How to Do Deep Work With Your Clients with Kait Ann-Michelle

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 246. Today I'm sitting down with Coach Kate and Michelle, and we are discussing how to do the deep work with your clients. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and today I am super pumped to bring to you a very special coach. Her name is Kate Ann Michelle, and she shares with us her personal journey, how she has been able to remember herself, do the deep inner work and really share with us the truth behind transformation and how she gets to the root for her clients and really help her clients see ultimate results and fair warning. Some of this work, this deep inner work, it might show you the opportunities for you to take a deeper look at yourself. So I want to invite you before clicking off this podcast, no matter what is discussed, really listen to the questions that are posed inside of this episode so that you can take a look and give yourself the opportunity to take a close look at you, the coach. When you do this work, you'll be able to facilitate really powerful transformations for your clients. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up, Kate and Michelle? How are you today?

I'm doing fabulous. How are you?

I'm doing so good. I cannot wait to dive into our conversation today. Thanks so much for being here.

Of course, I'm excited to chat with you as well.

So for those of us who have not had the pleasure of being introduced to your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Wow, that's a lot. So I am a coach, but I do health and fitness. That's kind of where my coaching started. I grew up as an athlete. I played high level athletics, so I played divisional basketball in college. I then went on to get my master's at the University of South Florida, stuttering under Dr. Bill Campbell in the Performance and Phys Physique Enhancement Lab. And I have a few, I think we have four research studies published now. And after that, I really got into integrative medicine. So then I got my functional medicine certification. And then through my own kind of personal development, after my basketball career ended, I got really in introspective and trying to understand who I was outside of what I did, because I had spent my entire life kind of preparing to play professionally. And then I tore my patellar tendon and that ended my career. So I had to figure out who the fuck I was outside of, you know, being an athlete. And that's where my passion for psychology started. And so I do health, fitness and personal development. We work with anyone from a very busy mom who does not know how to kind of prioritize herself as well as her family, to high level athletes, executives, entrepreneurs. So we, we work with a lot of high level, high higher thinkers, I would say is really what I'm looking for with people that we serve. Because I am not really interested in kind of service solutions or just doing the service kind of, here's a training program, here's your nutrition, like, have a great day, talk to you next week kind of thing. It just doesn't interest me. I am very abstract as a thinker, and so I like the intricacies of having to take all of the elements of someone's life and really customize an approach and kind of build it out like a puzzle. So that's typically how we serve a lot of our clients, is lots of examination calls, deep diving into what their pain points are, what their life looks like, what their stress management techniques are, what are some of the limiting beliefs that they have, or what are the stories that they themselves about themselves to bring that into the forefront of their awareness so that we can start to break through some of those mental barriers as well as optimizing their mental and physical health to really achieve peak performance.

Okay. So this is amazing. And you shared a lot, and there's a lot to dive into. So what I'm curious about first, number one.

Okay.

Is, you know, what was that transition period like for you in terms of your career ending and figuring out who you were outside of what you do? How long was that transition period for you and how have you used that experience to facilitate transformations for your clients?

So this is something that I am very, very clear about, is that I think that personal development is a lifelong journey, and I think it's a fundamental relationship that you need to have. So for me, it started in 2016, and that was when I had surgery. I left school, I had to go home because I couldn't take care of myself by myself in North Carolina. And so I remember the day after my surgery, and I was in the living room because I couldn't go up the stairs, and I found out I was allergic to oxycodone. So that was kind of a fun, fun side effect of that endeavor. But I remember sitting there, like, I can't sulk. I. I can't just sit here and not do anything. And being sedentary doesn't allow me to process. I process a lot through movement or writing. So I remember getting off the couch, getting on my crutches. And it was in Vermont, so I had to. It was still sn snow. And I remember I lived up the street from the rec center, and that's where sports kind of started for me. I used to go after school with my brother, and that's where I learned to throw football and play basketball and do all the things. I remember walking into the gym with my crutches and kind of sitting on the floor with a basketball, and I just remember praying, and I was like, you know, give me some clarity, give me some peace. Like, tell me where to go, what to do, what to see. And so I looked up, and then we had a gym in there, and I used to train in there. We used to do kind of strength and conditioning stuff. And I was like, all right, well, I can't dribble a ball. I can't run up and down the court, but I can pick up a weight. And so I remember I'd go down there every single day, and I would just, you know, do what I could do. Arms, shoulders, you know, some unilateral stuff, but nothing too crazy. And I was like, okay, so I can. I can move my body again. But I think for me, I just started asking myself good questions, right? One of my mentors told me, if you want to have skilled answers, you need to ask skilled questions. And so I started examining, like, who am I outside of what I do? And at first, that's kind of a scary thought, because if you don't know who you are, every single person, when you ask them that question, they're going to tell you what they do, that they're a mother, that they work in this job, that they are friends with this person, that they are married to this person. It's like, that's all great, but that's outside environmental stuff. Like, who are you? Take all of that stuff away. Who are you fundamentally? And that's a difficult question to ask if you don't take the time to get to know yourself. And so I spent a lot of time by myself figuring out, what do I like, what am I interested in? What are parts about myself that I was too afraid to put out into the world because I felt like I would be judged, right? So what are. Am I if I take off all of the walls that I've built to protect myself and all the kind of the masks that we wear, Right? Being an athlete was a mask. And so it's like, it allowed me to express myself in a way where I didn't have to use words to say how I was feeling. And so for me, that was a great outlet, especially as a kid. My mom was a single mother with three kids, and I didn't have a dad. And so I was kind of always felt like I wasn't good enough because my dad didn't want to be my dad, and I thought something was wrong with me. And then my mom was so busy with my siblings that I was very, very independent from a young age. And so that was that outlet for me. And so I started to examine, like, well, well, why was that so important to me? You know, what am I not working through? What am I not addressing? And so, you know, I would just reflect on, like, what is. What are parts of feedback that people have given me throughout my life. I remember my grandmother, when I was a kid, she told me that she thought I'd be a scientist because I wanted to know everything about everything. I'd go outside and pick up bugs and be like, what is this? And why is it like this? And why does it have wings? And, like, what. What is the purpose of all of these things? And so I'm a very curious person. So I was like, all right, I'm curious. What am I about?

