Welcome to The Masterful Coach podcast with Molly Claire. If you're a coach who's ready to impact more lives, make more money and create a life you love, you're in exactly the right place. Get the support you deserve as a female entrepreneur. Master your coaching skills, grow your ideal business, and honor your priorities in your personal life. Are you in? Let's get started with your host, bestselling author and master life and business coach, Molly Claire. Hey coach, as you'll soon find out, today's episode is pretty personal for me. I definitely got emotional recording it and I did decide that I wanted to share it with you. The reason I decided to share this is I haven't really spoken publicly about some of my personal challenges that I've experienced, and to be honest, much of this is the driving force behind the comprehensive master coach training that I'm offering in 2024. So I'm bringing together in that program, different practitioners that I've worked with personally, and that I have brought into my community for my clients. And it is just an honor, an absolute honor to lead up this work. So if you want to find out about that, of course, you can go to my website. And the coming weeks we'll be featuring some of the experts and you'll be hearing more about it. But for today, I'm getting a little bit personal. So without further ado, let's dive in. Hey coach, as I sit here to record this episode, I have not yet decided if I am going to actually air this episode or not. It feels... very personal to me, very vulnerable. But what I decided, as I've thought about it over the last couple of days, is that I would go ahead and record it, giving myself permission to delete it. So if you're hearing this, obviously I have decided to air it. I'm guessing I'll have a bit of a vulnerability hangover, maybe a shame storm thrown in there. All these lovely things we experience. But I did want to share this with you because I think that what I've experienced over the last four to five years has very much shaped me as a person and really shaped the way that I coach, and the way that I teach, and the way that I guide each of you to be a great coach to your clients. So, I'm sharing it with you here today. I'm just going to give you a little bit of highlights. Funny story, the other day, my daughter, she said something out loud to someone at the store and then we walked away and she said, "I love oversharing". And it was like just such a great moment. And so, as I share with you today, I will likely not be oversharing all the details, but I'm going to give you the highlights, just to give you an understanding of the big picture idea. So, I started my journey as a coach in 2014. I trained with the Life Coach School. I was on a dial-in conference line with the founder, Brooke Castillo, and 12 other soon to be coaches. I fell in love with the LCS model. The LCS model is one way that the concept of cognitive behavioral therapy has been practiced. This idea that we have circumstances and then we have thoughts about what's happening or the people in our lives. Thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions, and actions create results. You can see some version of this in many different self help books. The way that I learned it and integrated it into my life was at the Life Coach School. So 2014, learning this tool, learning this model, using it for myself, using it with my clients, absolutely life changing. So life changing, in fact, that I decided to do master coach training in 2015. So I dive in, I take a deeper dive into understanding thought work, understanding how to use this cognitive model. I couldn't believe that the more I learned about it, the deeper I understood it, and the more effective I could be with it in my life and in others lives as well. So that following year, 2016, I start helping to train coaches. So I'm building my business, I'm also training coaches, creating some curriculum for the school, some worksheets. Down the road, I trained some master coaches. And I loved it because I saw and felt the power in this work. So during that time, as I was learning and building my business, I also went through a divorce, became a single mom and was really becoming the breadwinner for the first time. While I had a lot going on, I will say that having the model, the coaching model, and that cognitive work was so beneficial for me. And I genuinely felt like I was expanding and growing as a person and expanding my life in all the best ways and my relationships for that matter. Fast forward just a little bit, and in 2019, I remarried. Many of you know, I've talked on the podcast about having a blended family, eight kids, whoa, holy moly, what a circumstance, right? I was very conscientious going into this relationship and felt well prepared- and, you know, it's a big undertaking to remarry and blend a family and all those things. Well, as I entered into this marriage, everything I thought I knew about thought work and the model was challenged. And I mean really, really challenged. I was experiencing trauma responses that surprised me, nervous system activation. I was struggling to... where in the past, my use of thought work had been effective in some pretty big situations. Honestly, healing from my divorce from my first husband, navigating co parenting, like doing so much deep internal work. And this was like a whole new beast. So here I was, struggling to manage my mind, not able to feel in control of my emotions at all, and finding that I was using the coaching model in a way to really gaslight myself. Shut down my intuition, shut down my knowing, and really try to fight through it. And I know that many of you relate to this because guess what? We're fighters. We want to figure things out. We want to make them work. Right? So going through this experience on one hand absolutely challenged what I thought I knew about the model. And it also opened the door to such greater understanding of