Ep #193: Sharing the Gift: How I Really Coach My Clients

“Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul, be just another human soul,” Carl Jung. I was speaking with a friend recently and she said, “You know, wouldn’t it be nice if you did a podcast episode on how you coach?” And I said, “Really? That would be nice?” And she said, “Yeah, I think people would like that.”

And then, something interesting happened. I felt this resistance. I felt like, “No, I don’t want to do that.” And I realized, well, how interesting is that? I definitely paid attention to that. And I realized I felt a little scared, a little scared of being seen, and really, of once being seen, of being judged.

And so, here we go, my friends. I’m going to go there. I had recently written an email to someone that I’m working with this next fall, I am cohosting a retreat and I’m doing a talk for their organization out in Seattle, so be sure to be on my mailing list to find out more about that.

So, while this woman is familiar with my work through the podcast and also I did a workshop for their organization and have given a talk prior, she’s never experienced me coaching. So, I wrote a letter explaining and that letter, that unvarnished truth, free for you to think what you want, is going to be the content of today’s episode. Here we go.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I am recording this to you a couple of weeks in advance. I am getting ready for a visit from my brother Andy and his family. Andy is amazing and, for Christmas, he bought his children and my children race entries to a spartan race that’s happening at the Notre Damme Stadium, to which the kids had mixed reactions.

They adore their Uncle Andy and their dad, and they’re like, “Oh boy, a race?” So, their family is coming out, arriving today, and we’re going to do some other stuff. It will be fun and a treat to see them almost two weeks in a row because we got to see them last week in Iowa. And our kids get along so well together, so we will likely also go to Lake Michigan, do a lot of great cooking, go swimming, go to the park, it’s pretty hot, play around the farm. It’s gorgeous here right now.

If you don’t follow me on Instagram, I’m trying to refrain myself from just posting thousands of pictures of the prairie, of my flowers, of what it’s like outside right now. I am not a great gardener, I just love it. I just love it and I’m making lots of mistakes along the way.

I also have such big plans, such beautiful plans for the rest of the farm, for the landscaping, for the gardens, and I’m balancing out my – well, I’m not actually at all. That’s a lie. I’m not balancing at all my dreamer self and my ability to do. I’m totally keeping the big dreams and all of my things that I’ve cut out for my vision for the outdoor space and trusting that we’ll make our way there.

But it’s really nice to be able to share that and it’s just been gorgeous outside in the evenings with the fireflies and looking forward to sharing that summer magic with my brother who I love so dearly, and he and my husband get along famously, just like brothers, and yeah, their kids are awesome as well. So, that is what I’m going to be up to shortly here. But before that, I wanted to create, share this episode with you.

As I mentioned in the intro, I am feeling a little nervous about this. I suppose, yes, it feels a little bit like being naked. Which I don’t notice, I guess, when I’m with my clients. That might sound weird. I promise you, yes, I wear clothes on all of my coaching calls. And I also feel like there are layers that I’ve practiced so much they just drop away. And I’ve also done work to shed those layers and continue to; any of the sort of ways that I think I need to coach versus just what I believe I bring to the process.

And this is a conversation I’m comfortable having, I realized, with certain people, like my clients already. I trust them obviously, they trust me. And with colleagues, certain colleagues and people who I think move more fluidly between sort of the material world and the spiritual world and who don’t think twice about that.

I think one of the first times I really told anybody about how I coach happened in a private conversation with my dear friends and mentors, Dr. Mollie Marti and Dr. Tererai Trent. We were at Mollie’s house following a keynote conference for the National Resilience Institute, it used to be, formally, the National Resilience Institute that Mollie is the founder of and Tererai had been the keynote speaker.

And then, we had this amazing, impromptu girls’ weekend, magical, just everything you would expect from spending time with powerhouses like that.

And with people like that, who I think are true visionaries, leaders, healers, medicine women in their own right, it just felt very safe and natural to share this. And it also felt like an important part of my process and a birthing process.

And that conversation was years ago. And for various reasons, I don’t think I have intentionally set a conscious decision to keep it under wraps, but I feel like the people who are meant to find me, find me. And more and more, I’m learning the power in communicating this freely so that the people that are meant to find me can find me more easily, the people that resonate with me are able to find me, and the people that don’t find someone else.

And so, again, as I mentioned in the introduction as well, I am preparing for a talk and a retreat I’ll be co-leading in Seattle this coming October. And it’s with the organization – an amazing organization – RevelEleven. If you don’t follow them already, please do check them out.

And so, in speaking with their founder, who was familiar with my work, and again, I’ve done a workshop for them before – you can even find that talk on YouTube – she isn’t familiar with how I coach.

And so, I just wrote her a personal email describing it, which trust me, is a huge win for me from years ago, to write a professional email where I also let myself be this truthful and free about how I really work, leagues ahead of places that I used to be.

And then also, isn’t that the way we want it to be? Professionalism and our deepest truths, our greatest gifts, those things should not be at odds. I know I’m of the highest service in my profession when I am living from my deepest truth and when I am freely expressing my gifts.