Right?

So then I started diving into all of the things that I genuinely enjoyed doing by myself, right? I don't need other people around. I don't need feedback. I don't need validation. It's like, these are things that I very much enjoy just being Kate. I love speaking. I love writing. I like studying. I love learning. But specifically, like, what do I like to learn? Right? Science. I love philosophy. I like psychology. I'm very into kind of, like, CIA crime stuff and, like, putting all of the abstract pieces of things together. I like to read. And so these are, like, little tidbits about parts of me that I might have dismissed or felt like they were stupid or, of course, being an athlete and being a nerd is, like, not a cool thing. So lots of times, like, I'D be. I was a bio major in college, but I'd like, sit in the back of the bus and like, study with biology, but, like, not around my teammates because I didn't want to be that person that I just started really spending time, quality time with myself, not distracted, not on social media, not trying to do all these things, like really just getting to know me and enjoying my own company and figuring out what are the things that I like, Love comedy. These types of little, little tidbits of, well, what drives you, what motivates you? Typically when people talk about motivation, you're either running away from something, so you're afraid to go back to something, or trying to escape something else right away from pain or towards pleasure. So what is the goal? What is driving the outcome? What am I motivated by? What do I want to achieve? And so for me, I realized that it's a combination of both things, depending on what it is, like, what I'm working towards, right? In different areas of my life, the things that motivate me will be different. And so there's different arenas, right, that we all operate in. And, and so being able to get clarity on that and then what drives your progress or regression from that? What stories do you tell yourself about yourself, right? What labels do you walk around saying, I am this type of person, or I'm not this type of person, or I can do this, but I can't do that, and just really paying attention to my own language. I think that that's important because you don't really pay attention to the shoulds, shouldn'ts, cans, can'ts. And so just cultivating more awareness around my own thoughts helped me a lot with being able to pull them out, extract them, and go, is there any evidence that that's actually real? Or am I just telling these things to myself, about myself? So that was really the catalyst to starting my own business was like, well, I've told myself I can only achieve this much, but what if I can achieve more? I just won't allow myself to try. And so that's where we get into like, I can't do this, or I'm afraid of failure. I think that that's really an excuse because the, in my opinion, right, the only way that you could fail with anything is if you refuse to walk into the arena and try, right? You've already counted yourself out. Whereas if you just walk in and give your best, knowing that it's not going to be perfect the first time, then you give yourself permission to learn. And that's where growth happens. And so something I say a lot that people resonate with is that growth and comfort do not coexist. And so knowing when you're uncomfortable, you're going through something that's going to force you to grow, to learn, to gather more wisdom, skill sets that's going to allow you to progress. Because for me, fundamentally, what drives me overall is that I feel as though it is my obligation in this life to find out all that it is that I can be in aligning my purpose and my passions with that, to dictate the path in which I walk. But not having the courage to walk that path would be something that I would regret much more than not trying. And so that's. Or then trying and coming up short.

Right?

Because I don't know that I don't necessarily have a clear idea as far as an external item that would measure success. For me, it's am continuing to grow, Am I learning more? Are my skill sets improving? Do I have a different perspective? Have I gathered more wisdom? Am I able to create things that help more people? That for me is the biggest piece of feedback that I pay attention to. And I think that everything else is just kind of a result and compounding effect of that.

So you said three things that I think is important and I'm curious how you manage it. Number one is you said that personal development is just something that we never arrive and that we're always. I mean, you didn't say it in this way. This is my interpretation. But, you know, we never, never arrive and we're always peeling back the onion and that we are always having a human experience. It's not until we graduate that we're not, you know, that we're consistently just continuing to pull back the layers. And I think for myself as a high achiever and assuming, you know, knowing that like attracts like and that you're also calling in these high performers, these high achievers, what ends up happening in what I have noticed in myself and in my clients is that there is a consistent focus on the, on the gap or, or, you know, trying to, you know, chase the. These fleeting moments and outcomes of like. Okay, so I figured that out. I changed my thoughts. I've realized now that I'm, you know, not talking to my. Well, myself well, and I'm shifting that perspective. I got it. And that we forget. I think that we're having a human experience and wherever you are, wherever you go, there you are. So have you had these moments where you're like, oh, man, I thought I Handled that already, but that neural pathway is still there. And do you ever feel like, oh, I thought I had taken care of this before, like, whatever this is, like, I'll use body image as an example or, or, you know, self, self integrity, you know, being integrity with your word. And then, ah, realizing, oh, I've been leaking personal power here. Leaking personal power here. How do you reset and how do you teach your clients to reset without going into the shame spiral of like, oh, I should have figured this out.

