Monica Shell - Change Your Roadmap

We are currently zipping through the ether at the speed of bytes. I believe we have ended up where we're supposed to be. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, conversations about making a better living and a bigger impact by defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. I'm Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach and author of The Art of Encore Living. If you're ready to play your game and live your legacy, visit creativeonpurpose.com to get started today. Let's meet our guest. Monica, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Hey, Scott, I'm so glad to be here with you. Good to see your face. My name is Monica Shell, obviously, and I'm a, I'm a coach and entrepreneur and a mentor, all of these things. And I help women at midlife figure out what their now what looks like. You know, when life's been good and you have those 3:00 AM, uh, staring at the ceiling moments and you're trying to figure out, you know, what's it all been about? What am I really supposed to be doing? That's, that's what I help you figure out. And if you want to know more about that, you can tune into the Midlife Clarity Podcast or go to the, uh, the website changeyourroadmap.com. Send me a note.

Fantastic. Well, one of the reasons why I was excited to bring you on the show is that you and I operate in a similar domain. You have a focus, um, you know, that's narrower than mine, but I love, uh, following you on social media, listening to your podcast, and, uh, just love the perspective that you bring towards helping people in this midlife moment, uh, navigate their way into whatever their what's next is meant to be. So. One of the questions I always like to begin with is kind of an origin story question. I'm just going to put it out there, guessing that Monica didn't wake up at 9 years old one day and say, you know what, I'll be when I grow up, I'm going to help middle-aged women find their way into their what's next. So I'm just curious about your path. Like, how do you see the arc of your journey bringing you to this, this moment that you're in right now?

Yeah. So I had to be it. I had to become it to earn the right to help people through it. I didn't, like, I thought I was going to be a teacher actually. And I went to school, went to college to be a teacher the first 2 years. And then I switched over to a business major. So I've had a nice career in business. Still have that 8 to 5, you know, branding the logo here. But I had been with the same company at the time for probably, I don't know, close to 10 years and had seen a lot of change, a lot of corporate change, had dodged some bullets and acquisitions, mergers, that kind of thing, and kept surviving all of that. But it's very stressful. And I made up my mind that I didn't ever want to be dependent on some, some some guy in a suit 500 miles away who was going to make a decision that changed my life. So I decided that I wanted to branch out and do some other things. And when I really leaned into what my skills and gifts were, I'd been a coach and a mentor for a very long time as a leader in the corporate world and just really love to see people live up to their potential and discover things about themselves that they didn't even know that they had in them. Really enjoy developing people and from that aspect. And the real, I think the clincher for me, and I'm not going to get political, but the clincher for me was when we had a presidential election in 2016 and I saw people in the streets crying and pulling their hair and screaming. And I was surprised and shocked because I figured I, Maybe they don't, maybe I know something they don't know because I never am going to be that horrified or otherwise, or even giddy about whoever gets elected president because that's not directing my life. You know, I, I'm the one who's directing my life. So it was so shocking to me that people were that upset about it when we have so much more power to, you know, to create and define what our success looks like and how it manifests that I would, I just couldn't dream of being that affected by an election at any level. So I kind of made it my mission to start talking to people about what their own power was, you know, what their own, the things that they have control over. And that morphed into a coaching business that actually I built while I was building another service business. I actually started, the business I started was a mobile sandblasting business. I was behind the desk all day and then I was literally on the weekends sandblasting vehicles because I love the physical work too. So it was a lot of fun. I sold it after 3 years. It's hard on the body. But in the meantime, I had built up my coaching business.

That's very cool.

That's how I ended up here.

Well, my older son worked for several years in a small company where they did that kind of work. And yes, very challenging work, sandblasting and all that.

That.

I love the reference that you're making towards helping people see, step into, stay in, and share their power over, you know, to be an agent of their own destiny. And I couldn't agree more that, you know, when we find ourselves getting spun out by things that are clearly way beyond our control, and probably that don't have that much impact on our day-to-day lives, becomes just a seductive way to, to, um, hold yourself back or hide from your ability to control how, how you choose to see things and frame yourself in your situation and what you decide and do next. And I know that this is a really important piece of, you know, the work that you do. So I'm just curious about, you know, as a coach, we all have some sort of signature approach or some idiosyncratic way that we help people. We all, in a way, help people do the same thing around helping them step into their power. But I'd love to hear what's the signature process or idiosyncratic approach that you use to help the woman that you serve step into their power to be agents of their own destiny?

