Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:50] Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™. I am so excited to be your host. Hi, my name is Rhonda Britten, founder of the Fearless Living Institute™ and Master Coach for more than two decades. You've probably seen me on 600 episodes of reality television. I know a thing or two about coaching and I want to share everything I know with you and this is why this podcast exists to help you become a better Coach, a more confident Coach, more impactful Coach, more influential Coach, a Coach that has a business that you dream of having, because I do fundamentally believe that you can do all the business stuff you want.
[00:01:27] You can get a pretty website, you can get a Facebook page, a Facebook group. You can do everything you want, but unless you have the confidence in your coaching, true confidence in your skill, you're probably not going to build the business of your dreams and you're going to make it about things like, "Oh, I don't have time." Or, "I'm too busy. There's so much competition."
[00:01:44] You're going to just tell yourself all these things which are lies. To me personally, the number one thing that you have to work on in order to build your business, to make it what you really want is the confidence you have in your coaching skills, the confidence you have to change people's lives. I know I can change lives and it's not a theory, it's not a wish, it's not a dream, I know I can do it because I've done it for thousands and thousands of people and I want you to do that too.
[00:02:13] I want you to be able to change as many lives as you'd like, even your mere presence changing lives and have the confidence to know that you can coach that perfect client that you deem is yours, right? To track that client. Today, we are going to be talking about line 12 of the Master Coach Manifesto.
[00:02:33] Now, if you have not heard all the lines, the entire Master Coach Manifesto, you can go to episode 00 and listen to the entire manifesto and you can go to MasterCoachMindset.com and download the manifesto, because in this first season we're going line by line through the manifesto to give you a foundation of what I believe a Master Coach needs in order to truly embody and integrate what it means to be a Master Coach.
[00:03:02] Again, you can build your skills only, but if you don't have the attitude, the mindset, where do I want the presence of a Master Coach, you're only going to get so far. That is why I'm doing what I'm doing today with you and Master Coach Mindset, right? Let's go. We're going to line 12 and line 12 of the Master Coach Manifesto reads like this:
00:03:30 "A Master Coach supports the client in staying centered in their heart because they know a visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution." Let me read that again. "A Master Coach supports the client in staying centered in their heart because they know a visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution."
[00:03:57] Just FYI, all problems that your client is coming with, I guarantee you, they're a visceral problem and what do I mean by visceral? It's literally in their bones, right? It's in their being, right? It's in their heart. It's not intellectual. Even though they may use their intellect to get themselves caught in the problem over and over again, a real true problem and that's why people are coming to you for support is it's a visceral problem.
[00:04:25] It's something beyond intellect. It's going to take their whole body, their whole mind, their whole heart, their whole being, their spiritual philosophy, whatever they believe in order to move them through. A visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution. It's one of the reasons why Starting Over was so effective. My TV show is Starting Over, is that in Starting Over, I did visceral exercises with every client.
00:04:50 Now, that type of visceral exercise was I have them physically doing something like I had them physically building bricks, building wall. I had them tearing something down. I had them putting something on their body, right? It was our true physical visceral experience in order for them to get it at a different level.
[00:05:12] We as most Coaches talk either you're having a session on phone or you're having a session through Zoom or Skype or another video service and you may not be asking your clients to build a wall or tear one down and you can do a similar thing just by the questions you ask and reminding yourself that this isn't going to be solved with the intellect.
[00:05:34] Again, not that we're not going to use the intellect, we are, we're going to use the mind, but the problem isn't going to be solved because they think better, okay? I want you to hear that. A problem isn't solved because they think better. Again, thinking is nice. We want them to think, we want them to think more evolved, be more enlightened, et cetera, but thinking alone, trust me, if your client use their thinking to get them into this situation, thinking is not going to get them out and trust me, they thought about their problem over and over and over again.
[00:06:07] It has not given them the way out. It's actually probably created a trap for them. Thinking about something over and over and over and over again is not going to solve your client's problem. You must keep them in their heart and help them embody it at all levels. You must have them embody it in their body, in their heart, yes, in their mind and again, spiritually, it like has to be a full body experience.
[00:06:36] If you just keep asking intellectual questions, they're not going to feel it in their body. They're not going to feel it in their cells. They're not going to get goose bumps. They're not going to get that stomachache, not that we want our clients to get stomachaches, but they're not going to have that visceral like, right?
[00:06:53] When my clients get visceral, a few things happen to them. Let me give you some hints that you are hitting it viscerally. One of the things is that my client gets confused, right? Because their head, they can't use their brain to get them out of here, right? Again, remember we talked about layering questions last time? Those layering questions are going to get their client out of their head, right?
[00:07:15] When my client is trying to use their head to figure it out and I start asking them the questions, those layered questions to help them move beyond their thinking, but move them into their body and move them into their heart, they're going to get confused, okay? That's one way you know that you're probably hitting home is that your client is like, "I'm confused. I'm confused." Don't take this personally. Don't think like, "Oh, I didn't make it right. I could have asked it better."
