Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the coaching mixer. I'm cold. Yeah. Welcome back to the coaching mixer. I'm cold, too. It got cold. What happened? You look very warm, though. I put my hat on. Um, between working, getting a treatment, and I'm going to go to the sauna after this. That sounds magical. Yeah. You were away. How was your trip? I was away and then you were away and now we're back and we're together. Uh my trip was amazing. It was really really wonderful. Um I saw so many things, ate so much good food. It was definitely um a lot of culture shock and like there were a lot it was a different travel experience than I've had before. like it took a lot more to adapt to things and to like learn the ropes and figure out how to pay for stuff because everything. And I went to China. I know you know that. I don't know if everyone else knows it, but um I went to Shanghai and um yeah, basically it's like mostly a cashless society. Not like entirely, but also like you don't really use credit cards that often. So it's like all payment through apps, which like figuring out how to make my phone work and how to make the apps work was definitely a struggle. speak Chinese. Yeah, that didn't happen so much. How to use my Google Translate. So good. Was more more what I did. Yeah. But it was amazing. And I feel like I'm finally um over the jet lag, I think. So that's also wonderful. Gosh. Well, welcome back. Welcome to everybody. Thank you. We are like this is I think our 14th episode. Look at us. I know. Look at us chatting and uh we're tea totling today.
It's not exactly the middle of the day, but I have responsibilities for my children tonight. I was like, I'm probably going to need to drive somewhere, so let's drink tea. What are you drinking today? Yes. Okay, so I am drinking a um Korean tea that's like an herbal tea. It's like lavender and chrysanthemum and stuff. And I actually got it from Korea. Jordan and I went to a wedding a few years ago. And it's like one of those ones that's so nice. I like don't ever drink it cuz I'm like I want to save it, but I'm glad that I'm having a reason to drink it. Yeah. I'm glad you're drinking it because tea like loses its potency over time and Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Um I had plans. I was like, I'm going to make something very fancy. I'm going to do a tea latte. Um, but then it was just so chilly here today. We've had snow. It has been like, wow, I was in the Bahamas last week and then came home and snowstorm and I was like, Canada's like, "Hey, welcome back. Welcome to Canada." So, I am going old school. I have a black tea. Um, it's called the Champion and it's from Firebelly Tea. So, I don't know if you have David's Tea or if you've heard of David's Tea. It was like a big deal here. Yeah. I think that is like a chain. It's a chain and like tea shop. Yeah. And the founder um sold the company, left the company, and then started a tea company that has like it's more pure like he doesn't like doesn't have the candies that the other tea company kind of like has. So, I've been really enjoying a bunch of their tees and this is their black one of their black teas and nice. It's delicious and it's like hearty and just some milk and sugar. That sounds amazing. Honestly, I was a little confused when you're like, I'll make something fancy. I was like, how does one make a fancy tea? I was imagining you like like you dried the tea leaves yourself or something and you were going to like gather them from the garden. Listen, I actually do have a tea I do have tea plant seeds and they were growing really well this summer and then my newest cat decided to eat them. No. Yes. I was just like, "What are you doing?" So, I I have a couple more of them, so I'm going to try them over the winter. I have a a little grow light that some of my herbs are still surviving and thriving with right now, but I'm going to someday soon. Yeah, that's very rude of your cat. I'm assuming they're like not toxic to cats or anything like that. If they are, it didn't seem to bother her. She quite enjoyed it. She went back I had one and then she ate the other one. Yeah, it was they were not somewhere she could even really get to. She's not a tiny cat. She's a very large cat and she somehow shimmyed up to find them. So, I guess they were delicious. Wow. Yeah. Well, that bodess well when you figure out how to grow them without the cat eating them. I will be growing them in the office. I think this is I've got my little winter herb setup out here and they're pretty happy. So, yeah. All right. What are we talking about today? Before we before we jump into that, just like quickly, how was the Bahamas? It's so nice. Yeah. Yeah, we've been we've been a bunch of times. Um we go to like the same resort every time. My kids go down water slides for four days straight. It is a lot of walking, a lot of activity, a lot of swimming, and my parents really enjoy it. So, we go with them. We kind of piggyback on their trip. And uh it's so nice to be warm, and it's not so far away. Yeah, that's awesome. Yay. Okay. Thank you. All right. So as you were I think intro introducing our topic for today, do you want to give an overview or like we were kind of talking about this I think at the end of um one of our recordings and I know we've sort of touched on this topic before but I think about this a lot um because coaching can be a really intimate experience for a client. Like very often doesn't totally matter what niche of coaching you're doing. Quite likely you as a coach are going to be sometimes the one person that your client trusts to say things out loud to that they've maybe never shared with anyone. It's you're someone who they can explore the practical issues that are going on for them and the internal ones. And I've gone through things with clients like total breakdown of like their internal conditioning, their spiritual or religious beliefs. And I w was really wondering because I know this has probably come up for you as well. What is the role of bringing our own personal, maybe spiritual, maybe religious beliefs into coaching?