Acceptance. I think that there are two things that people fundamentally struggle with the most. One is permission. And second is acceptance.

Right?

Being a human means that we are invaluable by design, right? We are going to show up and be imperfect. We are going to come up short. Especially if you've spent the majority of your life in these habits, in these thought loops and these patterns, it's not going. You're not going to conquer it overnight. You're just not. And so the goal isn't to overcome it and always overcome it, right? You are limited to what you can achieve or feel or express as a human being. And so first you have to have realistic expectations of yourself.

Right?

The goal is not to, oh, I'm aware of it now, so I'm just going to fundamentally stop. It's like, that would be nice, but that's not how this is going to work. Right? And so you have to let go of that ego that's like, oh, I'm this, I'm that. Oh, I didn't really come up that short, or, oh, I didn't make this mistake or I'll never make it again or whatever that is. Like, the more that you hold this standard of perfection over yourself, the more disappointed you're going to be because you're comparing yourself to something that doesn't actually exist. And so if you can accept the goal isn't to conquer this inevitably, it is to make the frequency of these events less often and the gravity of them less, Less debilitating.

Right?

And so it's not about. And even if your perception of what it would look like to overcome whatever it is that you're struggling to overcome is going to be different as you continue to it.

Right?

And so the first time that you face it, if you have a fear of something and let's say it's body image, right? And so you are like, I'm going to, you know, get myself into a place where I feel confident in my skin, like, plot twist. I don't think anybody ever feels entirely confident in their Skin, right? And so it's like, okay, well then what other things can I focus on around my body? Finding gratitude for what it does for me. The fact that I feel it appropriately, the fact that it carries me through the day, the fact that I can perform that I'm getting stronger. And in a side effect of doing all of those things right, aesthetics will come, but inevitably genetics will control certain things, right? You might have stretch marks, you might have cellulite, guess what? That's not always going to just go away as much as you'd like it to, or whatever marketing gimmick is thrown in your face saying that you can achieve that thing. And so it's bringing awareness, but realistic expectations and going, this is my body and I accept it for what it is, I can improve it and I want to because I deserve to. And I respect myself enough to continue to pursue things that serve serve me right. And so it's a different language, it's a different conversation, it's a different dialogue that you're having, knowing that maybe if you self sabotage when you step on the scale and it's up that you used to cope with eating ice cream and it's like, well, that's a negative feedback loop because you're going to feel guilty about that and then you're never going to get the result in which you are aiming to achieve. And so you have to go, okay, well maybe I don't do that. How else can I cope with this? And, and again, the other thing, like I said before is, is it's not ever going to be something that you never have a thought about, never have an emotion about, never check yourself and go, oh, I don't like that picture of me, that's not a good angle. Or oh, my waist isn't small enough, or my legs aren't big enough, my glutes don't whatever, right? You're always going to have some of that desire to improve. But you can look at that from instead of a negative perspective, go, okay, well I want to focus more intentionally on driving this desired outcome, knowing that the bar is set here. But I may never achieve that.

That.

And that's okay. Because my joy, my fulfillment and my peace comes from the fact that I can show up and continue to try to achieve that standard. But you cannot hold yourself to the expectation that you ever will, right? Because one, you won't and two, because you won't and because you don't. If you take that and internalize it as a piece of your identity, saying that I'm not good enough, Something's wrong with me, I'm blah, blah, blah. You will then start to manifest and externalize self sabotaging behavior. And so if you don't want that to happen, you have to show yourself right? Peace, discipline, respect above all. And I think a lot of people get into these behaviors and habits because they lack self respect. Because if you held yourself to a standard in which you respected yourself above anybody else, you would not treat yourself the way that you do.

So true. Now there's something that you said too that I think it's worth also bringing to bringing attention or putting attention towards is that I notice a correlation between high achievers who also have experience in their life of feeling like I'm not good enough. So their drive to achieve usually comes from a place of wanting to fill this void of I'm not good enough and then realizing that there's no amount of mountains that they climb, peaks that they reach to fill that cup up. So in your process and in working with high achievers, with yourself and also with your clients, how do you help starting, how do you help them achieve the acceptance or the integration of parts of themselves that they don't like or they've miscast or that they have decided isn't good enough? How do you begin this process of integrating them, integrating that back to themselves and beginning to accept these parts of themselves helps?

So I think the hardest thing about being a coach in general is that sometimes you have to allow people to fail in order for them to learn.

Right.

It's like your mom telling you not to date that guy because he's bad. But you're like, mom, you don't know what you're talking about. He's phenomenal. And then you find out he was actually terrible and your mother was right. Right. And so I think that relates a lot to coaching is like, I'm going to give you my perspective, I'm going to give you my experience, but I'm going to give you permission to learn. Learn.

Right?

Because that's what it is. I'm not here to tell you what's right for you. I'm here to help guide you, give you a piece of wisdom, shift your perspective and allow you to choose the path that you feel is most aligned with where you want to go.

Right.

