, we're not working on the business. And I think that sometimes it's, you know, this view or this perspective or the experience to understand there's all this correlation between all of the aspects of ourselves. And of course, if I work on some of my childhood trauma, I might actually solve a business thing. And sometimes, you know, if they are not understanding that potentially they won't work on that because well, that's not business perspective. But for her, it was so important to be able to do that, because she didn't know that. But this was just my view at the moment, my understanding that there was something there. And this, you know, just perhaps comes with the experience that there was something behind what there was a blockage in her business. And I ended up working on releasing some childhood trauma. And then that part of her business suddenly, you know, started working. And it's like, well, we didn't do anything on your business. Yes, we did. 

Molly Claire 07:26

We did everything on the business. Well, I think, you know, it's funny because you're, you know, we can talk about this almost as like a one-off or this like rare situation. It's really not right. I mean, and here's one thing I want to say because I'm always, for all of you listening, I am always advocating for safety and ethics and good education and everything and you know, make sure that for each of you, you are, there's an episode that I have on trauma and trauma therapy and so I highly recommend that you become trauma informed, understand your limits. If you're working in that realm and area, you should be qualified to do it and on and on. And I also think that there are many things we can do and ways we can support our client within nervous system regulation and some things that are not dipping into areas that we are not qualified to tackle and truly support them in healing. I mean, being in conversations that are loving and supportive and make space for someone, that is healing in nature in and of itself, right? It doesn't have to be something magical beyond that, right? In order for it to be healing. So I just, I want to make sure to speak to that because I know that word can be, you know, it can be a hot topic, but I want to circle back to what you were saying, Brian, which is, you know, I mean, when I'm working with my clients, where they are stuck in business is almost always related to something underneath, to something deeper, right? And we, when we look at like nervous system states, a lot of people don't realize that when we're in this overworking frantic state, right? When someone's like, I'm trying everything. I'm doing this, I get up and I do all of this. Well, guess what? Like, maybe we need to put a pause on that because people don't realize that can be a version of the flight response, right? Which is triggering something from before. So, you know, all that being said, our clients and us having responses and challenges within our business life that actually need to be addressed in a different way because of those underlying emotions and things that exist is extremely common. I would say it's more the rule than the exception. 

Brian Berneman 09:47

Yes, definitely. And you know, I think that it's so important to understand for us as someone that is supporting another person, the more that we understand different perspectives. And this is why I'm always an advocate for multiple modalities, multiple perspectives, to be able to have both for ourselves in our own understanding and healing journey, but also to be able to support others. The more that I know, the more that I'm able to support others. As you mentioned, you know, with trauma. I don't want to just be trauma informed. I want to be trauma experienced, to be able to actually support because I have had this happening multiple times. Someone worked with a coach, and the coach wasn't ready to understand what they were doing. And they activated something on this person. And then they sent them to me because they were activated, but they didn't have the skills. And you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that I know my limits. And I know that sometimes I'm not the right person to do something. And that's when you know, I know other people. And I'm like, perhaps I'm not the best person for this. Perhaps Molly is or perhaps you know, Justin is or perhaps Claire, who knows who. But the more that I know my own limits, the more that I can serve others. And this, of course, comes from a place that I'm not living from a place of scarcity and survival, which I tell this to a lot of my students as well. You know, I had this student at university that wanted to become a coach as well. And he was asking me all of these questions. And I was like, well, you know, if you're trying to get clients, because you're coming from a place of scarcity, you're going to get perhaps the wrong client for you. And it's so important to be able to be like, you know, I'm not for you, you're not for me, go over there. Or, you know, we are a match here. Yeah, let's do this. 