Yeah, I think that it depends. So that's, you know, that's— it's a little bit vague, but it does depend on the person. It depends on where they are. So What I do is definitely meet them where they are. A lot of times, and I'll say most of the time, the first task is to help them actually believe that these things are possible, believe that things can be, can look different, feel different than wherever they are right now. And really working on overriding some of those seeds that probably were planted a long time ago that have us believing that where we are at this certain point in life is the most that we can hope for. So the first thing we have to do is believe. And one of the examples I use is it's like someone who— myself, for example, I came out of a childhood of relatively— I won't say poverty, but not much money. And I remember hitting a point after I graduated from college you know, as probably one of the first people in my family to graduate thinking, this is it. Like, this is the best thing I'll ever do in my life. And I think we get in that mindset. We get in that, that place of, uh, because of where we came from, once we hit a certain point, we think this is the pinnacle, but there's so much more. There's so much more out there. And I'm going to be a different person 10 years from now than I am right now, because I was a different person 10 years ago. Than, than I am right now. And we know that to be true. So the first step normally is kind of cultivating that belief, maybe clearing out some old beliefs and, and helping them see a vision of what the future could be. And what that allows us to then do is understand what do we want that future to be? You know, once you believe it can be different from now, then you can start to think about what do I want it to look like? You know, what's it going to take for me to feel like I'm living into my purpose every single day and maximizing my potential with whatever time I have? So that's, you know, that's generally how we approach it to begin with. We really try to tap into the things that bring us joy, that we can identify as how we want to feel. You know, we're not going to paint a pretty picture of what we want to do or be before we identify how do we want to feel? You know, what's really important to me? Do I want to feel secure? Do I want to feel productive? Do I want to feel connected? Um, do I want to feel helpful? What are the, what are the feelings that we really want to kind of go through our day hanging onto? And then how do we create that for ourselves?

Yeah, well, I love that. You know, the, the theme, or what I'm hearing, is something that is very similar to the way I approach things and the way I think the way all good coaches approach. I love this idea of meeting clients where they are and helping them define what success looks like for them, because every situation is different. And then, you know, the process is always, well, how do I get this person from where they are to where they want to be and close that gap as, as effortlessly, efficiently efficiently and effectively as possible. So I love that. I also love, you know, one of the things that I've been talking a lot about with clients in my community is this idea that we are so much more limitless than we give, than we believe, you know. And I'm hearing that theme in what you're saying too, that, you know, helping people see not just, you know, not just what's possible, but to understand that we don't even yet know how, you know, what the extent of possibility is for us. What do you think, you know, what are, what for you are, you know, common challenges or are there any common themes around, you know, what holds your particular ideal client back? You know, what's the, what's the, the, the most common challenge that you have to help people overcome?

Well, I would say that is probably in two different categories. So one category is the woman who has a family, you know, a husband, maybe some children still at home, or in college, you know, that still depend on mom to be what they need her to be. And a lot of times there is some guilt around pursuing something for me, right? Even though, even though when you show up as the best version of you, you know, that's gonna sprinkle fairy dust on everybody around you. That's gonna uplevel every way that you show up in life. But it's hard sometimes to get over this hump of guilt over feeling selfish. We've built a good life. Why am I not satisfied? Why do I feel like I have to reach for more? And why do I, you know, need to try to allocate some time for me to do that when these other people in my life need me? So that's one hurdle. The other category is going to be a woman who is living, you know, who's living alone. Maybe an empty nester, maybe never had children, who had a partner maybe for years and either by death or divorce now finds herself alone. It's an unmoored time, you know, there's a feeling of drifting. Maybe the career is doing exactly what it's supposed to, but because other things have become kind of out of her control. She's having a hard time anchoring and she's, it's hard to get beyond the 8 to 5 or 9 to 5 routine. And again, thinking there could be something more for me. It's just hard to imagine and it's hard to get yourself in that mental place of I can take control of some of this and all these things that have happened. That I didn't have control over. They happened, but I can control my reaction and I can control how I show up from this moment forth.

Love that. It's interesting that you, you use the word drift. I just was gifted a copy of Paige Najami's book Drift, which talks about, you know, what happens to many of us in midlife is, you know, we found that we've been kind of settling and just allowing ourselves to be kind of just go with the flow, go with the current.