And so that's the first piece of that is listening, guiding, asking good questions, getting them to be introspective. But again, sometimes in most people will chase external material items to fill an internal void. And until you recognize and truly understand Nothing externally will fill the internal void that you have because you're not sitting with it, examining it, understanding it, appreciating it, and then addressing it within yourself. You're looking for an outside factor to fill that void. And you might find that in the short term, right? You might find something, a relationship, a person, a job, a career, monetary success, whatever that might be. But that's going to be fun for like a little while, and then you're going to feel empty again, which is why you continue to chase the next thing. Because it's like, oh, well, that felt good for a moment. Maybe I just need to do bigger, maybe I need to do more. Maybe I need to conquer these things and achieve this thing and that will make me happy. But when you decide that happiness comes from your own success, you will never actually be able to be present and fulfilled and embrace that moment and take it in and remember it and appreciate it and remember all of the hard work that you put into that. Because it's the pursuit of the thing that matters, not the thing thing. And I wish more people would understand that. That was a hard lesson for me. It's like, I can't wait to get this thing. But it was the pursuit that was the most meaningful because that is what shaped me, not the outcome. That was just an indicator of what I had conquered. But that doesn't say anything about the pain and suffering that you go through to achieve these things. And in the pain and suffering is where all of the growth comes from. Not from the success, not from the peak, but from the valley. And so if you can go, okay, well, now I have to choose which path do I want to walk that is going to where the pain and suffering is going to be the most meaningful to me in the end. And I think a lot of people don't take the time to sit down and figure out what the fuck in life means something to me, because we are told our entire lives, this is what you need to do. This is what's important. This will give you status. This is what success looks like. This is what you need to embody. And, and by the way, no one that actually is at the table when you get there cares about you. They just care about what they can get from you. No one's going to tell you that, right? And so you have to for me, and I know it sounds quite nihilistic, but it helped me a ton was going, well, if everything in life is meaningless, what means something to me? And when you can ask yourself that question and get very Clear on that. Then you can know, okay, these are the things that matter, and I want to pursue them. And also in hindsight, when I'm 80 years old, on my deathbed, I can look back and go, even though there was a lot of pain and suffering, the pain and suffering was worth it in the end because the pursuits of that were fulfilling to me and gave me the most meaning within my life. Whereas if you walk the path that's designed for you and you don't ask questions and you don't know yourself, you can look back on your life with a lot of regret. And I think that that's one of the saddest things that I see in people. I work with a lot of people that are highly, highly successful. I mean, financial success that I can only dream of. And they're entirely unhappy people because they don't actually have the life that they want. They just chase the things that they were told would make them happy. And I think unless you've gone through that or have enough people around you that can tell you that, you'll continue to get lost in that cycle that many people do, where they just chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, and never find true fulfillment or peace.

Especially for high achievers. High achievers are chase, chase, chase, chase chasers. It doesn't matter what it is, whether you're in all categories. Health, wealth, or love. So one of the things that, you know, that you said that I'm curious about is, you know, you mentioned we're going. We're gonna. We're gonna. We're going deep here. You're bringing out the deepness in me here.

Okay, I love it.

But you're like, you know, one of the things, too, that I like to remember for myself, and I'll just speak for myself, and I will also ask you how you translate this for your clients, because sometimes I don't want to take my clients too deep too fast. But for me, you mentioned, you know, on their deathbed. And when I'm think perspective, I'm always reminding myself we're all going to die. And we all think that time is promised, and we. It's the number one resource, in my opinion, that most people take for granted and think that they have plenty of. When in reality, the next five minutes aren't promised. And I'm ruthless and relentless with that resource, more so than my money. And so the other thing, too, is that the idea, you know, when you're operating your life from that perspective and then also remembering that life is choice, it's the idea of these events that will happen, that will inevitably happen, that will be uncomfortable. But the choice of it being hard and painful can be both. We can have the both experience of like, oh, this is bad. I need to sit with this, process it, and then move through that pretty quickly if you want to. In this idea of, you know, this idea of it doesn't have to be painful if you don't want it to be.

So I think that one of the biggest things I wish people would truly understand is that you cannot have good without bad, or you wouldn't know it was good. And so I think there is beauty in suffering, there is beauty in pain.

Right.

And I think that a lot of the times people get stuck in situations because they haven't learned from them. If you are stuck, if you're going through something, if you're struggling, if it's painful or you're suffering in some way, there's a lesson in there that you need to learn, learn. And until you learn that lesson, you will continue to exist in a cycle of pain and suffering.

Right.

But there's beauty in that. There is growth that will come from that. And again, it's all about how you look at it.

Yes.

And it's. For me, it's like whenever I'm in that season of my life, I just ask myself, what am I missing? What am I not learning? What is going on here? What. What better questions do I need to be asking myself about this? Especially if it's a repeated thing, it's like, what is the underlying thing that's driving my behavior in this arena of my life? What beliefs do I have continue to manifest in my external reality? How am I operating in this specific arena? And is this really driving the outcome in which I want? And the answer obviously is no, if I'm dealing with some pain and suffering within that compartment of my life. And so I need to go, okay, how do I need to change my approach? What am I comfortable with starting with? Because typically there's underlying fear. So what is the thing that I'm afraid of and what is the lowest level of exposure I can give myself to face this thing head on and start to make some progress us. And I think that if you look at it as an opportunity, because regardless of what we might think again, a lot of people like to play like it's the end of the world when something bad happens. It's like, no bad things have happened previously. You overcame them. Bad things will inevitably happen in the future, and you will overcome them. So you have to know that this season of your life is not permanent, but you have to ask yourself, where do you want to be on the other side of the storm? And if you want to improve through the storm, then you need to shift something about what you're doing, what you're thinking, how you're looking at it.