Yeah, this is such a juicy topic. Um, I think it might trigger some people. It might. Yeah. Be controversial. Yeah, I think there are like I don't know. There's like a lot of different levels to this question. Um because I know that there are a lot of coaches out there who like their niche is their spiritual or religious practice. Yeah. Which Yeah. Like on the one level I think that's awesome that like people can find almost a shorthand for like if they if it's important to them that their coach shares certain beliefs that they know how and where to find that. Yeah. And I think it's always important as a coach to be able to hold space for the client's experience and like center the client's perspective and experience above and beyond what my personal beliefs are. And if there's like a larger incompatibility to the point that I'm like coming up against my own like moral values that I rather than like pushing them on the client that I notice that and maybe like acknowledge this is not the right client coach pairing. Yeah. And like send them on their way. I don't know. What are your initial thoughts on this topic? I I agree with you. I think it's really complicated. um as a I you know the the story that keeps coming up is I had um a client I worked with for a number of years and when we started working together it was really important to her that I was not part of her former religion. She had been in a really high demand religion and one of the questions she asked me with a lot of trepidation on the call was like, "Are you this religion?" And I was like, "No." I'm like, "I've never I've never I can I can be." It was it was a Christian religion, but it was like a really specific type of Christianity. Um, and I was like, "I'm not Christian." I'm like, "If that's a like I'll be totally transparent with you. I if that's an issue at and she was like, "It isn't." She's like, "I think I actually need to work with this with somebody who doesn't have those particular um beliefs because she and she told me that she had worked with a therapist who was part of her religion and spent much of the therapy trying to push her back into believing in her religion." Oh, no. And his explanation for that was like, I'm practicing my religion by keeping you in the religion. And I was like, oh my god.
I didn't make that face for her at the time, but you know, we worked we worked together for a number of years. And it I think it was really helpful my my ignorance about that particular path. athic. I know a little bit um but it's never it's never a religion that I've personally practiced. I know a lot of people who are Christian um I know enough from like world religion class in grade 11, but because I didn't hold a lot of those beliefs, it was like a free space for her to bounce those things off of. Right. And that experience actually made me really think about I'm very honest about my spiritual beliefs with people and I preface a lot of like this is just going to be where I'm coming from because of my spiritual beliefs. But in coaching I'm like I'm a safe person to question your your spiritual or religious beliefs with because I don't and I have no agenda about it. Right. Yeah. And I think it's I think that if you are looking for someone as a coach who shares your belief so that you can operate within them and you know you're really happy with that belief system but you want someone who gets it on that level. It can be so helpful to have somebody who's a coach and coaches specifically within your religion. Mhm.
