Contributing To The World Through Writing

This episode of beyond you'd why is brought to you by our why App. Head over to whyinstitute.com to take the why app so you can discover your why today. Knowing your why is the essential first step in having the clarity to move forward faster and have a bigger impact.

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so you know that each week we talk about one of the nine whys. And then I bring on a special guest that has that why so we can see how their why has played out in their life. Today we are going to be talking about the why of Contribute. Now, if you remember, people with the why of contribute want to be part of a greater cause. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They don't necessarily want to be the cause, but they want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. They love to support others. They relish the success of the greater good or the victory of the team. They are the behind the scenes person that's always looking for a way to make the world better. They're go to people. They're the ones you look for when you need help with just about anything. They make reliable and committed teammates. They often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. They use their time, their money, their energy, their resources and their connections to add value to other people and organizations. So today I've got a guest for you. Her name is Ann Beaulieu and she is an emotional intelligence coach. She's a speaker and an author. She's the founder of Walking Inside Resources, Inc. She's a coach and a resource based company in the field of emotional intelligence. She's the author of Emotionally Intelligent Way and she has written 30 books to date. Ann, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's an honor.

Well, this is fun because you and I just met. We met through a mutual connection and so you took the why app, discovered your why of contribute, and how did that feel to you?

It felt pretty good actually. When I read the description, it was like it was bang on. It's exactly where I'm at in my life. It's exactly what I am doing. And when I showed our mutual connection, she was like, well duh, we knew that.

So I would say pretty accurate.

That's awesome. And so tell us a little bit about what you do right now. Somebody says, so what do you do, Ann? What is it you're doing?

I do emotional intelligence coaching for entrepreneurial women. I assist them because beside being a coach, I'm also an economist and a chartered financial analyst. So I assist women get beyond their fears when they're creating their business or when they want to step up in their business. That's the bulk of what I do right now. I'm also a keynote speaker and I am also a writer. I'm actually what people call a content beast. I love to write.

So you've written 30 books. That's unbelievable. And I know you said you did that in a short period of time.

Yeah, it's two years ago. My mentor asked me, what would you love to do right now? And I was like, I don't know. He says, well, you love to write. Why don't you write? And I said, word for word, I am no writer.

And I turned around and I started writing and it was like the floodgates opened and it was book after book. I couldn't type them enough. They were just flowing through and at the tune, like in flow. I can write 1100 words an hour. It's my voice break because it's like, it's amazing. And it's that contribute, that wanting to contribute, that desire to help others.

So tell us the names of some of your books. What's been your favorite book to write?

I write for business people. I write case studies for developing emotional intelligence. Sounds a bit dry. But I also write fairy tales for developing emotional intelligence, and that's what I love to write. And those fairy tales, some of them are bittersweet. I've written Shannon, the Man in the Mirror, the Dirty Money. It all solid about one specific lesson because nobody likes to be told. But if I can, I'm very good at metaphors, so I will take a metaphor and running all the way down so the reader can go and see if they're doing it. And if they're doing what the you could say the main characters doing, then they could say, oh my goodness, I'm also having those results. And then I give them a solution. And I also write books for women and their relationship with money. There's one that's being formatted right now. It's almost ready for publication. And it's freeing yourself from financial mothering.

Yeah. So I've been writing a book. This is going to sound terrible because I've been trying to finish this darn book for about a year and a half. And you wrote 30 books in a year and a half, so I'm a little embarrassed to even even think about that. So do you write Books for other people.

What do you mean by that? Being a ghostwriter?

Yeah. Do you ghostwrite?

No, I don't. I do contribute in books when people ask me. And I write articles, like for Forbes and other platforms, but usually, no, I write. It gets given to marketing, and they publish.

That's awesome. You know, my book is almost done, and I don' ghostwriter for it, but I had some other thoughts on different books. How can you write so much? What happens in your brain, in your thinking, in your time, and go through that with us? Because there's going to be a lot of people listening to this that are trying to write their own book or they're thinking about writing a book and can't even fathom how you could do what you did. What advice would you give to somebody who's trying to write their book right now?