And yet, there’s been a lot of deconditioning that has had to happen, a lot of unlearning. And apparently, that continues on because I was a little surprised at my own reluctance when my friend suggested that i talk about this as a podcast episode.

So, this is an abridged version of how I coach. I’m sure I won’t hit everything as I share what I wrote to Joni in this email. But I wanted to share it with you today, not only in case you are looking for a coach – and you can find out if how I really work resonates with you.

But also, I hope it is an example of you being of highest service in your life, in your chosen profession or medium, by coming freely from your deepest truth, however weird or outside of the mainstream that might seem to other people, how you can be of highest service to your life and to others in this lifetime, by freely expressing your gifts.

And I want to say without fear of judgment, but I can’t honestly say that I’m there yet, and I don’t want to make you think that that’s necessary, that you have to be completely free of judgment. I will say, I am much more free and that’s the destination in which I continue to head, more and more freedom. And I want that for you as well.

So, without further ado, here’s what I wrote in the portion of the email where I describe how I coach, “In a longish nutshell, the best way I can describe how I coach is that my orientation is always soul to soul. That being said, I’m also a crackerjack of a mindset coach. I think it’s the combo of being a poet, lover of all things story and language, and also law school training, finance undergrad, not to mention that I’ve been doing it for over 10 years and have had some powerful mentors and colleagues to train with in the mindset coaching realm.

So, I do bring this high-level mindset coaching ability, but this is all really in service of my intuition. I lead with my intuitive gift, which is to sense the true self, potential of another. That has always been so clear and real to me, and it took me a while to realize that not everyone sees that.

There is like a stream of energetic information that people are always communicating about themselves, and that’s the level at which I first engage. Secondarily, I will be with, talk with their most practiced, superficial…” that’s not a judgment, just describing what it feels like, “Social self, personality self. But I’m also simultaneously listening to and talking to this other deeper, truer self.

The deeper, truer self gets that I hear it, see it, sense it, get it, and wants to be known, so it gets its point across to me one way or another, so I can hand it back to the person and there can be a revelation and an integration.”

So, sidenote, this is similar to the process I described in last week’s episode when I talked about how I will feel for threads, and then find threads and then follow them in my coaching sessions.

So, back to the email, “So, while this is happening, I’m also, again, talking with the client, as lots of coaches do. We talk, I ask questions, I listen very deeply in between the lines. I feel around for the place of revelation opening, healing shift they are looking for. Their true self cooperates with this. I feel it when we find it.”

I also want to say, sometimes people’s – this is a sidenote – sometimes people’s selves really resist and don’t want to cooperate. And I don’t ever force anything. I just let that be and will say, “Just note it. Observe it. I’m feeling a lot of resistance here, a lot of blocking, a lot of defensiveness, a lot of anger.”

A lot of times, it’s because they might perceive me as an authority figure. I am not, by the way. I am not a guru. I am there to serve them. I am there to help them locate their own inner authority, their own agency, their own golden threads.

And a lot of times, if we just stay with that, that can just soften things up and move the energy again.

So, back to the email, “I feel it when we find it. Almost always, the other person does too. Sometimes, in the moment, although sometimes the gold in the nugget doesn’t reveal itself until later when their own understanding, their own brain catches up.

But the soul, the energy of the person does get it in the moment and will hang onto it for them and deliver it up at the right time for them. It’s always very benevolent, benevolent, benevolent energy, even and especially when it’s also a hard, challenging topic for them.

But beyond the insight, information, answers that come from a coaching session, what also happens where I feel it when we find it, and they usually do too, is that there is a felt sense and contact made with their own true self.”

So, let me say that a little bit differently in case that’s hard to understand on the podcast. When this happens, when it’s that sensation of finding the golden thread and then I talk about it, tell them what I found, not only do they have the information that that golden thread offers. It’s more than that. It’s an experiential, a very real, very palpable sense of contact with the true self.

So, back to the email, “They come back in true contact with a part of them that has been there all along and it’s not something that they have to think about or make themselves believe. They experience it and therefore they know it.

And I usually try to get people to pause in that moment to really let the full moment sink in because the brain wants to hurry right over it as if nothing has happened. Like, nothing to see here. There’s no true self down there. Carry on. Carry on with your busy superficial self-life.”

Again, no judgment there, but that’s kind of what the brain wants to do, you imagined that profound experience there a moment ago. So, that’s when I will slow the role in a coaching session and make sure that we are dropping down, imprinting that experience, giving it space and presence, being very present with it.

But to make that true self so much more real to the person, I slow things down and have them pause so that it can be stamped, imprinted, embedded as a part of their reality. Not imagined… reality.

When you make contact with a real person who leaves a great impression on you… so when you make contact with a real person who leaves a great impression on you, you are changed. Imagine the change that can happen when that person is our own true self, when that person who leaves the great impression is who we’ve been underneath, our true self, all along.

It’s a moment that changes us forever and it’s so important to take that in on all levels.