Molly Claire 11:50

Absolutely. And I want to highlight a couple of things from this is number one, to as coaches, continue to expand your knowledge, expand your ability to help learn different modalities so that you are the most qualified to support your client in the biggest and best way, right? That's like one piece of this. And at the same time, when something is outside the scope of your practice, when something is beyond your limits, that is why we want to have a network of people so that regardless, we can be there in service to others, right? So yeah, I just I love all of it. This is such I just I want more of the great coaches out there to understand this, right? And know that I really believe I know I can say this, and I'm guessing the same is true for you. So my life has been impacted in, I mean, monumental ways by really skilled coaches who have taken the time to develop themselves and to bring forth their inherent gifts too. And I'm just so grateful for it. And I just I just can't say enough about how important it is that we develop these skills to help human beings. 

Brian Berneman 13:10

And you know, this is just my view because it has been my journey and partly it's been what I advocate. If we are going through the experience of all of this, we are going to actually be better coaches, we're going to be able to be more of service because we went through it. Like, I tell a lot of times to some of my students that if they are wanting to, you know, go and do a course and become a coach, but they don't have the experience. They don't, they didn't go through it themselves. They didn't, you know, learn experientially, then, you know, they could be good. I'm not saying no, but there's a difference, you know, if someone learns something and is actually grounded in that and embodies that, then it's much more likely that they are going to be able to support others in that way. And this is why for me, it's so important to actually stay in integrity and be grounded in what I know and be completely confident in. I know that what you said, whatever is within my scope, I know that I can support people. Whatever is not within my scope, then there's other people, cooperation, collaboration, whatever it is. Like, I feel that a lot of times I keep on seeing people that are stuck in the paradigm of competition. 

Molly Claire 14:41

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 

Brian Berneman 14:43

And that doesn't support the people that we were wanting to support. 

Molly Claire 14:47

That's right. That's right. 

Brian Berneman 14:48

The focus needs to be, you know, it's not about me, the focus is about them. 

Molly Claire 14:54

That's right, it's about the client, right? And yeah, I love that you brought this up because just actually just today in my, with my master coaches, we were discussing this yesterday and I was posting today about this, about how do we find and align with our power partners, our cooperative partnerships, these relationships where we find other people who are aligned with our mission of helping people. And when we can come together and we can bring together these different pieces and parts, it really, it serves the whole, right? And it's in service of our clients and it's just, yeah, something I can't emphasize enough for sure. 

Brian Berneman 15:39

And it's, you know, Molly, I think that as well, that's the microcosm of what we were talking about before about integration and about understanding the holistic approach. The holistic approach is about the whole. Where we see it on aspects of people or on, you know, us as different people that can support others, we need to see everything as the whole to be able to understand, like, it's not all about me. It's about how do we allow ourselves to be of better service? And that is the same way. If we start to actually have that perspective, you know, that holistic perspective on every aspect of things, and we start to integrate that, things become much easier. Like, I know firsthand that life becomes so much easier when we start to have this perspective of, you know, collaboration, perspective of holistic care, perspective of, you know, not competition, then suddenly things become more beautiful, more abundant, more everything. 

Molly Claire 16:44

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Absolutely. I want to go back to something else you said about our experience as coaches and what that brings. So I want to circle back to that. And then I do want to make sure also that you share any, you know, specific things that you want to make sure to highlight in this conversation for my listeners as well. But you know, when you were talking about us going through things, right, and experiencing things and really walking the walk. I agree that there is a really big difference between learning something intellectually, and us actually experiencing and integrating what we're learning. And I believe there is no shortage of opportunities for us to experience hard things. I wish, sometimes I wish that were not the case. But what I'll say is, here's the difference. Those of you listening, when something comes up for you, how willing are you to open up and be with it? How willing are you to have support from a coach, to really deepen and expand your own emotional capacity within whatever's going on. And this can be with things we consider big things or really anything at all. And I've seen this, I'm actually curious to see what you think about this, Brian, because I've seen this time and again, that when I'm working with a client who keeps herself a bit shut down from looking at what's going on within her, and understandably so, by the way, right, there is no judgment. But, when a client does that, I see that it stunts their ability in their business and it stunts their ability to serve their clients. And so have you seen that as well, that when someone stunts their growth, that it really, it limits what they're able to help others with and the understanding they're able to have. 