It may sound crazy. Connect with your pain. People ask me, I want to ask people, where do you think creativity comes from? How is it born? And some people say, you know, I get Zen, I sing Kumbaya, I do the mudra, I breathe for me, I connect with my pain. Creativity is born out of pain. And that's why I said purpose is born out of pain. So I use that creativity to channel my pain for the greater good. That's why I'm able to write.

Well, tell us a little about you. Where did you grow up? How did you get into the financial planning world? How did you get into the coaching realm?

I grew up at the end of a dirt road. Super poor, financially poor, and emotionally poor. My mother was psychotic. I did not know. So I spent my whole childhood with a woman who believed she was pregnant with the child of Jesus Christ. So if you think you've ever competed with siblings. I competed with God or his ghost children. My father was a sociopath. I'll just give you one example, and that's a caveat here. Who sat in his garage one day and thought, how can I break this little girl's spirit? I know I'm going to take a winter tire and I'm going to carve a whip out of it. I don't have to watch Roots to know how it feels to be whipped. I know. And so therefore. And that's just like the tip of the iceberg. So in order to make sense of my world, I went inside my head. I ejected pretty young. Anything you can imagine in the world that is bad has happened and more. And the only way I thought I could survive was I'm gonna be so f smart that I'm gonna see you come in a long shot. And I'm. And I became really, really good at profiling people from a young age. It was a surv, sure. And I went through that. And I entered university at 16, and by 22, I had a master's degree, and I was unstoppable. I had that kind of brain that could just learn. But I was what you call a morpher. I could adapt to any situation, anytime, but no real sense of who I was, what I needed, what I wanted. None of it. And I built. I got married. I had children. I did it all. And at 40, it was like everything collapsed. And then I say I met Morpheus. One of the men I called Morpheus, and he showed me my Matrix, and I just completely collapsed. And I thought that I was this monster, that I should be locked up. And not that I had done anything illegal. It was just. I thought, oh, my goodness, what have I done? I'm unconscious. I'm as conscious as can be. Holy moly. And then in that place, it was like the mirror shattered. And I had a choice. Burn my whole life and rebuild or do that same shit I did before. So I started doing the work, and I went at it with. I would say, whatever love I had in my heart. I. Very little. I had no compassion. At some point, if people call it dark night of the soul, I looked like stage four cancer. I kept crying all the time. I cried for nine months straight. Was burning. I burned for five months solid. I can't explain it to people. Is like, imagine your worst anxiety case. I shook for five months solid. I had no compassion. And people were asking Morpheus, like, like, oh, what's up? She was at the top of her game. What's going on with that woman? And he was like, she's gonna crawl down that hole, out of that hole with compassion in her heart and that connection to that little girl, you know, that I had lost inside or whatever. And I went to the bottom of my soul. I did. And there's a kind of safety there because I already hit rock bottom in that part. I'm unafraid of whatever darkness can be, and I use it now with my clients. That's what moved me to coaching. I only know what I am living.

So you experienced it firsthand, know what it's like to be there, know what it's like to get out of there. You want to use that to help other people that are in similar situations?

Correct. So my specialty is emotional patterns. Remember that profiling in the past? It's Turned out to be pretty good. It helps me see where the emotional blocks are. It's like walking the maze, the dark recesses of our mind. And I've already seen darkness, so. But I can embrace it with the intent to bring it to light, to raise consciousness. That's my contribute, that's my why. That what allows me to take my ego and put it aside and serve and serve from my heart with every fiber of my soul. I'm deeply connected to my why.

There's going to be people listening to this that have heard of emotional intelligence, but don't know what that is, what it means. What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is basically, for me, feeling. We need to feel our truth in order to know where we've been and in order to know what to do, moving forwards. But most people are afraid of feeling because they're afraid that if they feel, it's all gonna. It's only gonna be pain. But feeling is like a tap. It's either on or it's off. And when we allow ourselves to feel, I can say to someone, laughing with all my heart, and at the same time say that I am angry at the. It's like Khalil Gibran, the poet, said, when you're feeling joy, know that sorrow is sitting on the bed. So when we feel joy, whatever is cause of that joy can also be taken away. So it has the sorrow. They always walk hand in hand. And I understood that the vessel for our pain is the vessel for our joy. The extent we allow ourselves to feel our pain is the extent that we can contribute from a place of joy.