But I always wonder, I'm like, those people are so transparent that if that's not where you're at and what you want, you're going to know. Like, I think that sometimes it like it does, it's a service to your clients to say, "Hey, I'm, you know, this type of a Christian coach and this is how who I help and what I do." I think that can be really beneficial so that the right people know you're right for them. the people who might not be a fit. No, you're not going to be a fit. Um, it's just I I just think personally it's never something I've wanted to like build my business around, right? Around your spirituality like like I just feel like we do so much as coaches that is like so much for other people, right? We use our lives as an example for other people. We're constantly like scanning our own experiences to give tools for other people. I'm like, I kind of want my spiritual and religious practice to be for me and for my personal growth so that I can come to the table with a more open mind and less judgment and
and also I think I'm I I'm assuming you agree with this but like I don't think with that therapy
practice though like obviously I'm not a therapist I can't speak with an expertise on that but I think if you do have a practice observing people, even if you have it based around a certain religion. This is my belief. I don't think it's ever okay to like shut down a client's questioning or to try and lead a client in a direction that they're not necessarily wanting to be led in. Like I think even if you have a framework that you've developed that's um I don't even know like stemming from a certain belief system. I still think like personally I think we have to be like client led in that way and acknowledge our own biases if we can't do that with integrity and let the client go or at least state it out loud like if it were important to me to further a certain belief system in the session I would be like hey I'm noticing that you seem to be questioning these things my inclination is to coach you in this direction is that where you actually want to go. Yeah. Same as I would like I am a creativity coach. I work with a lot of writers. I think it's like implicitly understood like writing is not better but like we're all kind of moving in the direction of more writing rather than less writing. if they were questioning their relationship to writing. I think it's important that I create space for them to question that freely and that I not try and like push them into a space where they're like feeling like they have to write or else I'm they're doing something wrong or damaging the coaching relationship and I think that's so hard for most people. Like I'm even as you were talking about I was like yeah and like I remember I had a client um who hired me to help them with their business and then started questioning whether they wanted their business and my first instinct was like okay this person needs like motivation we've got to help them out but then it was that that actually that story of my other client leaving their religion came up and I was like I totally have an agenda because I'm like I'm not doing my job if I'm not coaching this person on being a successful business owner. And when I actually let that go, the person ended up shutting down their business. Amazing. And it was a totally it was like the perfect life move for her at the time. But I remember just feeling like I'm I'm following where the client wants to go and it feels really uncomfortable and like how am I going to help this person? And then I was like, yeah, actually I'm a coach. I can help them with with whatever there's right like we don't need the the pillar whether it's the the niche or the belief system or the stuff like it was it was a healthy shift at that point for this person. Yeah. I actually had a similar experience where someone hired me to make money in their art business and we coached for a couple months on like breaking down every resistance and like by breaking down I just mean like investigating it, creating space to question it, you know, exploring it openly and we like it felt like we were just kind of going in circles, spinning our wheels for a while and then it was like do you actually want to be doing this? Like I think those I don't know I don't think I've said that explicitly but I think those conversations started becoming that question we couldn't ignore it anymore because it was very clear there was like some resistance to that work and yeah I think you know I could have and maybe I did a little bit too much not question that just because of my own biases and because of what you know this person hired me for explicitly. Um, but I think that was like the best thing for this client was to then she ended up shutting down her art business with joy though. She was like, "I'm getting a regular day job. I'm shutting down the art business. I feel great about this." Uh, yeah. I mean, I think that really speaks to why even if you decide to have a hardcore, very specific niche as a coach, you also need to be well-rounded. Like I know there's been a lot of people poo pooing the general life coaching kind of track, but if you don't know how to coach on anything, you can only coach on like business or art or creativity or the religion that you know, I think it does it is a disservice to the client, but it will also leave you in a place where if your client decides to go in another direction. If you have integrity, you're going to have to end that relationship, right? You can't help them with where they want to go. Mhm. Yeah.
Yeah.
In terms of you've mentioned that you have a very strong spiritual practice. I'm agnostic so I'm like questioning everything. That's the and like I think that also like I bring my own perspective to conversations about religion. But um even though you've decided not to incorporate your belief system into your niche, would you say it informs your approach to coaching and like how Yes. And and I think I say that because it's true for me I think as well. Totally. I think I think anybody that claims that they are I just don't know if you can actually separate it. I think it's important that you don't have to it's a it's tricky, right? Like it's you want to bring enough of yourself and your life experience to the table that's relevant to the person that you're speaking with, but not so much so that it's overshadowing what whatever they need. So, it's it's not a secret. I've talked about it a million times on my own podcast, but I mean I've been a practicing witch since I was 13. Um, and I would I guess I would consider myself religious as in I follow that religion. But one of the precepts of that religion generally for not for every single person who practices, but one of the things is it is a deeply personal practice. It is not um a religion that goes out and recruits for people because it's hard work. It's hard work and the way that that works for many