Do—

one of the things that I am arriving at in the work that I do with clients of a similar age is I think that we don't get a lot of training and support in the things that are really required to live a fulfilling, happy life. We don't, you know, we're not encouraged to really explore the edges of our understanding and ability and maintain curiosity, awe, and wonder. We're not encouraged to seek creative solutions to challenging problems. And, you know, we're not really encouraged to think critically about ourselves, our lives, our situation, and what's going on. You know, the first half of life is all about external instruction and validation. We seek, you know, school, our jobs tell us what to do, and then we get rewarded for doing what we're told to do. In that midlife moment, I think a lot of us are broken open to the possibility that maybe I can do this work from the inside out. Maybe I can decide that instead of playing this game I've been told to play, I can play my own game and I can define what success looks like for me. And one of the things that I was really interested in, in kind of what you were saying, is, you know, this idea of empowering people to define those things for themselves. And so, you know, when when you help someone kind of see what's possible— excuse me— see that their life is much more limitless, and that what success looks like for them is actually something they can achieve. What's the, what's the primary skill, habit, you know, thing that they have to learn or improve to start to get closer to what they really want?

That, to me, the most important thing, and this is something that really has culminated for me in the last couple of years, the most important thing is the discipline to take the time to dig in and understand yourself before you start spinning your wheels. Because what I see is a lot of people are, even if they might kind of start waking up to this possibility that, you know, maybe I need to do some work, maybe, you know, there are things. We go out and we buy all these books, right? They buy the books, they buy the programs. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And you know, we, they, they turn into shelf help, right? Instead of self-help. And we find that it often sets us backward. It moves us backward instead of moving us forward because these books, and I'm not taking anything away from any, I know you're an author, I love what you do. I'm not taking anything away from that. I'm working on one myself, but it's addressing this issue of the idea that people go into a book and either they don't implement anything or they implement very little and they start to feel like the village idiot because everybody's talking about Scott Perry's latest book and oh, it's life-changing, or Brené Brown or whoever, it's life-changing. And, but they, but they're not getting anything out of it. And the reason they're not is because they haven't figured out how to apply what they're reading and learning to their own life. And so to me, the biggest skill, if we want to call it that, and discipline is doing that front end work to get to know yourself. Gotta be friends with yourself again. You know, I think we get to a point in our life and, and I hear this all the time. I don't even know who I am anymore. Well, you gotta figure that out. Let's figure that out first because the rest of it, you can spin your wheels like a hamster in, excuse me, in a cage and, and never, never go anywhere. You know, the company I work, my, my 8 to 5 job is Hub Brothers Pizza and we sponsor a NASCAR team. You know, that's fun to go watch, but those guys are going really fast and they end up in the same place every lap, right? They're go, they're going around and around unless they're doing a street race. That's, that's what we do. You know, we can go really fast and, you know, get the idea that if I just buy this book or, or see this, you know, go through this program, I'm gonna change everything. But until you have that discipline to just stop, pay attention to yourself, really try to get to know yourself as a friend again, it, it could be for, it could, it could set you back, not just keep you stagnant, but move you backward. Yeah.

I really, really appreciate that insight. I love the— this is like the second time in a, in a week or two that I've heard shelf help. I love that. I love that idea. And I think you're, you're right on. The problem with kind of any do-it-yourself approaches, it's just, just a practice in closing closing loops, single loop learning. It's like, oh, I'm going to read the book. Oh yeah, I understand that. And we conflate learning something with actual, like, meaningful change or doing something. And I know that for me as an author, I'm very intentional about writing books that only include what's necessary to end and with clear calls to action for readers to do something with, you know, what they've just learned. And to like walk them through this process of learning something, doing something, creating. You mentioned the word discipline, which I think is, you know, the daily discipline of knowing yourself. And I mean, that's ancient wisdom that's inscribed across the Oracle of Delphi from whatever it is, the 800s BC, as you know, that's the first rule: know thyself. Such a profound insight. It really Really love that. And so I know that we, just before we came on, we were talking a little bit about, you know, you're going through a little bit of a transition in what you do. Give our viewers a sense of, you know, where Monica is, where's Monica heading next?