This can happen individually and in a group. Both are powerful and offer different things. One of the gifts of a group is that it can accelerate the process for everyone. One of the ways this happens is that when someone else has an experience shifting like that that is profound, it can help you not just believe you have a true self, but it can help you experience your own truth when you are in response to others experiencing theirs.

And then, I also wrote to her that I don’t always explain this process to clients, but that is something I have changed and I am changing more and more. It’s not necessary for them to understand in order for it to work, but some people do like to know.

For years though, I didn’t want to share because I was worried it would seem weird. But shedding that has been a freeing, a liberating part of my own journey, I will say healing too, my own journey of embodying my true essence and letting go of anything standing in the way of that, anything that feels oppressive to that.

So, this is very meta and important for me as a coach, the more I embody and express my truest self, the more powerfully I’m able to help others do the same.

And I’ll say the same as an artist – the email is concluded – that as artists, as creatives, the more we embody and express our truest self, the more powerfully we’re able to help others do the same. Because that energy is communicated through our art, it is also communicated through ourselves. We are our greatest works of art.

And the more we love and trust ourselves enough to liberate ourselves, tell ourselves to be seen, and also allow our true selves to be loved, then the more that energy and that example emboldens others to do the same, gives them the courage to speak their own truths, to offer their own deepest truth in service of whatever their medium is, whatever their healing art is, the more it gives others a pathway to see that, oh yes, there is a pathway forward where I can thrive in this world, not pretending to be someone I’m not, not pretending to be less than what I really am, more normal, more mainstream, more whatever have you.

But I can see a path to a brilliant, thriving, empowered future of my dreams and the path is carved by me being me, free, liberated, unabashed, unapologetic. So, whether you make a living as a coach, as a healer, as an artist, as a creative in whatever your medium, I wanted to offer this example for you.

And this brings me now to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. Don’t just listen to this information and be entertained by it and then do nothing with it. Use it to really create tremendous transformation and change in your life. Integrate it, reflect upon it, act differently because of this. Ask yourself, how will I act differently because of this episode?

And that is actually what I want to offer you in today’s coach with me. If this resonates with you, that the path to your greatest thriving, to your fullest expression, the path to your greatest destiny and fortune is a path where you become more and more of yourself.

I’ve shared on so many episodes my personal prayer and intention and mantra, which is, “The more I am me, the more successful I will be,” and variations on that, “The more I am me, the more I will thrive.” That one doesn’t rhyme, but it still works, “The more I’m me, the more I get paid.”

So, I invite you to consider, are there places currently where you think something like professionalism or success is fundamentally at odds with your own deepest truth and your own highest gifts.

How can you begin to see that differently? How instead can you turn that on its head so that you know with every fiber of your being that it’s the more you come from your deepest truth, the more you freely offer your greatest gifts that puts you in the position to be of highest service for your own life and for the lives of others.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I really appreciate you being a listener in this community, more than just an audience to me. And if you’d like to help me spread the word, the best way to do that is to go to iTunes, leave a review, is to subscribe, is to share. You can tag me on Instagram, @leahcb1, #theartschoolpodcast.

I always love hearing about where you’re listening, what’s resonating with you. And if you haven’t noticed, I am very passionate about helping people move into a place where they are tapping into their deepest truth and they are offering their highest gifts and that that does lead them to a future in which they are fully thriving, fully expressed, wildly in love with their life.

So, if you want more of this kind of work and this kind of energy and this kind of information, the best way to keep in touch is to sign up for my newsletter, which you can do at my website, www.leahcb.com. There are also links in my Instagram profile to sign up. That way, you’ll be the first to know about any future offerings of the Art School, the Art School Mastermind, private coaching, other ways of working with me, upcoming retreats, and it’s a great way too to stay connected with this larger, international community of inspired, affluent, prolific AF, loving, conscious, kind, capital-C Creatives.

To close today, just another something to take with you on a walk or on a journaling session or into an inspired conversation with a trusted other, a little bonus coach with me. So, what I want to offer is that you spend time actively imagining scenarios, paradigms, a future in which you are the most successful you could be, precisely because you are coming from your deepest truth and your greatest gifts, precisely because you are showing up as you, the true you.

The brain will want to shut that business down. And so, using the imagination in a very active and intentional way to train your brain to see, “It is safe to be me. It is safe for me to be successful being me,” to teach your body this, to recondition your central nervous system to scenarios in which you’re prolific, you’re flowing, you’re affluent, you’re in demand, you’re visible as who you really are and you are happier, healthier, wealthier than ever.

Give yourself so many opportunities to imagine that, to feel what that feels like, the excitement also encased in this reminder that you are safe, that it is safe to be you, it is safe to be successful being who you truly are. It is safe to be happy and fulfilled and affluent, rich, visible, wealthy, abundant.

Whatever it is, being who you really are, it is safe for you to be seen, known, and loved as who you really are. Make a commitment to yourself. Make a promise to yourself to create that kind of love and safety for yourself. Have a beautiful week, everyone. Thank you so much for being here and I look forward to talking with you next time.