Right?

Because I think that we take to, we tend to take things, things at face value instead of looking at it in a three dimensional structure where you can abstract it and look at it and spin it around and flip it over and go, oh, I didn't look at it from this angle. That's what I was missing.

Right.

But I think if you look at life as a game and you enjoy it even in the hard times, right. It is still, there's still a lot of joy in that. And I think that if you can take that and apply it, you'll. You'll at least enjoy the pain and the suffering that is inevitable for you to go through. Through.

I'm glad you heard my question because I think that that's like what I was trying to say in the sense of like, if you can really look at pain and suffering as. Instead of like treating it how most people do, which is like a hot stove, like, oh, I touch it, I'm gonna go away from it. We all hear, you know, people move away from pain faster than if they just sat in it. But we're able to, you know that because to me, when I look at the self development world, I feel like the level one is like, oh, relentless positivity. I just need to be. Yeah, that's, that's why I laughed.

Right.

People call it toxic positivity, like, which is just like spraying whipped cream on trash. When in reality we need to shift our perspective and how we process pain and know that it can be both. Like, how is this serving me? How is this serving me? And that question that you asked about, you know, if this is a repeated pattern, it's just such a. When you can look at it from a gift without, without experiencing, without trying to not feel it, without trying to pretend it's not there, that to me is how you process through it.

Yeah.

And I think, I think a lot of people will shut down emotions, which I don't think is beneficial. I think that acting out of a highly emotional state is self sabotaging in nature 99.9% of the time. But I think that until you can label the emotion that you're feeling and ask yourself what cultivated this, what thoughts, behaviors am I embodying in Regards to this emotion, what stories am I telling myself about this series of events? And is any of that true? Because we have so many thoughts in a day that most of them are not real at all, right? We just tell ourselves a bunch of. And half the time we're not even listening. And so again, there's no conscious awareness of what's going on in your own head. But when it comes to any element of life, right, the good can only be good for so long and then inevitably they'll be bad. But you can also flip that on the other side, right? The bad will only be bad for so long and it's really not that, that bad, right? There's just something that you haven't overcome yet. And until you take the time to sit and look at it, which most people run from it, and then they make excuses and woe is me and it's not my fault. And this is where I get into. If you can take extreme ownership over your life, that means everything that happens to you is your fault, right? And a lot of people will hear that and they'll go, well, it's not my fault that X, Y and Z bad thing happened to me. Yes, it is. On some level, maybe not the entire event is your fault, but inevitably some of it is your fault. But also every good thing that happens to you is also your fault, right? And so people only want to hyper focus on the good stuff and be like, well, I did that, I accomplished that. I, I did this. Whatever. Anything that bad happens to them, it's like, no, that was my fault. That's this person, they did this thing, they said this thing about me, they did this thing to me. No, life is happening as a consequence of your choices, all of them. And consequences aren't always negative, right? There are good consequences to decisions that we make. But I, but if you continue to walk down the path without any ownership over your life, then you will live your life in a victim's mindset. And that is just not a good place to be. That is not going to give you a high quality of life. And again, we get caught up in all of the material items of our culture where it's like, I, I'm grateful that I did grow up with a lot and I was still happy as a kid. Kid. Because as I got into my adult life, I never wanted a ton of material things because I just wanted to do the things and have the relationships and have the interactions and conversations that I found fulfilling. That is what gives me joy, that is what gives me peace. That is what makes me happy, right? Being able to choose my life and having power over that and being able to continue to climb the ladder of my own personal development journey and be introspective. And I think that within my lifespan, I'm studying clinical psychology now, but I don't know that we will ever master the mind. And I think that that's an incredible journey because I again, going back to who I am outside of what I do, I am entirely curious. I'm a nerd. I like to learn, I like to apply knowledge and I like to experiment with things. I like to conquer skill sets and acquire more things and stack them because the more value that I can put within myself, the more value I can give to other people. But all of those things have their own levels of difficulty. Guilty. All of those things have sleepless nights, lots of pain, lots of suffering decisions that I have to make. Is it worth going and experiencing this moment with this person that I care about, or do I need to work on this thing for myself?

Right.

When do I be selfish and when do I be selfless? And knowing that sometimes you have to be self fish in order to give selflessly.

Right.

And so there's lots of different things that we have conversations about that we're not even aware that we're thinking through. But if you can bring them to the forefront of your mind, then you can logically work through that roadmap and go, okay, this is the decision that I am going to make. And when you're facing with a difficult decision, you have to ask what the potential upside is and what the potential downside is. And if you can live with the downside, then the answer should always be yes. But most people don't actually think clearly through those different things to get clarity of the best decision for them at that point in their life.

So there's something you said, I'm very curious, your opinion on, in terms of radical responsibility. And I think that that is a very powerful conversation to be had and also very triggering for many people when they start. Especially if you start to put that into the context of what we saw happen and in our world in 2020, 21, 22, I was like, wait, what year are we in? Right.