You know, so many of us are taught to suppress and not feel things, not show things. You know, so, for example, me as a dentist, when I'm working with a patient, I can't be real emotional and animated while we're doing what we're doing. It's more of a calming effect, and it's not the real emotional aspect of it. And so how do you get somebody who is not used to feeling and not valuing that to actually feel?

It starts with first question, what do you need right now? There's a vast difference between, what do you want right now? What do you need? When we think about what we want, it's short term. It satisfies us. Short term, it's like, I want a glass of water. But that glass of water, when we drink it, what, we'll never drink water again? No, we'll want to drink water again. So a want is short term, but a need is long term. It satisfies us long term is sustainable. So by asking a person, what do you need right now in order to answer this truthfully? It's a feeling. So they need to feel. And from a place of feeling, then we figure out what a person wants. But our society has it backward. They think, suppress your feeling, do what you want. People do that. But they feel that emptiness inside. And I know because I had all the accolades. Like I said to you earlier, I used to be a performing monkey on crack. I have more diplomas and certificate. I have 18 diplomas and certification. But when people go, wow, I say to them, why did I do that? When I felt into that truth, I burst out crying. It was to prove to the world that I existed, that I deserved to be here, because I felt undeserving. So vastly different. When we feel into what we need, our life changes on the spot.

When we feel into what we need.

Our life changes on the spot because our answer is different.

That's interesting. You know, when you think about marketing, we talk about wants versus needs and how wants are so much more powerful than needs. But maybe it's different, almost the opposite. When it comes to looking inside yourself.

People are very quick to say what they want. What do you want? Right now, I want a vacation in Hawaii. You know, they might say, I want a girlfriend, I want a cat, I want a goldfish. But when you ask a person, what is the need behind what you want, it requires vulnerability to answer that question. Question. And that vulnerability is feeling. And many people view our society taught us to view vulnerability as a weakness. But without feeling, we're like that hamster on the wheel. We just keep racing.

I can feel that way plenty of times. So emotional intelligence. I'm still not quite sure on the definition of emotional intelligence.

It's feeling our feelings and emotions, knowing where our feelings and emotion come from so that we can change our limiting beliefs. We can only change a truth if we feel it. It's what we hear. It's what you hear in Buddhism. The only way is through. So that's through feeling. We must feel our truth in order to change our life. When I see a woman entrepreneur who says to me, I want a bill, a startup, and you say, why? And if they're not used to feeling, they might go, well, I want to make money, whatever it is, but I help them connect with the pain behind the why. And then they realize that I want to build a business so that the woman in me at 20 years old never has to go through the shame or the Guilt or the pain that I went through. And once these women connect with their pain and moving through purpose, they move mountains, they build multinationals in no time. And people are like, how did you do that? Because passion comes from pain, the desire to alleviate that pain.

Wow. And so when you speak at events, what are you typically speaking on?

I speak about how to get well for salespeople. It's like how to get your customer to know you, like you and trust you. So it's how to develop meaningful relationship with your customers. I talk about uncertainty, how to shine in the face of uncertainty, especially if you're a mid level manager. You may think with all. In the age of AI artificial intelligence, how do we position ourselves so that we view uncertainty as opportunity, as advancement, as innovation? Many people know this intellectually, but to live it, that's a different story. So I give them a blueprint for that so that they can shine and close more sales. I speak on compassion a lot. I speak about embracing the gift of every situation. So anything that's related to the field of emotional intelligence, I do.

You know, it sounds like for you, relationship to self is the basis for all of that.