Brian Berneman 18:50

Definitely because you know as you're saying this is why everything is related. Yes, we are making ourselves small as a protective mechanism. So this isn't something, you know, to point out as a wrong behavior.

Molly Claire 19:05

Exactly. 

Brian Berneman 19:06

This is understanding trauma. When we are actually trained in that, we understand this is a protective mechanism. This person, for whatever reason that perhaps needs to be uncovered, is protecting herself, therefore is not allowing herself to experience growth with money or with her business or in relationships as a way of protecting herself, potentially from the suffering of potentially losing one of that. It doesn't matter exactly why it is, what matters is a perspective that, you know, what they are doing is not wrong. It's not helpful for them to what they want to achieve. That's a different thing, you know. I usually, with a lot of people that I work with, I tell them we need to be grateful for all of our protective mechanisms because they are supporting us to survive. Now, the question is, do we want to survive or do we want to thrive? Because to be able to be well is not the same as to be able to survive. To be able to thrive in life is not the same as to be able to survive. Survival, great, necessary. That's what we are wired to do. Now, we need to consciously choose something different. This is why we go through all of these experiences. This is why, as you were saying before, there is suffering in life. I practiced the Buddhist philosophy for many, many years, for the last 25 years, and one of the main understandings in Buddhism is there is suffering, and there is a way out of that as well. Life brings us all of these different opportunities, as you were mentioning. Life brings us opportunities that are big or small. It doesn't matter. Everything is a learning opportunity. Now, are we seeing it like that or not? Are we allowing ourselves to experience it like that or not? And are we actually experiencing? Which is what you said before. One of my teachers used to tell me, knowledge and information is meaningless unless you actually experience it, embody it, integrate it. If it's not embodied, which that is when it becomes wisdom, knowledge is irrelevant. Nowadays, we have all of the AI, we have all of the information over there. We have plenty of information. We can go on YouTube and find everything. It's not a shortage of information. It's how are we understanding how we match with that, our understanding, our ways, our beliefs, our tendencies, and how can we match us with that to be able to then integrate it and embody it and then allow it to actually be experienced. All of this is, you know, it's a lot of times really important to understand all of these different things that perhaps sometimes it seems it's not connected. Everything is connected. 

Molly Claire 22:08

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. There are so many things I feel like I need to have you come back and like and now I'm thinking I want to have you come teach in my group. There are just my brains going crazy because There's just so much good here so many good things being said and I really appreciate that you talked about it not being wrong when we're in a protective mode. And I think that you know for any of you listening, when it comes to you if maybe when I brought up this idea of, you know, are you willing to open up to be with it? And if you were feeling any sense of judgment or some of these kind of really unkind things we can say I just want to reiterate that we can always if you're noticing that how can I gently? Make a little bit of space to tiptoe into looking at this and certainly of course, I think having a coach that understands how to support you in that right is everything.

Brian Berneman 23:14

Well, as you're saying that, like, to be able to feel safe when we have a protective mechanism like that, when we feel safe with another person that is trying to support us, we need to understand processes, we need to understand timing, we need to understand, you know, sometimes it can be like that, sometimes also it takes time. And to have a non-judgmental view of something that we are observing, like, I can tell some of my clients, you know, like, you're closing down, like, not only, we can say it physically, but you know, you're shutting yourself down, not as a judgment of what you're doing, as an observation, so that we can actually do something with that. When we have this approach of non-judgment for life in general, that supports others to feel so much more confident and comfortable and safe around us. 