[00:07:43] That might be true, might not be true, but don't get caught up in that, right? Instead, just know that, "Oh, my client is getting confused, I'm hitting it, I'm getting closer, okay, good." Another response your client might have when they're having a visceral experience is they might cry. They might go, "I don't know..." They cry, they have a ... right? They have a ... Moment and when they're having that ... or that crying moment, you know it's visceral.
[00:08:15] Again, if your client is getting confused, your client is getting confused, that means you're hitting it viscerally or if they're like, "I'm crying." Again, you're probably hitting it viscerally. You want to hit on these problems your client has using their whole body. Again, they're going to get confused, they might become silent, they might become paralyzed, they might have nothing to say nothing, they don't know what to say, they're just like.
[00:08:45] It's almost like they're ... I don't want to say shocked because it's not really a shock, it's not that type of shock like a trauma shock, it's more like a, "What?" When your client is going, "What?" Again, that's awesome because they're having a visceral experience. Those are just some of the ways that you know your client is experiencing their insights, their ah-ha's, the chain that you're making through your questioning is having a visceral experience.
[00:09:16] Again, it's not personal, don't make confusion your fault, your problem, sure you could have asked it better maybe, maybe not, but again, it's all about showing you that they're getting into their body heart and not just in their brain. When you get caught in ... You're trying to use your client to have their knowledge or their intellect it's just going to trap them between the four walls of their own thinking.
[00:09:41] We've all experienced that individually and our client's experience probably a whole bunch before they ever get to us. They're probably trapped in a box. I had a client that wanted to ... That she had several properties, real estate properties and some were rentals, some she lived in.
[00:10:00] She didn't know what to sell, she knew she had to sell something, but she didn't know what to sell. She was using her intellect to decide what to sell. Now again, we want to use our intellect, sure. Intellect is nice, we want to create all those numbers and get the Excel such spreadsheet out and be like, "Okay, I bought it at this, the market is at this."
Then this is the square footage and this is the good neighborhood. If I've sold it now, the market is this way. All of that is nice, but my client having multiple property, she's deciding what to do with, that's all nice "information", but that's not going to give her the guys, the momentum, the guts, the which one should I say.
[00:10:40] Again, it's not all intellect. She has to actually go put all the intellect on paper, she can do all that and then she has to use her heart, her body to make the decision and that's where we learn to trust ourselves because again, if we're only using our intellect, I guarantee you, you're not trusting your decisions or trusting yourself.
[00:10:59] You may in fact be trusting other people more than yourself. I know, I know, I don't want you to do that. The question I want to bring into this conversation that I was asked by a listener is, "Rhonda, coaching is a new, but rapidly growing field." Yes, it is. "Some certification programs are year long, some are six months, some are just one weekend which seems crazy to me. What should we look for in a coaching program to ensure the most confidence in our skills when it's over? Like looking for the right college."
This is awesome. I'm going to tell you because it goes right along with this visceral question. If you are reading a book on coaching, you might have a visceral moment of an ah-ha, you might have an ah-ha insight, but an ah-ha and an insight, I know this is going to shock some, I know it might shock you, but an insight and an ah-ha does not change lives.
[00:12:01] I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know everybody loves insights and ah-ha's because it's like, "I had an insight, I had an ah-ha. I know it will make the difference in my life." But an insight and ah-ha is just a nice moment, it doesn't actually change lives because what do we do? I'll tell you what I did with insights and ah-ha's in the past.
[00:12:18] If I had an insight or an ah-ha, I actually thought that insight and ah-ha were what was going to change me. I'm having this insight, I'm having this ah-ha, I'm having this moment and I thought the moment itself would cause me to do different behaviors, would cause me to think differently, would cause me to act and react differently, but what I noticed in myself and also in my clients is that I'd have that ah-ha and that insight and it would feel really good, but I never embodied it because I never practiced it.
[00:12:58] Instead, I would have it, think that was going to change my life, that somehow I'd be a different person and I ended up being the same person. Have you ever done that? Have you ever thought like, "Oh, I had an insight, I had an ah-ha. I get it now." Then you think you get it now, intellectually, you think you get it now and then your life stays exactly the same.
[00:13:16] That's pretty much true from 99.99% of people and most of your clients. Again, insights and ah-ha's are nice, but that is not the visceral solution we're looking for. That's a nice moment, an opening, but then you have to move them into practice, you have to move them into action, you have to move them into their body, you have to move them into their heart to change it from an ah-ha and insight to a real embodiment of change. Does that make sense?