I would love to do that. This is a season of change and transition for me. I'm kind of stepping away from the one-on-one coaching for a bit. I'm still, I have a hand, just a select handful of clients, mainly people that I have coached before that have taken advantage of an offer that I had to kind of have a subscription to me, kind of have me on retainer for at least a once a month, once a month touch base. And I'm enjoying that. I love continuing to work with with clients that I've already kind of taken through that, that part of the journey before. I am leaning more into working. I've launched a podcast, Midlife Clarity. I am working on a book and I haven't decided on the title yet, but it really digs into this idea that we have to get comfortable spending time in the quiet alone and getting to know ourselves again. And I got more insight in an afternoon picking blackberries about 3 years ago than I had got from 90% of the books I had read up to that point, because I got my hands busy and my mind could drift. It's almost like meditation for me, the busy hands, drifting mind. And I got a lot of answers that I had been looking for on the outside, but they were on the inside. So the book is really leaning into that concept. And I have gone through just a life-changing loss. I lost my husband at the end of October. And so everything changed for me because my why changed. I mean, I already, I had this idea of what I was working toward, and that was being able to come home from the 8 to 5 job at a reasonably young age to spend more time with him because he wasn't the best of health. And then he, he got sick and we had about a 5-week battle and he, and he passed. So I had to spend some time as I was processing the grief to think about what's going to happen now. And everything has changed for me. I'm not so focused on, oh, I need to leave this job as I am. Making sure that now I have nights and evenings and weekends free. You know, it feels weird to say that, and I've kind of worked through some of that grief work to understand that it's not a shame. You know, I shouldn't be ashamed to say the word free, but that's where we are now, that I can spend working on and pushing through on some of these things that maybe I would've held back on before. So my focus has shifted.. And I'm really interested in making a bigger impact than I can make working solely one-on-one with people and, you know, reaching more people, helping more people. So that's how the podcast came about.

Yeah. Oh, that's really beautiful. I really appreciate the vulnerability and the generosity of your share, and I'm very sorry about the loss of your husband, but it's so powerful that, you know, that this thing that we're all going to experience in our lives, uh, um, and, and I can't imagine, can't even imagine what that is like at this point, uh, in my life. But, you know, that you leverage that moment to, uh, create possibility for yourself and to use, you know, to, to leverage a loss to help heal yourself and, and learn how to heal other people along the way. So I can't wait for the book to come out. And for those of you that are tuning in, Monica has a fantastic podcast. It's relatively new, but you're cranking out episodes at a pretty brisk clip, at least.

I'm committed to weekly. That's what I'm committed to.

So that's it. And so really some wonderful insights in all of that. So I really appreciate all of that. I just want to really quickly give a shout out. Chris is tuning in and enjoying the conversation. And Chris is going to be on the podcast here in a, in a week or two. So great to have you with us, Chris. Monica, as we're kind of winding our way to the end of our 30 minutes together, you know, you've already shared quite a bit of insight that, you know, will help someone who, like you, wants to either, you know, aspires to make a difference, in their lives or, um, is advancing in some sort of endeavor that where they can enhance their, their own life by helping other people enhance their lives. If, if there were just like one final lesson you've learned or a quote that you're, you, you live by or something that would help someone, um, just take a, you know, become half a shade braver and take a small step into their potential and possibility and the difference only they can make? What, what would you share with them?

In a nutshell, I'll say don't hold back. Don't hold back because there's something inside of you that can help someone else, probably multiple someone else's. Your experience, your, what you have lived, at this point is an inspiration to someone. And to hold back and, and hold that piece of yourself from the world because you are afraid of failure, afraid of success, afraid of the spotlight, whatever it is, holding that back is doing a disservice to the people around you and to the people that you could potentially uplift. So don't hold back.

Beautifully said. I love that. Well, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Monica and I really appreciate your time and attention and tuning in. We hope that today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility, to keep go-go going with defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. You can visit CreativeOnPurpose.com to learn more. And if you're watching on social media or YouTube, please share a comment, a question in the, in the, in the comments or reflection or your biggest aha lesson or takeaway from this conversation. If you're tuning in on the podcast, please leave us a 5-star and a written review. It really helps more of the right people connect with this content and help them make the difference that they seek to make and learn from our guests. Now, take the insights and inspiration from today's show and play your game all in and full out. Monica Shell, thank you so much for lending us some of your time and your wisdom today.

My pleasure. Thank you, Scott Perry.