Molly Claire 24:07

Yes. And I mean, I just have to say this because I know that there are a lot of coaching approaches that I do not agree with. And I will just say it loud and clear when there are coaches that are using this pointing out something like why are you staying small or get out of your own way can be helpful at times in the right way. But you know, if for one second, someone is believing that this harsh fixture behavior approach is going to be beneficial to anyone long term. It's just not. So okay, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I want to say one more thing. And then I want to have you say any parting words. And then of course, also where people can find you. But you know, I meet with my coach, we dive deep, we look at things, we sift through everything inside twice a week. And of course, I'm doing this on my own as well, right? And it's like, because it's not always comfortable. It's not always pleasant, right? The tears and the emotions and the things we face and experience. And for me, you know, I do that, of course, for my own well being. And also every time I know me opening up and expanding my capacity for love, my capacity for, you know, even my capacity for emotions and understanding, it's always going to be in service of my clients. So when we go first with this work, we can be of incredible service to our clients. 

Brian Berneman 25:38

Yeah. And you know, Molly, now that you're mentioning this, I was actually last year, at the end of the year, in the graduation of university, my students, one of my students came up and started to share something that she heard me saying, which I think that is appropriate for this, which is I told my students that, you know, a lot of times there's the same growth that, you know, beyond your comfort zone. And I told my students, we don't always have to go beyond our comfort zone. We can expand our comfort zone. Like, why do I want to be uncomfortable? You know, like, as a reality, why do I want to be uncomfortable when what I can do is, you know, if that which I'm trying to achieve is outside of my comfort zone, instead of going outside, if I, for whatever reason, I don't feel comfortable doing that at the moment, I'll just expand my comfort zone to encompass that, therefore, I can do it. So, you know, we can have to achieve the same thing, we can have different views, and sometimes that is what helps each individual see things differently. Like, for this person, that's what they connected with. And I'm sure that a lot of my students didn't even resonate with that, or didn't even notice that I said that. We need to understand this, you know, it's kind of like, it's important to experience, to be able to go through things, and to be able to, for ourselves, as you were just saying, keep on working on ourselves, because that's the most benefit that we can bring to others. 

Molly Claire 27:14

Yes, yes, yes. Gently expanding our capacity. I love that you brought that up because there are so many ways we can grow and integrate change and yeah, such a great conversation. Okay Brian, any last words of wisdom for my audience? 

Brian Berneman 27:32

Um, let me see what concept now…

Molly Claire 27:34

So much pressure, right? What is the big thing you want to say? 

Brian Berneman 27:39

I think that one of the biggest things is to keep an understanding that everyone that we work with as a client is also for us. There's always learning for us and growth for us. And when we take on the mindset of always learning and everything, everything is an opportunity for learning, every person is an opportunity for learning, especially those that we are going deeper with, which I assume that that's what we are doing with our clients, we are going deeper with them, the more that we understand that, the more that we grow, the better that that keeps on having that effect on others. 

Molly Claire 28:21

Mm-hmm, I love it, love it. Okay, Brian, tell my audience where they can find you. Of course, all of this info is in the show notes as well, but tell them where they can find you and of course about your podcast and everything. 

Brian Berneman 28:33

Yes. Thank you, Molly. And they can find me on Brian Berneman, brianberneman.com. My name is my brand, so it's easy. And then as well, the Conscious Action podcast, that's the podcast that is all around wellbeing, sustainability, anything in between. Really, it's all about the interconnectedness of things. So Conscious Living, there's plenty of episodes, including the wonderful episode that we have, you Molly as a guest. So check it out. If anybody is interested in anything, I don't like to do the hard sell. I am more like, go and check. If we vibe, if we resonate, then I'm the right person for you. So, you know, go and check out all of my socials or on my website and always, you know, we can have a conversation. That's the way that I like to approach it. 

Molly Claire 29:25

Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. 

Brian Berneman 29:30

Thank you Molly, thank you for inviting me, thank you for having this opportunity to connect again with you and for everybody that is listening as well and for the wonderful community that you have developed. 

Molly Claire 29:42

So awesome to be a part of it here. All right, coaches, thanks for being here. I'll talk with you next week.