[00:13:45] This is why I want to answer this question right now using the visceral question, the visceral problem, the visceral solution is that that is advanced coaching. Asking a good question like, " Tell me more about your marriage." Again, fine question, nothing wrong with that question, but if you don't know how to layer it, you don't know how to turn it into a visceral problem, a visceral solution, you don't know how to make that a visceral question, then your client is going to stay in the same place over and over again and you're going to feel like a crappy coach.
[00:14:21] Why does this happen? The number one thing that I think you need, this is me personally, you don't have to believe me. I've only been coaching for over 23 years is that without a one-on-one mentor, you're never going to get the one-on-one attention, the supervision you need in order to become a better Coach. Not going to happen.
[00:14:48] 99.999% of coaching programs have no mentoring. They might call it "group mentoring", but again, you're not getting that one-on-one listening to the sessions. Does your group mentor listen to every one of your sessions and give you unique, personalized feedback for you in order for you to embody the skills that you need in order to get better?
[00:15:14] I dare say not because my experience is that most coaching programs bypass mentoring because that's the hard part. Training mentors and having one-on-one mentors is the difficult and expensive part about a coaching program and that is why 99.9% do not have mentoring. When the question is, "What should we look for in a coaching program to ensure the most confidence are skilled when it's over." Mentoring. End of story.
[00:15:53] Without mentoring, you are not going to feel confident. Also, coaching hours. How many Coaches, real clients. This is another pet peeve. Pet peeve. This is a pet peeve. Pet peeve is when coaching programs say, "Oh, you're going to practice coaching with your peers." Okay, wait a minute, aren't the peers learning the same thing you are? If the peers are learning the same thing you are, they're going to bring that experience, that knowledge that they're learning in your coaching session.
[00:16:21] You probably have a really great client to coach. Awesome, because they know everything you know and even though they pretend not to know it, let's face it. That Coach is probably pretty, I want to say, easier to coach, because again, they have the knowledge that you do. You don't have to learn how to not have jargon, you don't have to learn how to work with a client from the get-go from the very beginning that they know nothing.
[00:16:47] That's the second thing. The first thing is mentoring. Individual one-on-one mentoring. Critical and key for you to embody the skills to have the confidence that when you graduate, you know you're a great Coach. The second thing is in that mentoring, to make sure in that supervision, remember I supervised you that you are actually working with real clients.
[00:17:10] People that know nothing about the work, that know nothing about me, Fearless Living®, whoever you're studying with, nothing about the process and they are literally coming to you whatever problem they're bringing, they don't know anything that you've studied and they are a real actual live client.
[00:17:28] Similar maybe in fact to the ones you might be having in the future. Those two things working with real life clients, not peers, not practicing with each other, that's not going to give you the same feel and having enough hours, 75+ coaching hours and again, going back to the supervision because that supervision is what's going to support you in understanding what those visceral questions are and identifying those visceral problems and those visceral solutions because again, we want to get our clients out of intellect and when you have your 100 questions that you get from most coaching programs, you're in your intellect.
[00:18:07] By the way, when you're coaching, you're thinking about the next question. Not helpful as I've talked about time and time again. If you really want to go through a coaching program that gives you the confidence and you know the skills, you've embodied them, then you need a one-on-one mentor, unique and personalized and not six sessions, not eight sessions, you need to have a mentor every month, twice a month minimum to go over your sessions and to listen to your sessions.
[00:18:41] The second thing you need of course is real live clients that know nothing about the work that you're learning. Without that, you're not going to feel confident as a coach. I have so many people that take popular coaching programs. They're popular, they're really big coaching programs and then they come to my Fearless Conversations workshop which is a three-day weekend.
00:19:03 Jennifer by the way and Bax, I can give you a couple things off the top of my head, but Jennifer said that she went through a very well-known coaching program, I think it was 10 or 11 months and she came to Fearless Conversations and in three days, she said she learned more about coaching than she did in the entire year-long program that she was in.
[00:19:30] Same thing with Bax, Bax had been a coach for years and she was like, "I'm a good coach. I'm great. I know everything about coaching." Then she came to Fearless Conversations and she was like, "I know nothing about coaching. Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. Now I know about coaching." It's awesome that you want to be a better coach. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to be.
[00:19:42] Now, you have to take the initiative to actually do it for yourself. When I give you a skill, when I give you a tool, for instance in the membership, the membership if you're a member of Master Coach Mindset and you remember, you're getting a worksheet every week that's designed per episode.
[00:20:01] Are you doing it? Not just becoming a member and just to get the transcripts, PDF or to say that you're a member, but to actually work the work, to actually do it, to do the homework, to do that worksheet that I create just for you. Do the worksheet. Again, you're going to have that visceral experience.
[00:20:22] That is why we assign our client's homework, that's why we assign them not just technical things like drink three glasses of water which if you're a health coach might be important, but you want them to move beyond three glasses of water. You want them to be thinking about how they think, about how they move in the world, how they see the world.
