Embracing Challenges: Clotilde Dusoulier's Perspective on Living an Extraordinary Life | E165

Foreign.

To the podcast this week. So this week I've been doing interviews, as you know, with clients of mine who have written books, because I want to feature female authors. There seems to be, like a circuit of authors that go through, and we all hear from them, and I think that's great for them. I have no problem with that. But there are a lot of authors that, you know, only people that know the person end up knowing that they're an author. And I want to expose a lot more women to the potential of getting their voices out there. And so I am using my podcast as that platform. I know that. That, you know, if you've been a podcast listener for a while, my goal is to really have an impact and reach on 20 million women. So for those of you who tune in regularly, thank you. And for those of you who have shared this podcast with other people, other women that you know, thank you. And if you have written a review, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Because I'm so grateful. The more reviews we get, the more exposure we get through the Apple algorithm. But today, I'm excited to introduce Clotilde du Solier. Her name is so gorgeous. She is French. She is from France. She has written a new book that is written in French. Someday soon will be in English. But here's what's so fascinating. Clotilde was a client of mine, and we worked together for some time. And through that work, I knew a lot about her business and a lot about why she did what she did, but I didn't really know some of her very interesting background. And in her own right, prior to starting her business that she has today, she was a food critic and wrote beautiful recipe books and has built quite a career on that. But she's made major shifts in her life. And as a woman who has a family and who is an entrepreneur, I think she brings a really unique perspective to all of us who might have, like, a dream or might be getting a nudge or something that we really want to give our attention to, but we have yet to, like, seal the deal. Her book is all about change and living that beautiful life, and she has her own method. Right. So her. Her book, which is written in French. Well, for those of you who are listening, I know I don't have that many listeners in France, so if you don't speak French yet, you want to listen to this podcast because she talks about, of course, in her beautiful and lovely French accent, about the importance of living the life that you want to live and relishing the ability to do that and the. The method in which she chooses and has chosen and built a very successful business to help other women do the same. So Clotilde is an absolutely lovely woman, and I'm so, so honored to have the opportunity to talk with her about this beautiful new piece of work that she's created for the world. And so I'm so glad that you're tuning in today. Thank you for joining us. And I will move it right along to start the interview. Okay. Clotilde, I am so happy that you're here. I was so delighted, as I mentioned in the intro, to see that you have published a book and that it's almost out. You. You said just about 10 days from when we're recording. So by the time this is shared, your book will be out and on the shelves and available. So thank you so much for making the time and the time difference, because I know we're also about nine hours apart. So I'm glad. I'm glad we were able to make it work out. I'm at the beginning of my day, and you're at the tail end of your day, so works out. So welcome, welcome. So why don't we just get started and just have you start talking a little bit about who you are and the work that you do, and we'll just see where we go. How's that sound?

That sounds great. And first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of yours and big fan of the podcast, so it's. It's wonderful to share that platform with you today. So my name is Clotilde du Soulier, as you will have introduced me prior.

Which you say so much more beautifully than I ever could, so thank you. Yes.

So I am. I am French, born and raised in Paris. I did work for a few years in California because I am trained as a software engineer. And so when I, yeah, when we graduated, my future husband and myself, we moved to the San Francisco Bay area because it was the place to be as engineers. And then I switched careers once, which around when I was 25, I had started a blog, a food blog, back when it was a very novel thing to do. And the blog got really popular really fast, and it allowed me to start a new career as a food writer. And so that's what I did for almost 15 years. I published a few books, five books, which are all available in the U.S. so if you look me up on Amazon, you will see quite a few published books. And my specialty was making French food approachable rather than snotty or, you know, snobbish.

Yes.

Yeah. And actually, the New York Times once wrote an article about one of my books and called me the Parisian friend we all wish we had, which I thought was the perfect tagline.

I love it, and I love that.