Of course we think we have a relationship with our child, a relationship with our friend, a relationship with a spouse. So people tend to see their relationship as separate. I used to do when I realized I am the vessel and the vessel is the depth. The depth. The vessel can be shallow, I used to be shallow, and I'm still shallow at times on some stuff, but it's the depth and that depth comes through feeling.

So for me, whether I'm in front of you or whether I'm in front of a client, it's the same.

What we do is what we do everywhere. You have a computer at home, whoever sits in front of your computer, the computer will do the same functions. It's not because it's you or your wife that it's going to be different. The computer is a computer, the mind's programming is the same. But people, the ego mind, like to think, oh no, it's different, I'll act differently. You know, I can be a perfectionist at work, but not at home. No, if you're a perfectionist at work, I can go check your closet at home. And most likely your towels are folded very neatly by color and all the corners it very nicely. What we do is what we do everywhere, including our relationships. So without a relationship to self, without knowing who we are, without feeling emotionally connected to ourselves, what do we have that is real?

So how do you Go about helping somebody discover who they are.

It starts with, what do you need right now? What are you feeling right now? And it's one by one. The work is looking at each belief, examining everything. Where does that belief come from? Who's taught you that? Looking at the results in their life. What do you wish to do different? Feel into that, from that place of feeling. What would you like to do? Let's do it. Then I become the how, the catalyst. I help them implement it. But they're in the driver's seat.

See it from the perspective of your why being. Knowing your why being the first step, why you do what you do. Everywhere you go, you are always about contributing. You are always about adding value, having an impact in the lives of others. And then how you do that, you know, is through your speaking, is through your coaching, is through your emotional intelligence, through your questioning, is through your stories, is through your life, through your experiences. And it's a very powerful story that you have that connects people. You know, I can see men in particular struggling with the concept of emotional intelligence. What have you seen?

It's respectfully begged to defer.

Oh, really?

Good.

Okay.

Because I find often men are given a bad rap, like they are suppressing their feelings and emotions or they're, you know, quote unquote, more angry than women. But anger underneath the anger is hurt. And hurt came through feeling. Someone felt hurt, so they feel deeply as much as women. I've had men being super vulnerable because they wanted to change. And women, I've seen women close up, and I've seen women become comfortable in their vulnerability. It has nothing to do to do with gender, Everything to do with wanting to change. So for me, men, women, makes no difference.

Good. That's good to know there's hope for us, huh?

There's hope for all of us.

Because we're always getting accused of being not as emotional, so. Good. Well, just because that word kind of scarce. A lot of men, I think the word emotional, you know, it scares me to some extent because it's not what we're used to. We're not used to connecting with each other emotionally. Men don't have as typically have as many the deeper talks and conversations as I think women do. Right. Women get together and talk about feelings. Men get together and talk about sports or something. A way to connect with each other on maybe a more superficial level.

Me, it's about safety. We're always looking for safety. Yeah. We open up when we feel safe. If I can make it safe enough for you to open up you will pretty much open up. And it's the same for me. If I feel safe, I open up. So our job for each of us is to make it safe for each other to share. It's my belief that anything can be said in a place of safety. It's holding that space where someone can share what they're going through without rebuttal or judgment. I teach my client to listen with an empty mind and so that they can just take in what is said and that. Thank you for sharing. But oftentimes most people listen at a superficial level. While somebody is talking, they're already thinking about what they're going to say or what they're going to add or rebut or this. And in that place, why would anyone talk? But if we keep it safe, quiet, open, it's amazing what people share.

So the key then is to listen quietly, or what is the key to creating safety? For somebody to be able to speak.