[00:20:48] I was talking to a neuroscientist recently and the neuroscientist said to me, "The key to change people's lives is not to change their actions ," which of course we all do. I do that. I change my client's actions, but more importantly she said, "the real key to changing a client's life is to changing the filter in which they see the world."
[00:21:11] That's what we do here at Fearless Living®. That's what I do with all my clients. When I do those layered questionings, when I see the visceral problem and supporting them and having a visceral solution, I am literally helping them see the way they see the world differently. A literal different filter.
[00:21:28] Literally, a different filter. I had a client yesterday, I was talking to one and she asked me, "Rhonda, you've given up resentment towards your family." My parents died when I was young and she goes, "You don't have any resentment towards them?" I said, "No, I don't." She goes like, "I had such a hard time giving up resentment."
[00:21:50] She goes, "What do you do? What do you do to give up resentment?" I said, "Well, first thing I do is I'm willing to see their innocence." When we're stuck in our thinking, we're trying to prove who's right and wrong. We're trying to prove who's right and wrong, we're trying to do the sheet, positive column, negative column, pro column, con column, cost benefit column, we're trying to do the columns.
[00:22:20] Using the columns to justify whether we should forgive them or not, to justify how they treat us, we're going to use that to justify whether we forgive them. We're going to justify how they've treated us in the last month whether we should forgive them. It's a reward, reward system is how most of us live our life.
[00:22:38] We reward good behavior and therefore we're willing to forgive. Instead, I said, "I am willing to see their innocence, they don't have to change. That person doesn't have to change one iota, but I'm willing to see their innocence and as I see their innocence, I'm willing to forgive not only them, but myself."
[00:22:56] Then I'm willing to A, B, C, D and take the next steps as we went through client to coach. Your job is to know that their intellect is always getting in their way and your job is to help them move beyond their intellect, take them out of their intellect and what's really going on in their heart, body, to really what's going on.
[00:23:20] I have a problem in my marriage, yeah because it reminds me of the way my mom treated me. It reminds me of my first boyfriend. That just breaks my heart over and over again. In the very first line of the manifesto, I talk about your willingness to do your own personal growth. I've talked about it several times so far in season one because it's so critical.
[00:23:46] If you don't have the capacity to forgive, it's going to be really hard for you to teach and train and coach your client to do it. You're going to be seen through different eyes. Again, I know that we can do things for our clients that we can't do for ourselves, I get that, we're all growing, but your ability to get past your resentments and past your unforgiveness and past your small-mindedness and past your judgments and past your "negative thinking" and beating yourself up is going to give you more capacity to be there for your client.
[00:24:15] Again, don't use your intellect to solve your problems, use a visceral ... Every problem you have is a visceral problem. If it's lasting more than a few days, it's a visceral problem and you've got to help them find a visceral solution and the same for you. It's deeper than your mind can fathom. It's in your heart and your body.
00:24:33 TIP OF THE DAY:
The tip for today. I'll say it this way. The tip for today is, "Are you willing to love yourself enough to have the courage to help yourself and your clients move into the visceral environment?" Yes, they might cry, they might get angry because again, that's where the feelings live. Visceral is where feelings live.
[00:25:04] Are you willing to explore your feelings and have full access to all your feelings and help your client have full access to theirs because if your client doesn't have full access to their feelings, they're going to stay in their head. Are you willing to feel all your feelings? Are you willing to do the work necessary to move into your own visceral solutions so that you can have the experience of doing it so you know how to do it better for your clients.
[00:25:33] Go to MasterCoachMindset.com, first of all, grab the Fearbuster Coaching™ Toolkit. It is free, it is my gift to you and it's going to help you know how to open and close a session, it's got videos and templates, step-by-step scripts and of course, it's got the download of the Master Coach Manifesto and you need that.
[00:25:53] You need the Master Coach Manifesto, put it up on your bulletin board, put it on your computer screen. Put it somewhere that you're looking at it all the time to give you the courage to say yes to becoming a better coach. I know you want to be, I know you want to be, but in order to become that, you must face your own walls, you must face your own faulty filters, you must face your own self. Make sense?
[00:26:17] Go to MasterCoachMindset.com and download that and of course, become a member. When you become a member, you'll get an exercise from me every episode to help you embody what we're talking about and of course to use it with your clients. Go grab it. It's a steel. Go grab it and become a member. Of course, you get access to different webinars and different calls with me that are not available anywhere else.
[00:26:44] My job and my desire and my love is to help you become a better coach. I love coaches. I can't wait to one day meet you in person at our Fearless Conversations workshop, I cannot wait to meet you in person. As I always say, share this. If it's helping you, it's going to help your family, your friends, other coaches, therapists, et cetera. Share it on your Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera, share it and I look forward to the last episode in season 1 is episode 13 which is just one week away and I look forward to seeing you there.
As always, be fearless.
Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:50] Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™. I am so excited to be your host. Hi, my name is Rhonda Britten, founder of the Fearless Living Institute™ and Master Coach for more than two decades. You've probably seen me on 600 episodes of reality television. I know a thing or two about coaching and I want to share everything I know with you and this is why this podcast exists to help you become a better Coach, a more confident Coach, more impactful Coach, more influential Coach, a Coach that has a business that you dream of having, because I do fundamentally believe that you can do all the business stuff you want.
[00:01:27] You can get a pretty website, you can get a Facebook page, a Facebook group. You can do everything you want, but unless you have the confidence in your coaching, true confidence in your skill, you're probably not going to build the business of your dreams and you're going to make it about things like, "Oh, I don't have time." Or, "I'm too busy. There's so much competition."
[00:01:44] You're going to just tell yourself all these things which are lies. To me personally, the number one thing that you have to work on in order to build your business, to make it what you really want is the confidence you have in your coaching skills, the confidence you have to change people's lives. I know I can change lives and it's not a theory, it's not a wish, it's not a dream, I know I can do it because I've done it for thousands and thousands of people and I want you to do that too.
[00:02:13] I want you to be able to change as many lives as you'd like, even your mere presence changing lives and have the confidence to know that you can coach that perfect client that you deem is yours, right? To track that client. Today, we are going to be talking about line 12 of the Master Coach Manifesto.
[00:02:33] Now, if you have not heard all the lines, the entire Master Coach Manifesto, you can go to episode 00 and listen to the entire manifesto and you can go to MasterCoachMindset.com and download the manifesto, because in this first season we're going line by line through the manifesto to give you a foundation of what I believe a Master Coach needs in order to truly embody and integrate what it means to be a Master Coach.
[00:03:02] Again, you can build your skills only, but if you don't have the attitude, the mindset, where do I want the presence of a Master Coach, you're only going to get so far. That is why I'm doing what I'm doing today with you and Master Coach Mindset, right? Let's go. We're going to line 12 and line 12 of the Master Coach Manifesto reads like this:
00:03:30 "A Master Coach supports the client in staying centered in their heart because they know a visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution." Let me read that again. "A Master Coach supports the client in staying centered in their heart because they know a visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution."
[00:03:57] Just FYI, all problems that your client is coming with, I guarantee you, they're a visceral problem and what do I mean by visceral? It's literally in their bones, right? It's in their being, right? It's in their heart. It's not intellectual. Even though they may use their intellect to get themselves caught in the problem over and over again, a real true problem and that's why people are coming to you for support is it's a visceral problem.
[00:04:25] It's something beyond intellect. It's going to take their whole body, their whole mind, their whole heart, their whole being, their spiritual philosophy, whatever they believe in order to move them through. A visceral problem can only be solved by a visceral solution. It's one of the reasons why Starting Over was so effective. My TV show is Starting Over, is that in Starting Over, I did visceral exercises with every client.
00:04:50 Now, that type of visceral exercise was I have them physically doing something like I had them physically building bricks, building wall. I had them tearing something down. I had them putting something on their body, right? It was our true physical visceral experience in order for them to get it at a different level.
[00:05:12] We as most Coaches talk either you're having a session on phone or you're having a session through Zoom or Skype or another video service and you may not be asking your clients to build a wall or tear one down and you can do a similar thing just by the questions you ask and reminding yourself that this isn't going to be solved with the intellect.
[00:05:34] Again, not that we're not going to use the intellect, we are, we're going to use the mind, but the problem isn't going to be solved because they think better, okay? I want you to hear that. A problem isn't solved because they think better. Again, thinking is nice. We want them to think, we want them to think more evolved, be more enlightened, et cetera, but thinking alone, trust me, if your client use their thinking to get them into this situation, thinking is not going to get them out and trust me, they thought about their problem over and over and over again.
[00:06:07] It has not given them the way out. It's actually probably created a trap for them. Thinking about something over and over and over and over again is not going to solve your client's problem. You must keep them in their heart and help them embody it at all levels. You must have them embody it in their body, in their heart, yes, in their mind and again, spiritually, it like has to be a full body experience.
[00:06:36] If you just keep asking intellectual questions, they're not going to feel it in their body. They're not going to feel it in their cells. They're not going to get goose bumps. They're not going to get that stomachache, not that we want our clients to get stomachaches, but they're not going to have that visceral like, right?
[00:06:53] When my clients get visceral, a few things happen to them. Let me give you some hints that you are hitting it viscerally. One of the things is that my client gets confused, right? Because their head, they can't use their brain to get them out of here, right? Again, remember we talked about layering questions last time? Those layering questions are going to get their client out of their head, right?