So I was happily doing work on, you know, recipes and recipe development and writing around that. But when I had my children, I quickly noticed that I was sorely lacking any kind of tool to handle my emotions. And I was feeling very lost in this life that I had chosen and created, but felt very heavy, very like. It felt like everything was a constraint. I felt like I had zero freedom. Like, I felt guilty all the time for anything that I did or didn't do. And that's when I found coaching and coaching completely transformed my life from the inside out. And it was a time when I was telling my friends about it, and everybody was kind of like, what? Like, people were riveted. And the conversations that I had around this were life changing for the people that. That I was talking to. And so I thought, you know what? Actually, coaching is a thing, and maybe it is something that I want to be doing. And so I trained in part with you when I got my master coach certification and. And started a business. And so I have been doing this for seven years now. And I have a podcast in French called.

That is. We're actually past 40 million downloads.

Oh, my goodness, how fantastic.

And now the book La Method changemabie, which is a way of sharing the methodology that I have developed over the years to coach our clients.

Okay, will you tell us the translation of your book title in the English?

So Change Ma vie means Change My Life. And so it's all on the podcast. And in general, I share things that have changed my life so that people can change theirs. The book is called La Metadata.

Yeah, I got it. That's perfect. Oh, so beautiful. So beautiful. I love that cover. Wonderful. What an eclectic background. Right? Like such a lovely software engineer to food blog, to food writer.

To coach. Right. And who do you coach?

We work with men and women, but mostly women, because that's what, you know, the kind of person that is drawn to us. We coach men and women who find themselves at a point in life where they feel like they have checked all the boxes. They have dutifully, you know, created the life that they were promised would create happiness. And they feel a sense that something is missing, and they are afraid of what this means. And so what we do is we help them instead of pushing away those Questions which most people do and just buy more stuff or eat more food. We help them ask themselves the right questions in the right order so that they can determine what needs to change on the inside, what needs to change on the outside so that it's not so scary. And oftentimes we find that it's actually less has to change than they thought, because coaching helps you change from the inside out. And as soon as you have a different outlook on your life and where you are, things unfold a lot more naturally on the outside. And we are essentially helping them prevent what would otherwise happen, which is collapse of relationships, changing careers when it was not actually what they really wanted to do. It was just an escape or burnout, which is, you know, in the US as in France.

An epidemic.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's such beautiful work. I completely agree with you. It's. I always, you know, having done coaching now for as long as I have with. With my own clients, and then also as a person who gets her own coaching, I realize now when I feel. I call it itchy, unsettled, confused, you know, and that for sure has been true for me this year because my kids have left, and you've probably even heard me talk about some of this on the podcast. It's just been such a really. The last probably 36 months of my life has been really interesting. It's just been such an evolution. It's like I. I now realize to wait where I used to immediately want to do something or like you said, just go straight into totally hiding from it. Now I just let it. I'm just going to wait. Like, is this a real thing that I'm dealing with here? Or is this just, you know, a brain that has things that fly through it from time to time? So I think the work that you do, of course, is absolutely beautiful. And I'm curious listening to you, because you have. You have lived such an interesting life professionally. What would you say has been one of the biggest, most sort of significant changes you've made in your life in terms of.

And through coaching, two things pop to mind. The first thing is the quality of my relationships, especially with my husband and my children, is incomparable. Because when you feel resentful about your life in general, you're not. You're not in a position to be the kind of loving person that I at least aspire to be. And the way that I felt about my life was really preventing me from. Yeah, from being super connected to my children and my husband the way I am now. And so the joy that I find in those relationships, the, the love that I feel and how proud I am of the mother that I am and the wife that I am is priceless. So that's one thing. And this not, not a small thing. And the other thing is coaching really helped me bust those glass ceilings that I had above my head and really gave me permission to imagine myself in situations, especially in terms of growing a company that I had never imagined for myself before. And one thing that really struck me is that I have been working for myself for 20 years. In July, it will be my 20th anniversary of quitting my salary job. And for the first 12 to 13 years of those, I was ambitious in some ways, but not very ambitious. And I always had this sense that somehow my success was dependent on someone else discovering me, giving me a platform, publishing my books, giving me space in a newspaper. You know, there was always that sense that there was a gatekeeper and I had to be nice and be attractive somehow to those gatekeepers who could just like. I remember one time there was, you know, the GOOP newsletter from Gwynneth Paltrow back then she had highlighted a food blogger in her newsletter. And so the blogger's blog had completely exploded. And I remember I was thinking, ah, like, I really need somebody like Gwyneth to really highlight what I do so that I can, you know, create this big success. And at no point was I thinking, how can I, like, be the. Be the driver of that success? I was kind of like waiting, waiting to be seen, waiting to be chosen. And that really flipped when I started my coaching company and I got in the driver's seat. So much more thinking, like, I don't need anybody else to, you know, spark anything for me. Like, I'll be the one, like, who better than me, right?