I feel like life has been on pause since 2020. Really?

For real? I mean, when we, when we got all put into this pressure cooker, cooker of an experience which was all together but very individualized, it was a very weird experience to observe and to see. Anyway, when you do live from this, this, this philosophy of taking and being responsible, which in my opinion is different than taking responsibility, but just being responsible and. And fully owning all your choices. How do you navigate the difference between intention versus impact? How you say I'm sorry and victim blaming and then going of that people love to say gaslighting.

So there's a lot in that. And I think that one of the most important things that you said that I want to address first is people being triggered by things.

Right?

People are triggered by radical responsibility. People are triggered by whatever. I think that if you're triggered by something, you need to ask yourself why that's triggering to you.

Right?

And if that evokes an emotion internally, it probably resonates to some gravity of truth that you're trying to deny about yourself. And that's something that I would examine because you can find a lot of peace. For example, I think that one of the most important things that I've ever done for myself is taking responsibility for all the things that have happened, whether as a consequence of a decision that I make or things that have impacted my life, that I used to carry a lot of shame and guilt around one of them being a very, very abusive relationship. And I carried a lot of guilt and shame around that. And it took a long time for me to be able to forgive myself for that. But I can sit here and talk about it without any of that. And if somebody were to come at me and I've had people that I've dated be like, you know what? You're just going to end up in abusive relationships. That's what you deserve. None of that hurts me. You cannot hurt me, because I know that it is not fundamentally true. And I will not accept you throwing that at me.

Right.

A piece of my past that used to be painful, I found peace with. So none of your words can impact the next decision that I'm going to make for me, because I am responsible for the outcome of what I choose to do next. And I know one of those things is not tolerating you anymore, Right? And so being able to find peace in the pain and the suffering that you've been through and accept that, yes, I engaged in this. Yes, there were consequences to engaging with somebody like that. Yes, I learned a lot. And I had to work through my own ability to forgive myself through that.

Right?

But when you talk about people gaslighting you or people throwing things in your face or not understanding you, you also have to know that every single individual that you interact with, even me and you, you and I having this conversation, Right. Now, when I say something, it might resonate with you differently than the way that I resonate with you.

The thing.

And that is because your frame of reference to whatever topic of conversation that we're going through is different than mine. And so when I'm working with people and having conversations, my goal is to understand their frame of reference, not project my own. Because if I'm doing that, I'm not helping them, right? I'm just assuming that they see the world that the way that I do, and that cannot allow me to serve them or impact them.

Right?

You talked about impact versus what was the other thing?

Intention.

Intention.

Your intention versus impact.

Yes. And I think that so long as your intentions are one clear to you, but clearly communicated in a way that another person understands them, that allows you to leave a positive impact in the way that you meant to do something.

Right?

I think a lot of people, and we can talk about this in a very kind of clear context I would say, is like, we're both speaking English right now, right? You understand what I'm saying? But I might say something that means something different to me than it does to you. And I like to give this example, right? If something were to happen, let's say, in your family dynamic, right, you have permission to kind of make your own choices, even if. Even if they wanted you to be at something. So let's say something crazy happened, and your mother called you and said, hey, I know you're super busy, but we're having this event and I'd really like for you to be here. If you can't, I totally understand, but I'd like you to show up if you can make it, and then you don't go. And your mom's totally fine with that. Like, I know you couldn't make it. I appreciate you trying, right? Maybe in my frame of reference, I could have the same conversation, but if I didn't show up, like, why the fuck didn't you come? You were supposed to be there. I told you it was important that you were there. Even though they communicated, it would be okay if I couldn't make it, they didn't actually mean it, Right? And so that's the difference in language, right? You can be speaking the same language, but the dialect can be very different. And so knowing that, clearly communicating what you're saying, but also the intention and the meaning behind what you're saying can help alleviate some of the confusion between what is said versus what is received. And that allows intention and impact to then be aligned because you have to have a common goal with whoever you're trying to impact and how you're trying to impact them, but also your intentions of being able to impact that audience or individual that you're speaking to to.

You know, it's very interesting as we're talking, you know, and as we're thinking about this. I'm.

I'm.

I'm a mom, just for context. I'm a mom of two young girls.

They are now.

Abby is about to turn six in two weeks. And then I have Gwen, who's eight. And it's very interesting as I am now responsible human being raising the next generation. It's interesting as I'm starting to see the stuff that we're talking about that human beings deal with in their 30s, 20s, 40s, and seeing how it is fundamentally laid down from the ages 6 and 8.

Yep.

And it's so interesting to me because as I'm hearing you talk and I'm thinking of, you know, let's just take our triggers, right? When I'm watching my husband and I engage with our children, like, my kids will say the craziest things that literally just don't have any effect on me at all. Because it's like, I know that it's about them. It's stuff like I'll just speaking realistic stuff like, I hate you. You're the worst mother ever. And I'm like, okay, okay. And it just. I never received that because, A, I know it's not true, and B, I know it's just a reflection of how they feel about themselves. My husband, on the other hand, will personally. He, like. It's like a dagger to his heart when they say that stuff to him. And he can't sleep. He, like, loses. It's just. It puts him in agony when he hears that. And it's interesting to me because I'm like, listen, what parts of you think that that's tr.