[00:07:15] When my client is trying to use their head to figure it out and I start asking them the questions, those layered questions to help them move beyond their thinking, but move them into their body and move them into their heart, they're going to get confused, okay? That's one way you know that you're probably hitting home is that your client is like, "I'm confused. I'm confused." Don't take this personally. Don't think like, "Oh, I didn't make it right. I could have asked it better."
[00:07:43] That might be true, might not be true, but don't get caught up in that, right? Instead, just know that, "Oh, my client is getting confused, I'm hitting it, I'm getting closer, okay, good." Another response your client might have when they're having a visceral experience is they might cry. They might go, "I don't know..." They cry, they have a ... right? They have a ... Moment and when they're having that ... or that crying moment, you know it's visceral.
[00:08:15] Again, if your client is getting confused, your client is getting confused, that means you're hitting it viscerally or if they're like, "I'm crying." Again, you're probably hitting it viscerally. You want to hit on these problems your client has using their whole body. Again, they're going to get confused, they might become silent, they might become paralyzed, they might have nothing to say nothing, they don't know what to say, they're just like.
[00:08:45] It's almost like they're ... I don't want to say shocked because it's not really a shock, it's not that type of shock like a trauma shock, it's more like a, "What?" When your client is going, "What?" Again, that's awesome because they're having a visceral experience. Those are just some of the ways that you know your client is experiencing their insights, their ah-ha's, the chain that you're making through your questioning is having a visceral experience.
[00:09:16] Again, it's not personal, don't make confusion your fault, your problem, sure you could have asked it better maybe, maybe not, but again, it's all about showing you that they're getting into their body heart and not just in their brain. When you get caught in ... You're trying to use your client to have their knowledge or their intellect it's just going to trap them between the four walls of their own thinking.
[00:09:41] We've all experienced that individually and our client's experience probably a whole bunch before they ever get to us. They're probably trapped in a box. I had a client that wanted to ... That she had several properties, real estate properties and some were rentals, some she lived in.
[00:10:00] She didn't know what to sell, she knew she had to sell something, but she didn't know what to sell. She was using her intellect to decide what to sell. Now again, we want to use our intellect, sure. Intellect is nice, we want to create all those numbers and get the Excel such spreadsheet out and be like, "Okay, I bought it at this, the market is at this."
Then this is the square footage and this is the good neighborhood. If I've sold it now, the market is this way. All of that is nice, but my client having multiple property, she's deciding what to do with, that's all nice "information", but that's not going to give her the guys, the momentum, the guts, the which one should I say.
[00:10:40] Again, it's not all intellect. She has to actually go put all the intellect on paper, she can do all that and then she has to use her heart, her body to make the decision and that's where we learn to trust ourselves because again, if we're only using our intellect, I guarantee you, you're not trusting your decisions or trusting yourself.
[00:10:59] You may in fact be trusting other people more than yourself. I know, I know, I don't want you to do that. The question I want to bring into this conversation that I was asked by a listener is, "Rhonda, coaching is a new, but rapidly growing field." Yes, it is. "Some certification programs are year long, some are six months, some are just one weekend which seems crazy to me. What should we look for in a coaching program to ensure the most confidence in our skills when it's over? Like looking for the right college."
This is awesome. I'm going to tell you because it goes right along with this visceral question. If you are reading a book on coaching, you might have a visceral moment of an ah-ha, you might have an ah-ha insight, but an ah-ha and an insight, I know this is going to shock some, I know it might shock you, but an insight and an ah-ha does not change lives.
[00:12:01] I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know everybody loves insights and ah-ha's because it's like, "I had an insight, I had an ah-ha. I know it will make the difference in my life." But an insight and ah-ha is just a nice moment, it doesn't actually change lives because what do we do? I'll tell you what I did with insights and ah-ha's in the past.
[00:12:18] If I had an insight or an ah-ha, I actually thought that insight and ah-ha were what was going to change me. I'm having this insight, I'm having this ah-ha, I'm having this moment and I thought the moment itself would cause me to do different behaviors, would cause me to think differently, would cause me to act and react differently, but what I noticed in myself and also in my clients is that I'd have that ah-ha and that insight and it would feel really good, but I never embodied it because I never practiced it.
[00:12:58] Instead, I would have it, think that was going to change my life, that somehow I'd be a different person and I ended up being the same person. Have you ever done that? Have you ever thought like, "Oh, I had an insight, I had an ah-ha. I get it now." Then you think you get it now, intellectually, you think you get it now and then your life stays exactly the same.
[00:13:16] That's pretty much true from 99.99% of people and most of your clients. Again, insights and ah-ha's are nice, but that is not the visceral solution we're looking for. That's a nice moment, an opening, but then you have to move them into practice, you have to move them into action, you have to move them into their body, you have to move them into their heart to change it from an ah-ha and insight to a real embodiment of change. Does that make sense?