The thought, that's such a great question. Who is better than you to do it? Right? But it's such a condition. I just did a quick story on Instagram and I was talking about that. In the work I do with my clients, you know, especially in my premier program, my sage program, I provide a lot of support, right? I'm, I'm on it. Like, I've been boxing with women all morning, since 5:30 this morning. It's my favorite thing to do, right? But there's still people who invest in that, but then they don't use it. And it's fascinating to me because of course I box with my coach all the time I can, right? I'm like, put my coach to work. That's what I'm invested in. Right. But I think women in general are sort of have adjusted a lifestyle and a belief system. And I'm speaking in generalizations, but I do think this is enough, true in enough pockets around the world, not just, not just in some cultures versus others. And we, we do abdicate. We abdicate our success, we abdicate advocacy, we abdicate support. We. We assume, oh, I don't have to do that or I don't get to be successful unless someone else says I am. Right. Unless Gwyneth Paltrow says I'm good at what I do, then who am I to toot a horn? Right? So I love that. I think that's a really important message. And one of the things I'll also just say that I think is critical about what you just said, very tactically, is I work with a lot of women who have businesses who haven't actually had to elevate the message of their business. They've been lucky with referrals or word of mouth like longevity. And so they've never really developed that muscle of the advocacy of their business, their model, their resource, their service, their product. And so it surprises me that there are women running 10, 12, $13 million businesses who don't actually know how to promote what they do because they've relied on this process. And unfortunately, it's just not replicatable. Right. When you know you can build something and go tell the world about it and do it in a way that works for you, you don't have to depend on other people doing that for you. So I think that's a really fascinating lesson, not one I would have expected to hear. So I think that was a really interesting thing to talk about. So thank you for sharing that. So let's talk a little bit about your method. If I pick up your book and I want to change my life, and I want to absolutely do that by listening to your voice.

Either reading it or hearing it. Do you have an audiobook yet? Is that going to be coming out?

It's in the works.

Okay.

On May 7th is the. Is the print and ebook version, and probably in the fall, will the audiobook come out perfect?

Yeah, I know everyone has their preference too, right. Which is fabulous. So what, what is your method? And what can, what can a reader expect by picking up the book?

So the changemavie method starts with a key question which is defining your own success. Because part of the problem is seeking outside markers of success that other people have presented to us. And instead of thinking that they're just Options that we can choose or set aside.

We.

We're kind of chasing those. Those markers of success that don't necessarily create what. What we want. And so the first step is in exploring what it would actually look like for us to feel like we have led a good life and having the right balance between outside things, which we all want and aspire to because we are like human beings evolving in the world. But also a good balance of those inside markers of success. Things that you can't see from the outside, but like the quality of your relationships, the quality of your relationship to yourself, your emotional, spiritual health, the meaning and the impact that you have in your life. That is, those things can be neglected because nobody, like, celebrates them. But I think they're so important to evaluate so that in. In your search for those outside markers of success, you don't forget to create those inside markers of success. So that's step one. Step two is looking at the quality of your relationship to yourself, how you talk to yourself, and what your expectations are of yourself. We work with a lot of people who have a perfectionist streak and who have an inside discourse that is really, like, unforgiving, super tough. They would never talk to anyone, anybody else that way. And so before you embark on any kind of significant change, there has to be a commitment to yourself that you will not do this at the expense of yourself. So this is like, before we embark on any kind of change, this is like, what is success? What is your commitment to yourself? And then the method is vision, focus, and drive. And so you establish a vision for an area of your life that you think is the first area that you want to look at. So you decide what you want. And this is actually not easy for most people because we are not asking ourselves what we want very much. And people don't ask that of us either. So developing like a rich and textured image of what is that life that you want to project yourself in, then focus is the next steps. Not necessarily the full stairway, but the first few steps. And then keeping your focus on this, because we always want to go in many, many directions. But then we don't make any kind of progress and we give up. And then drive is. Once you've gotten moving, how do you sustain that energy without exhausting yourself from the right emotional fuel? And how do you overcome obstacles, discouragement, judgment? How do you make sure that you have a good team around you to support you? So vision, focus, and drive until you are living the extraordinary life that you.