myself, of human beings, of the complexities and the beauty that is within us, and how to truly support ourselves and our clients in a very comprehensive way. Over the last four to five years, I really experienced feeling completely challenged in who I was, my sense of self felt completely rocked. And mind you, many of you have followed me during this time, right? Listen, I can do a great job of holding so many things together no matter what is going on in the inside. A lot of us are great at doing this. And I say great with a little bit of a smile on my face because it can be to our benefit and also sometimes to our detriment. But during the last four to five years, I felt my foundation of who I was, everything within me completely rattled and rocked. And during this time, the beauty has been - and what's relevant here for you in this podcast specifically - is that as I have worked with therapists, coaches, different specialty practitioners, I have really learned and understood how thought work really works and how it doesn't. I have learned how, as a coach, having an understanding of emotion work and what that really means, the different facets of it, why that matters so much. I've experienced many different ways of connecting with my emotions, healing with my emotions, moving my emotions, all of these things. I've also learned how an understanding of the nervous system and how it fits and connects with our emotions, and with our thoughts, how understanding that really makes a difference. Because here's the thing, any one method or approach or modality in isolation can be absolutely beneficial. And I also believe that when we have that broader, high level view, we can be the most effective. We have this space where we can understand where to lean with our clients, in any one moment. What's beneficial at one time, and what may not be beneficial at another time. Having this broader understanding allows us to effectively and safely utilize all the beautiful tools that we have with our clients. Now, I do want to say just one thing as I'm talking about all of this, my guess is that there may be some of you that are feeling a little bit of panic. Like, "Oh no, I only have this skill set and now I'm not qualified to coach." I do not believe that to be true at all. Please do not allow the skill gaps that exist, or the knowledge that you still need to attain, keep you from leaning into using with effectiveness the skill set and knowledge you have. I just want to remind you that as I've been talking here all this time, that I was using really, just mostly cognitive work, was extremely beneficial for me and my clients. So fast forward a little bit, here I am, and this last year I have been resetting my life. I took a break over the summer, which was very much needed. Of course, as I am once again, a single mom, and I have to say that I am so very happy with myself and my life. And being able to continue to show up in my business - while there's been just a little bit of chaos and craziness going on inside of me and in my life - but being able to show up for all of you and show up for my clients has been such a gift for me. And it continues to be a gift as I'm able to share with you the things I've learned and experienced about how you can be kinder, and more effective, and safer with yourself and with your clients. As I've been able to help so many of my clients understand how these different pieces fit together to allow you to be an effective coach. So I know I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but I just want to express to you, you listening here, thank you for being there. Thank you for being here, because I think the work that we do as coaches matters so much. And in large part, because of the amazing human beings we get to show up for. And for me, that is all of you here. This is the high level view. I have experienced really big emotions at new levels and new depths over the last several years, and I am so grateful for what it has brought to me and mostly what it allows me to bring to each of you. So as I finish up, I want to share a few really important things with you. I'm talking to you as a coach and as a human being, living a very human life. Number one, any tool, modality, or methodology that you use should be working for you, it should be working with you. It's okay if an approach worked at one time or in one situation and isn't at another time. If something isn't working for you, get curious, be open to what else you might learn or understand. Number two, especially all of you cognitive mindset coaches that follow me, do not allow your thought management, your mind management to mistakenly shut down your intuition, that inner knowing to shut down your feelings. Our feelings have messages for us. There is so much to learn. And so, yes, we want to be aware of the thoughts that are not serving us. We want to be aware of how we might broaden our perspective, that our thoughts may shift and improve our life. And awareness of our thoughts should never, ever be used to shut down any part of us. And the last thing I want to say to you from the bottom of my heart is that who you are matters. What you think matters. Your opinions, your judgments, your feelings, they matter. There is so much wisdom inside of you as a person, and as a coach. Access it. Learn to trust it. Please, please, please make enough space in your life and in this big, beautiful world for you. The person within you, who you are, is so unique and so powerful. Allow yourself to take up that space because you deserve it. All right, coach. That's what I've got for you. I'll talk with you next week. Thanks for listening to the Masterful Coach Podcast. Are you ready to build your amazing business with Molly as your coach? Check out www.MollyClaire.com to find out about Masterful Coach Foundations and the 10K Accelerator Method. It's the ultimate support for you as a coach building your ideal life and business.