[00:13:45] This is why I want to answer this question right now using the visceral question, the visceral problem, the visceral solution is that that is advanced coaching. Asking a good question like, " Tell me more about your marriage." Again, fine question, nothing wrong with that question, but if you don't know how to layer it, you don't know how to turn it into a visceral problem, a visceral solution, you don't know how to make that a visceral question, then your client is going to stay in the same place over and over again and you're going to feel like a crappy coach.
[00:14:21] Why does this happen? The number one thing that I think you need, this is me personally, you don't have to believe me. I've only been coaching for over 23 years is that without a one-on-one mentor, you're never going to get the one-on-one attention, the supervision you need in order to become a better Coach. Not going to happen.
[00:14:48] 99.999% of coaching programs have no mentoring. They might call it "group mentoring", but again, you're not getting that one-on-one listening to the sessions. Does your group mentor listen to every one of your sessions and give you unique, personalized feedback for you in order for you to embody the skills that you need in order to get better?
[00:15:14] I dare say not because my experience is that most coaching programs bypass mentoring because that's the hard part. Training mentors and having one-on-one mentors is the difficult and expensive part about a coaching program and that is why 99.9% do not have mentoring. When the question is, "What should we look for in a coaching program to ensure the most confidence are skilled when it's over." Mentoring. End of story.
[00:15:53] Without mentoring, you are not going to feel confident. Also, coaching hours. How many Coaches, real clients. This is another pet peeve. Pet peeve. This is a pet peeve. Pet peeve is when coaching programs say, "Oh, you're going to practice coaching with your peers." Okay, wait a minute, aren't the peers learning the same thing you are? If the peers are learning the same thing you are, they're going to bring that experience, that knowledge that they're learning in your coaching session.
[00:16:21] You probably have a really great client to coach. Awesome, because they know everything you know and even though they pretend not to know it, let's face it. That Coach is probably pretty, I want to say, easier to coach, because again, they have the knowledge that you do. You don't have to learn how to not have jargon, you don't have to learn how to work with a client from the get-go from the very beginning that they know nothing.
[00:16:47] That's the second thing. The first thing is mentoring. Individual one-on-one mentoring. Critical and key for you to embody the skills to have the confidence that when you graduate, you know you're a great Coach. The second thing is in that mentoring, to make sure in that supervision, remember I supervised you that you are actually working with real clients.
[00:17:10] People that know nothing about the work, that know nothing about me, Fearless Living®, whoever you're studying with, nothing about the process and they are literally coming to you whatever problem they're bringing, they don't know anything that you've studied and they are a real actual live client.
[00:17:28] Similar maybe in fact to the ones you might be having in the future. Those two things working with real life clients, not peers, not practicing with each other, that's not going to give you the same feel and having enough hours, 75+ coaching hours and again, going back to the supervision because that supervision is what's going to support you in understanding what those visceral questions are and identifying those visceral problems and those visceral solutions because again, we want to get our clients out of intellect and when you have your 100 questions that you get from most coaching programs, you're in your intellect.
[00:18:07] By the way, when you're coaching, you're thinking about the next question. Not helpful as I've talked about time and time again. If you really want to go through a coaching program that gives you the confidence and you know the skills, you've embodied them, then you need a one-on-one mentor, unique and personalized and not six sessions, not eight sessions, you need to have a mentor every month, twice a month minimum to go over your sessions and to listen to your sessions.
[00:18:41] The second thing you need of course is real live clients that know nothing about the work that you're learning. Without that, you're not going to feel confident as a coach. I have so many people that take popular coaching programs. They're popular, they're really big coaching programs and then they come to my Fearless Conversations workshop which is a three-day weekend.
00:19:03 Jennifer by the way and Bax, I can give you a couple things off the top of my head, but Jennifer said that she went through a very well-known coaching program, I think it was 10 or 11 months and she came to Fearless Conversations and in three days, she said she learned more about coaching than she did in the entire year-long program that she was in.
[00:19:30] Same thing with Bax, Bax had been a coach for years and she was like, "I'm a good coach. I'm great. I know everything about coaching." Then she came to Fearless Conversations and she was like, "I know nothing about coaching. Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. Now I know about coaching." It's awesome that you want to be a better coach. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to be.
[00:19:42] Now, you have to take the initiative to actually do it for yourself. When I give you a skill, when I give you a tool, for instance in the membership, the membership if you're a member of Master Coach Mindset and you remember, you're getting a worksheet every week that's designed per episode.
[00:20:01] Are you doing it? Not just becoming a member and just to get the transcripts, PDF or to say that you're a member, but to actually work the work, to actually do it, to do the homework, to do that worksheet that I create just for you. Do the worksheet. Again, you're going to have that visceral experience.
[00:20:22] That is why we assign our client's homework, that's why we assign them not just technical things like drink three glasses of water which if you're a health coach might be important, but you want them to move beyond three glasses of water. You want them to be thinking about how they think, about how they move in the world, how they see the world.