Want that's so wonderful and it's so possible. Right. I think you being in the world and advocating for that and modeling that. Right. And that living that extraordinary life doesn't mean you don't still have difficult things. You have to deal with problems that come up unexpected issues. I think that's also a. I would assume part of the journey that they go on with you is to realize those things will happen and then how we negotiate those actually contribute to our ability to actually live that extraordinary life. Right.

Yeah. It's this concept of toxic positivity that is internalized by so many people and so many women in particular, that if you're not feeling 100%, 100% of the time, then something is wrong, you're failing at life and happiness. And that very resistant and self judgment is actually piling on more negative emotion or unpleasant emotions. And so yes, the accepting that it will come with, with challenges. But what, what I think is the goal that I offer as this idea of a leaving. Living an extraordinary life for me means waking up in the morning thinking I love my life and I know the best is yet to come. Because I think it's. We need to create a life in which we can appreciate what we, what we have and where we are and also be sowing the seeds of something new and pursuing growth and change. Because I think there's this fallacy around happiness that a lot of people think that it's a static concept, like, okay, now I'm happy and so I don't need to do anything else. But in fact, if you stop growing, if you stop pursuing change and new things, you're just going to wither and die. And then you'll turn to over shopping, over eating, any kind of over scrolling. I truly believe that we all need something to look forward to, something that we're pursuing. And I actually had that recently in my own life where I was feeling like I had achieved a bunch of things. And I was thinking, I had this kind of general malaise and I was thinking, okay, it's because I haven't started anything new. Like I'm not, I'm. I'm not pursuing anything fresh and exciting. And so when you're kind of in the routine of doing things you like, but there's nothing new to just kind of like spark your enthusiasm, it can feel actually really unsettling, as you mentioned.

Well, and I think, I think it's such a great insight because I do, I wonder what you would say to this. Do you think that, do you think that there are just some people who think that way. Meaning, you know, because I agree with you, right? Like, and I can tell, like, with our kids leaving and we. We're now living in this home that we've always wanted. And my business is lovely and, like, everything's lovely, right? And I could feel like, oh dear, this gets to be where we sit on the couch at 7 o' clock and we fall asleep by 8. And that's not what I want my life to look like, right? You know, so then I got hot on a pickleball. Now I love pickleball. And it's so fun and we're playing together and. But we had to, like, recreate and now we're thinking about where we want to live next and the kind of trips that we want to take. And I just got this really cool thing happen yesterday that I can't tell anyone about yet, but that's going to be super fun. So. But are there people that are just sort of programmed for that? I call it a little bit of wanderlust, a little bit of that, like, constant, like, what's around this corner. And then there are other folks who just, they get to that point of happy and they. And they're like, okay, this is good. And then they don't want anything to change, right? And then of course, the challenge with that is that there's so. There's an inflexibility because life is just so dynamic. So then it's incredibly disruptive when something happens and change shows up for you that you weren't expecting. Is that a nurture nature kind of concept that with some of us just are born more interested in moving forward and others of us are just a little more comfortable once we get somewhere to just stay. What do you think?