True?

Because it wouldn't. It wouldn't affect you if you didn't think it was true.

Well, there's that. But I think also people tend to internalize someone else's dialogue because they don't take the time to question what their frame of reference might be.

Right.

So, for example, in the one that you gave, you might have told your child that they couldn't have dessert after dinner because they didn't clean the room. By just giving an example, they might say, I hate you. You're the worst. You're ruining my life.

Right.

Because. But they're really just upset about the fact that they didn't get what they wanted, and there were consequences to them not making the decision in which you had asked them to, right? So you can look at that and go, they're just really upset they didn't get dessert. Whereas if your husband were to just accept that they meant what they said with removing the entire context or frame of reference from the child, then of course it's easier to internalize something, right? Because I think especially when you're in the business of serving people and you genuinely care about them. I remember very early on in my coaching career, I would internalize everything, right? If they didn't respond to something I said or if something happened and they were having a really bad day and they kind of took it out on me. I thought it was my fault. I'm like, what did I do wrong?

Right?

I don't understand. There's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. I'm doing a bad job, right? And you always focus on the negative, which is an evolutionary concept for survival mechanisms. But of course, we're not in the Stone Age anymore. And so it is something that you have to be aware of, of your own biases cognitively so that you can go, okay, well, it's one person and you're serving just for example. So let's say you're saying serving a hundred people. It's like 99 people love you. One person's having a bad day and you're internaliz the one person's piece of feedback. But we do this all the time in different arenas, even on social media or friend groups or people that you interact with, seminars that I give, whatever it might be, right? The one comment out of the hundred is the one that you focus on, not the 99 positive ones, just the negative one. And so it's being able to be aware of your own cognitive biases and going, okay, well, that's actually not fundamentally true. Instead of saying, like I said earlier, you have to think about what are the stories you're telling yourself about yourself, and is there any evidence that that's actually real, Right? So one comment from someone that doesn't know you, a stranger on the Internet says you're full of. It's like, okay, oh my God, I'm full of. I made the wrong post. I didn't say the right thing, blah, blah, blah, where it's like, okay, well, if you look at it objectively, there are 99 people that agree with you and that think you're awesome or you're impacting their life in a In a positive way. There's one person that doesn't know you that made this rude comment and you're going to take that as truth and then deny all of the other things, right? And when you say it like that and you look at it like that, it's like, well, no, that's actually a bit ludicrous, isn't it? Yeah.

Right.

And then you can break through that belief and remove that emotion and stop making it exacerbate into something that would then shift your behavior likely to something self sabotaging or destructive in nature.

My clients deal with this too all the time. It's like they, they'll come to me and be like, oh my business sucks or I didn't do it. And I'm like, wait, so you're focusing on the three people that said no instead of. Or the, you know, most people are going to say no when you're focusing on them instead of the people that said said yes to themselves. When really, if you could just shift, that's what's going to help you step into a magnetic energy.

Well, even this, like one thing that I used to do so early, right? People who are in business, let's say you're in sales, right? You have to be able to keep showing up and know that you're going to get the door shut in your face a lot, right? It's part of the process. So again, acceptance of the endeavor is going to require you to get rejected. Like your ego has to just dissolve, otherwise you're not going to have the mental fortitude to survive, right? So you have to let that go. Because every no that you get is leads you closer to a yes because inevitably you will close. If you understand your closing percentages and KPIs and things along those lines. For me, every month I set a goal of how many no's I want to receive. Because if I know how many no's that I get, inevitably I've gotten yeses as a consequence to that, to those no's. And so if you can shift that as a positive, like I need to, at some point I need to acquire some no's, right? Because they're going to lead me closer to the yeses based on the data that I have. Because you need data to measure your own progress and skill set, then it rem the negative consequence of the no because they're inevitable. And I can accept that, right? And so, but I can't accept, you know, self sabotaging myself or not showing up with the same energy, being able to Communicate effectively to the person that I want to serve. Because maybe I got off a call that said, no, I'm on the next one, I'm ready to go. My frame of reference is good. I'm here, I'm present with you, I'm ready to serve you. These are things that you have to be able to adapt into and you cannot do that if you allow one small moment to shift your entire energy, your behavior, your ability to show up and be focused and present with whoever you're speaking to or whatever it is that you're engaged engaging with.

Right.

Because that is inevitably going to lead to another. No, because you didn't try. You really didn't try. That was not your best. You can't tell me that's your best effort when you're over here thinking about Sally just telling you no, it's like Sally might come back, by the way, it might be her own frame of reference, internal belief system or feeling like she's not worthy of being invested in.

Right.