For me, what it took, It's a training. So it's when somebody speaks to you, you train yourself. Like you can hear your thoughts. And you train yourself to, like, you know, when you go see a movie and there's a blank screen, visualize a blank screen, and you just listen. And that knee jerk, because it comes because we, you know, we all like to be right. That knee jerk comes. Then you just go, no, thank you for sharing. And you leave it at that. And then the person who's like, well, you're not saying anything. What would you like me to say? And you keep asking questions. True listening asks powerful questions. The most powerful question in the world you can ask someone is, what does that mean to you? I had a client, I had to train. He kept fighting with his girlfriend. And he was like, I'm so tired of fighting. Please help me. And I did an exercise with him. I said, you're going to sell me a Jacuzzi. I'm going to come in, I'm going to ask for a Jacuzzi. And he says, okay. So I come in, I want a Jacuzzi. He says, sure. How big? I don't know. Foot wide. This I want it to be. I want to be able to take it on a plane, and I want to be able to carry it. And the dude, so that goes on for 15 minutes, loses his shit, gets so angry. And he's like, are you kidding me? Why are you doing this to me? I said, because you're asking the wrong questions. So you're being trained right now. And then he was like, I don't know what to ask you. I said, ask me, what does that mean to you? And by the time I was done, I wanted a plush animal giraffe, three feet tall, purple, that I could carry on the plane. It was as crazy as that. But he never forgot. And the light bulb went on. He was like, oh, my goodness. I know why I keep fighting with my girlfriend. I never ask her what she means. I think I know. I assume I know. Never assume anything that will save your relationship.

I love that. What does that mean to you? What are you really trying to say?

Exactly. And for many people, what does that mean to you? They need to feel into it. They need to go within. Like people make vague statements. I want to be here for you. What does that mean? I want you to listen to me. What does that mean? I need you to sit beside me. What does that mean? For how long? I need you to sit beside me 15 minutes a day to hear what I have to say. Vastly different. Because then we know. But most people are super vague because they're afraid of feeling. When we feel, we're very precise. Very precise.

So feeling creates better communication. Would that be correct? Yeah. And communication creates better relationships.

Yes.

And relationships move things forward.

Yes.

Yeah. Interesting. And it starts with feeling.

For me, yes. Some people might differ, but at this point of my journey, it's about feeling. Because feeling is living. Unless we feel all our feelings and emotions, we're only like half living. How would you know you are successful if you are unable to feel into it? I had all these degrees and certifications and I kept accumulating them. And when I would get the diploma and stuff, I would just toss it aside and pick up the next thing. But the moment that I felt, and I saw this woman as screwed up as she was back then, that she still did it, no matter how hard it got. I became in awe of that woman and I started respecting me and honoring me.

Changed your relationship with you completely.

Unless we feel into ourselves, you know what intimacy is into me. See, we can only be intimate with another person to the extent that they we are willing to feel into ourselves, being with ourselves.

So for a lot of people, that can be quite scary.

It is. It used to scare the daylight out of me. I lived most of my life emotionally disconnected and I didn't even know. Despite all my upbringing, I thought that if I became educated, if I built a white picket fence, if I had all that money in the bank, then I was quote, unquote, a somebody. I was quote, unquote, somebody good. I was Successful, but I could feel none of it, so it didn't matter. And I had children. What was I teaching them? To become a performing monkey on crack? To go through life emotionally disconnected, to never feel into their mistakes so they could change. When I realized all that, I stayed in what I call the shithole for nine months. And I just kept crying because I was like, what have I done? But it gave me a clarity as to my why and why I want to contribute.

How do you handle the concept of busyness? Meaning I'm too busy. I've got too much going on. I've got to accomplish. Accomplish this. I've got to accomplish that. How does that fit in to the emotional intelligence world?

I saw this quote years ago. It used to trigger the crap out of me. It was a Buddhist quote. It was like something to the effect if you don't have time to meditate 20 minutes, make it an hour. And it was just like. And I could feel the claws coming out, you know, on the blackboard. And now as soon as I. That busyness, when I get that anxiousness, that stress, I drop everything. I go meditate one hour. And I. Because it's that disconnect. I do work hard. I can work 10, 12 hours a day. But when I'm done, I feel quite refreshed, actually. It's very seldom that I go like, I'm so tired. No, those days are gone. Busy without purpose leads to deplete. Feeling depleted. Busy, What I call the good busy. Busy with purpose. It keeps filling our tank.

Great. So what is life like for you now versus life like for you 10 years ago? I guess maybe in your mind.