My perception is that the only difference between the two is the awareness that we need projects to feel alive and to stay alive, and that those people that you describe as being just content to be where they are. I would be really curious to look at how miserable are they actually, and what are they using to cover up the misery. And I had the opportunity to meet a doctor recently who specializes in longevity medicine. And he was talking about, like, in passing, and I was like, oh, this is. This, this is what I've been saying is the. The deficit of projects is one of the biggest predictors of fast aging. And like I. The word in French is. I don't know if it exists in English. Senescence.

It's a.

It's a physical aging of the body. Like, when you stop having projects, your body just kind of literally Withers and dies.

Yes.

And so I would. Yeah, exactly. Which kind of like doesn't make anything else work well. And so I would venture a guess that those of us who do have that awareness that we need projects to keep us moving forward are lucky because we won't. We won't let this kind of stillness and complete a form of complacency steal our life that we, the decades that we still have.

Yeah, well said. Yeah. I think that's such great. It's such a great reminder, you know, I know that we all have different aged listeners. Right. You know, I'm 54, so I'm certainly in this really interesting window of my life where when I was young, my grandparents were like my age when they stopped working and they like watched the Price is Right, which is a show here in the US and it's just such an interesting time. And I'm like, no, no, I want to start maybe a whole other business. Like, I don't know. Right. So it is such an interesting time for all of us. And I love the reminder that you're giving us all to look forward. I remember. So a couple things that Peter Senge talks about. Vision. Right. And he talks about that. One of two things happens. It's reality and vision are like on a rubber band. If vision is here and your reality is here. If you lack clear vision, what will happen if you imagine these tied together with a rubber band is you will change your vision to satisfy the reality that you're in versus if that vision is super clear. It literally pulls your reality forward. Right. And I think for so many reasons, people, some people say they don't know how to have a vision. Right. I'm sure you've heard all of that with your clients or they're afraid to have that because it means I'm not going to be with this person anymore or my kids won't like me or. Right. Like, what if I really, really go forward with the very thing that's on my heart? It's so disruptive that I have to hide from it and I can't acknowledge it. Right. Which is. That's part of what I like to do in Hawaii, when we talk about it is like, nothing has to change today. Let's just talk about it. Let's just let it breathe. Instead of being in you, you know, suffocating you, let's just put it out here and let it, let it breathe for a minute, see what it does after it's had that chance. So I think that's super lovely. Okay. I could talk to you all day because I. I know we are kindred spirits in the commitment that we both have from different angles. Right. To help people and women live exceptional lives and make the difference they want to make for themselves and others. So I'm so grateful to know you and have had the opportunity to work with you, and I'm just thrilled that your work is in the world even more expansively than it already is. So tell us a little bit about how to find you, how to get this book, how to listen to you, tell us all the things.

Thank you. So the podcast is called Change ma Vie and it's available on every platform. Podcast, platform. Wherever you listen to Chris is where you can find me.

Then subscribe to me will be all great.

Yeah, we have a website called changemavie.com where you can find everything about our coaching program. The book is coming out on May 7, and so it's called La Metade Changema Vie. And I looked at Amazon and the Kindle version will be available on Amazon. I don't know about other platforms, but the Kindle version will be available. And possibly the paperback version, I'm not sure.

Okay. And it'll be both in English and in French.

Yeah, no, it's just in French. Just in French for now. Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

So it's for our French speaking audience. Fabulous. And then we're on Instagram at. So it's at we changemavie. Because changemavie was already taken, so I added we before.

Okay.

And maybe we can have the links in the show notes.

Yes, the links will absolutely be in the show notes. Not a problem at all. We'll make sure of all of that. And do you have any other events or anything else coming up that people might want to know about sometime over the next few months to have on the radar?

We have a weekly newsletter that goes out on Mondays. It's called Leslant du l'. Indit. So it's Monday. Momentum is how we could translate it. And so it's a very short email that we send out to give our subscribers a boost of energy to start the week. And that's where we will keep people updated of book events and signings and program openings.

Lovely. Well, I wish you so much success with the launch. I know you've been working really, really hard on it, and I am so tickled to just see you doing so well and making such a difference. So thank you for everything that you do and thank you for spending some time with me today.

Thank you so much. For having me. Chris.

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