There's lots of things that cause people to say no, it. And most of the time has nothing to do with you. And so if you can let that go, right. You could help them down the road. Because most people do come back, right. And they might help. Have I had this belief or I was afraid of this? Right? There's an underlying fear, but again, if you want to be able to relate to people and resonate to people, you have to be willing to go. Like you said, I don't know if I should go deep with people. I cut right through the. I'm going in, I'm going in because all of this surface level stuff, I want to lose weight, I want to get healthy. Why? Why is that important to you? What was the moment that you hit rock bottom and said that was enough? Tell me about that. How long has that been going on? When you look in the mirror, what do you think? What do you see? What do you feel? Feel what comes up for you? How is this impacting your day to day, Right? And again, for health and fitness, most of that stuff comes down to the fact that people don't have any level of self respect, which means they probably suck at setting boundaries, they don't communicate their needs, they feel guilty for doing that. And then what? Their external reality is a clusterfuck of stress in which they have negative or horrible coping mechanisms, right. That then go down the path of. In the road of self sabotage. All if we reverse engineer that come down to a level of self respect which they lack. And so that's where we need to get through that deep pain point. When you tell somebody that they don't have any level of self respect, a lot of them at first are like, what the did this person just say to me? And then they think about it and they go, well, if I really respected myself, would I tolerate that? Probably not. But we have to get clear on what is the root that is causing this manifestation of your external reality. Knowing that though you've given up all of your power, you have all of the power in this moment to make a decision that will change the rest of your life. And if you're willing to go there, I'm going to make sure we get you there. And if you can say that and mean it and know that you are able to deliver on that, you can change somebody's life, right? And that's what drives me every single day. I aim to be the person that I wish that I had because I had to do all of the shit on, on my own. And going through that alone, that's way harder than doing it with someone that's got your back.

And you know, to me it's just full circle conversation because then it becomes this like, well, how long does it typically take for people to, to, you know, to start to see the, the. Their outcomes, their external environment? How long does it typically take them to see, start to see change? Well, this goes back to the razor, razor's edge where it's both, it's everything all at the same time. We never just arrive. You're always going to have another layer, another, you know, another human experience to live through. To experience. But knowing that, I'm curious for you, for your clients, how, you know, when did they start to see their external environment catch up to their internal, internal.

So the first thing that I'm doing is figuring out what is the biggest problem that we're facing. What is their biggest issue? Okay, because we can do anything, right? But we can't do everything. And we certainly can't do everything all at once. And so, okay, we need to have a clear focal point of intention, right? Attention and intention need to go to this thing, this fundamental problem that we've got. And this is how we're going to approach it. Again, depending on the gravity of that experience, how large of a fear is it? Is. How can I titrate them with small exposure therapy to that fear that they have to start to build the confidence in their ability to overcome the bigger fear, right? And so this will vary person to person, depending on what the Context of that reality is and what they're experiencing. So I need to get clear on that and then give them approaches. But I do this in a collaborative manner. I do not dictate what people need to do. I say, how does that feel for you? Let's do this. Or how do you feel about that? Can you do that? Yes. And then accountability, always. Because if you leave people, if you leave it up to people to make the decision, the heart, decision, decision. We live in comfort, right? But go. Like I said earlier, growth and comfort do not coexist. So if you're going to sit there in comfort, you're not going to move that needle forward, which means the reality in which you continue to exist in is your fault because you haven't taken any level of action. And so if you want to talk about how long does it take for someone to start seeing changes, we have to also get clear on what are we measuring. Because a lot of people, and again, for simplicity's sake, people will look at the scale when it comes to weight loss, right? But they don't look at, well, typically I would have coped with eating something that didn't serve me at night because I'm stressed out and I don't know how else to use a creative outlet for myself that benefits my personal development.

Right.

But people don't focus on behavior as a metric. They just go, well, the scale didn't go down and I didn't eat dessert last night when I was upset, so I'm just going to keep eating dessert because I didn't see the scale go down today. It's like, that is not a realistic metric.

Right?

And logically that sounds absolutely crazy, but subconsciously that's what, what people do. It's so true. And so you have to go, okay, I need to take account of how is my behavior shifting? How are my thought patterns shifting? What things am I bringing to the front? So I am consciously aware of the decisions that I am driven to make versus the ones that I say no, that is a boundary of self respect. I'm not going down that path anymore. I'm walking this way. And so you have to be able to look at things not just data driven, right. But feedback driven. And looking at how is my behavior shifting? How are my thoughts shifting? How am I shifting the way that I perceive certain situations? How am I responding versus reacting to certain things? And the more that you can take account to them, what are you doing? You're bringing them into the forefront of your mind. And so if you can do that your reality is already starting to shift because you're conscious of things that previously you weren't conscious of, which inevitably changes the way that you look at yourself and you look at your environment and you look, you look at the world. And so it depends on what are you focused on. And that's why going back I said attention and intention needs to be very, very clear.

Right.

And it's one thing, not everything we can get there, but not all at once. And so you have to build somebody's path. Talking about like how I do what I do, every path is different, the construction of that is different. And I have to get enough detail on the individual to completely understand them in their frame of reference to start to build the path that they need to walk to overcome some of the obstacles that they're facing.

So good and it's so powerful. And honestly, we could do a whole other podcast on how you help clients, you know, with their behavior adherence. But I'm just gonna press pause on that because I want to be mindful of your time and we can talk about that at a different time. But for those of you who do want to go deeper, who do want to do this intense work, who do want to connect with you, what are some of the best places that I can sign send them?

Absolutely. So I do have a podcast that is Health fitness personal development related that is called Elevate E L E V in the number eight on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I am Kate and Michelle K A I T and Michelle, you could find me or just Google search that and my stuff will pop up. So outside of that, there's applications that you can fill in. I do do free discovery calls and consults first initially and then of course, course we'll map it out with you from there. But I appreciate you so much for having me and I look forward to connecting with you again in your audience.

I can't wait. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

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