In my mind. Well, 10 years ago, I blamed everybody. Pretty much. Whatever was wrong in my life, it was everybody's fault but mine.

Now I get I am the vessel. So I am 100% responsible for everything going on in my life.

Wow.

I get that. My. The external physical world is a metaphor for what is going on within. Everything we manifest stems from our beliefs. So I took charge of my life, and now I help others take charge of their life.

How do you feel about the impact you're making now versus the impact you were making then?

Back then, I thought I had impact. I was full of ego. It's like, oh, I'm it. And now it was funny because I sat down, I saw my mentor this week, and I said to him, like, the tears came up after all the work that I've done. I was like, I want to have impact. And he was like, you have impact. You have Impact with your clients. You have impact to the person you smile to on the street. But now it's like a hunger. It's like a motivator for the why. It's. I want greater and greater impact and I understand that to have that impact, it's from within, make room for it and then I can manifest it.

That's awesome. You know, one of my mentors used to interview fascinating and successful people from around the world. And what I noticed in pretty much all of their stories is they all had the fall. The fall created the rise. Oftentimes surprisingly, they had to. They revolved around, you know, alcohol or drugs or something like that. That took them down and then brought them up even higher. The fall is almost necessary. Does everyone have to go through a fall in order to reach new heights?

Well, I think based on my own, my own history, I think we can connect through joy. But many of us are stubborn. I was very stubborn. So I kept recreating the same crap in my life. So the only way and while I kept recreating that same crap in my life, I became more and more non vulnerable. So the like a thick, thick shell, thicker and thicker. No one could get in, not even me. And so the only way through is that to make that crack so the light can enter. It was like, it took a lot. I had to fall all the way down because of my childhood, because of everything that had happened. I had blocked the pain so massively that this connection to this inner child was non exist for me. It took that.

Somebody's listening to this right now and they're saying, I am on the busyness path. I am overworked, I'm over committed. I got so much going on in my life. I have so many stresses and obligations. How the heck am I going to even think about emotional intelligence when don't even have time to think about anything? Because, you know, our world is about being, you know, so many people are so busy, me included, that it's hard to get off that train. How do you get off the train? Or do you have to let the train crash before you can get off it?

Fear is a powerful motivator. It depends on your beliefs. I believe that when I physically die, most people think that they can come back and they can choose a life that they want and they can choose. But energy never lies. And I believe that we start at the same level we left. So whatever awareness, if you believe in awareness that we have when we physically die at the end of this life is the awareness that we will start our life with so that we can build in upon our lesson. If you think about what evolution is, that's what it is. There is no bypassing. When I connected with that, for me, do I ever want to go through what I went through as a child? Do I ever want to witness the sheer level of violence that I saw? No. No. I will change this lifetime. Is it so when clients come to me and they tell me all that stuff and what I call the excuses, I will say whether it takes you one lifetime, one moment, 10,000 lifetime, we all get to go home. We all get to connect deeper with our soul, to reconnect, purpose. And usually, especially if someone has seen and witnessed a lot of pain in their life, it becomes the motivator for their recovery. That's how they change the world.

You know, I appreciate you being here today. Your stories are amazing and I love what you've done and what you and it's just fascinating to see the impact that you've had and you're going to have just with the energy that I see in you because we're doing this. I can see you now. And so I love it. And I know you're going to have quite an impact for so many people. So if someone's listening to this and they say, I want to connect with Ann, I want to talk to her, I need help making the end of my story better. How should people get a hold of you?

My website is walking inside, one word dot com. So walking inside dot com I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, all of that. And if your listeners go to the website, there are promotions right now. They can spin a wheel and they will get a free ebook. Awesome. So there's lots of ebooks out there, so that's one way. Or you can email me at anne@walkinginside.com Walking inside.

Okay. Why did you call it Walking Inside?

Because life is a journey within and without that journey within. What are we doing?

That's awesome. Anne, thank you so much for being here today. I look forward to staying in touch with you as we both go on our journey. So thank you very much.

Thank you very much for inviting me.