[00:20:48] I was talking to a neuroscientist recently and the neuroscientist said to me, "The key to change people's lives is not to change their actions ," which of course we all do. I do that. I change my client's actions, but more importantly she said, "the real key to changing a client's life is to changing the filter in which they see the world."
[00:21:11] That's what we do here at Fearless Living®. That's what I do with all my clients. When I do those layered questionings, when I see the visceral problem and supporting them and having a visceral solution, I am literally helping them see the way they see the world differently. A literal different filter.
[00:21:28] Literally, a different filter. I had a client yesterday, I was talking to one and she asked me, "Rhonda, you've given up resentment towards your family." My parents died when I was young and she goes, "You don't have any resentment towards them?" I said, "No, I don't." She goes like, "I had such a hard time giving up resentment."
[00:21:50] She goes, "What do you do? What do you do to give up resentment?" I said, "Well, first thing I do is I'm willing to see their innocence." When we're stuck in our thinking, we're trying to prove who's right and wrong. We're trying to prove who's right and wrong, we're trying to do the sheet, positive column, negative column, pro column, con column, cost benefit column, we're trying to do the columns.
[00:22:20] Using the columns to justify whether we should forgive them or not, to justify how they treat us, we're going to use that to justify whether we forgive them. We're going to justify how they've treated us in the last month whether we should forgive them. It's a reward, reward system is how most of us live our life.
[00:22:38] We reward good behavior and therefore we're willing to forgive. Instead, I said, "I am willing to see their innocence, they don't have to change. That person doesn't have to change one iota, but I'm willing to see their innocence and as I see their innocence, I'm willing to forgive not only them, but myself."
[00:22:56] Then I'm willing to A, B, C, D and take the next steps as we went through client to coach. Your job is to know that their intellect is always getting in their way and your job is to help them move beyond their intellect, take them out of their intellect and what's really going on in their heart, body, to really what's going on.
[00:23:20] I have a problem in my marriage, yeah because it reminds me of the way my mom treated me. It reminds me of my first boyfriend. That just breaks my heart over and over again. In the very first line of the manifesto, I talk about your willingness to do your own personal growth. I've talked about it several times so far in season one because it's so critical.
[00:23:46] If you don't have the capacity to forgive, it's going to be really hard for you to teach and train and coach your client to do it. You're going to be seen through different eyes. Again, I know that we can do things for our clients that we can't do for ourselves, I get that, we're all growing, but your ability to get past your resentments and past your unforgiveness and past your small-mindedness and past your judgments and past your "negative thinking" and beating yourself up is going to give you more capacity to be there for your client.
[00:24:15] Again, don't use your intellect to solve your problems, use a visceral ... Every problem you have is a visceral problem. If it's lasting more than a few days, it's a visceral problem and you've got to help them find a visceral solution and the same for you. It's deeper than your mind can fathom. It's in your heart and your body.
00:24:33 TIP OF THE DAY:
The tip for today. I'll say it this way. The tip for today is, "Are you willing to love yourself enough to have the courage to help yourself and your clients move into the visceral environment?" Yes, they might cry, they might get angry because again, that's where the feelings live. Visceral is where feelings live.
[00:25:04] Are you willing to explore your feelings and have full access to all your feelings and help your client have full access to theirs because if your client doesn't have full access to their feelings, they're going to stay in their head. Are you willing to feel all your feelings? Are you willing to do the work necessary to move into your own visceral solutions so that you can have the experience of doing it so you know how to do it better for your clients.
[00:25:33] Go to MasterCoachMindset.com, first of all, grab the Fearbuster Coaching™ Toolkit. It is free, it is my gift to you and it's going to help you know how to open and close a session, it's got videos and templates, step-by-step scripts and of course, it's got the download of the Master Coach Manifesto and you need that.
[00:25:53] You need the Master Coach Manifesto, put it up on your bulletin board, put it on your computer screen. Put it somewhere that you're looking at it all the time to give you the courage to say yes to becoming a better coach. I know you want to be, I know you want to be, but in order to become that, you must face your own walls, you must face your own faulty filters, you must face your own self. Make sense?
[00:26:17] Go to MasterCoachMindset.com and download that and of course, become a member. When you become a member, you'll get an exercise from me every episode to help you embody what we're talking about and of course to use it with your clients. Go grab it. It's a steel. Go grab it and become a member. Of course, you get access to different webinars and different calls with me that are not available anywhere else.
[00:26:44] My job and my desire and my love is to help you become a better coach. I love coaches. I can't wait to one day meet you in person at our Fearless Conversations workshop, I cannot wait to meet you in person. As I always say, share this. If it's helping you, it's going to help your family, your friends, other coaches, therapists, et cetera. Share it on your Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera, share it and I look forward to the last episode in season 1 is episode 13 which is just one week away and I look forward to seeing you there.
As always, be fearless.