people is going to be very different. So the way that I practice might not be like what the a friend of mine who's Wiccan the way they practice may be very different. Um, but I think that the maybe the the benefit of that is I really don't think that I have the one correct path for everybody out there. I am really open to discovery and it has interestingly I tend to attract people who are spiritually leaning. Um over Halloween I did this offer which I do like I do it about once a year but um I did tarot paired with coaching. So it was a session where I gave people a a reading but we talked about the cards that were coming up in relationship to their positioning. We coached around it. And what was really fascinating was actually a lot of the people who bought that session were my current clients. Mhm. And I was like, just so you know, I always have cards here. So, I can always pull cards if we're if we're feeling stuck or you just want some a different type of information. I can tap into that really quickly. I've been doing it for a long time. But it was really fascinating because I know some of my clients would never be into that and that's absolutely not part of their spiritual path, right? But because I'm not like this is the right way and I've got to get everybody using tarot cards every day um or like doing full moon rituals every month because that's not my energy. I think it has helped me attract people who are in that exploratory space and I mean I also taught yoga and meditation for you know 16 years. So I've had lots of people with lots of really interesting mystical experiences around me and even though I could I guess in the I'm religious but it's not like got to get the people on board make make some new witches get a new coven going here. like it's more like how can we just help people find the path that that is for them and whether that's spiritually or with their work in the world or how they get to live. Um I think it's really helped. Yeah, it's it's hard for someone to surprise me with whatever they say. I think like and maybe that's maybe that's a benefit is I've never been like you thought what you said what there's not a lot of pearl clutching that goes on my in my coaching so I think that there's like that as a benefit and then somebody who is really religious and needs someone to who understands their religion they're going to gravitate more to that other person probably not be that interested in working with Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, unless they're they're wanting someone with a different perspective. And also, it sounds like you you have an energy very much of like openness to all. So, like they might actually Yeah. be attracted to that. Yeah. It's uh it's good. But I but I mean at the same time it kind of turns me off when people are like as a consumer. I don't know that I would ever go and like work with someone who was like, I'm the co I know someone who's like a therapist for witches. And I was like, that's kind of neat, but I don't know that I necessarily like have to have my therapist understand ritual format or understand the cycle of the seasons. Like, I just don't know that it's necessarily relevant to how much they can help me. My coach happens to be basically a witch as well of a different Okay. of a different um kind of community, but it doesn't come up that often. It's just like she kind of understands the basic language and if I talk about spirit guides, she's going to get that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean that might be more like you're that's like at most incidental to the more like core relationship that you have. Like maybe it's I guess like nice or it's nice terrible to have but like not a necessary it was not essential to me. Yeah. Yeah. Not why I hired her. Right. Yeah. I guess I kind of have an interesting relationship with religion specifically, not as much spirituality, but I was actually raised in a very high control religion. Um, and I left and my my parents left as well um when I was around like 12 or 13. So, there's a part of me that actually like like right now my beliefs are very far from that experience. It was a sect of Christianity. Um, but I do find that I kind of like coaching people when it happens who are in that religion but are also like kind of open or in a like like religious setting but are questioning or open to it just because I feel like I can there's a part of me that can speak that language a little bit but now I'm in such a different place that I can bring like an interesting perspective. But again, it's important to me never to impose. Well, let me think. I mean, of course, I'm not like trying to impose my belief system, but I do have certain tenants of like my moral system that I'm like very open about and I'm always going to be representing. And if I can't coach a client, um, if I feel that that like what they're trying to move toward is in conflict with like my belief system, then I might just like call that out and maybe I'm not the coach for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean I think for someone who's questioning it actually really helps to maybe you know it kind of goes back to that conversation we had about like do you have to have experienced what your client is going through in order to effectively coach them. I think in some cases like that is really helpful. Um I was in a cult so not a witchcraft cult. That's right. I think you mentioned that we're going to I was like witchcraft is so like it's there's too many of loose and question right wait okay so when were you in a cult I mean it sounds so dramatic when I say it like that I was in a cult it was a spiritual community and it was definitely on the more like high demand side um like Steve lived in the one of the communities like he lived in the core community that is where we Um, and I know for I I I want to I always want to be really careful because for most for a lot of people who are very close to the teacher, there were a lot of experiences that I think did really like hurt people and um were not were not as like benign as what I experienced. Um, you know, nobody stole my money. I there was no like weird sexual stuff. like it was not what you think of when you watch those documentaries on Netflix. But for some people, you know, they sensational, I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there were people who devoted like decades of their life and then the teacher would be like, "Here's your teaching. You're out." Like just kick you out for Wow. He was a extreme person for a lot of people. I was never that close with that teacher and most of my experience with the community was most of it was very positive. Um I met some really incredible people. I met Steve there. Like our children wouldn't have existed without that community. Um but there was like you were expected to go on retreat a couple times a year. They were not cheap. They were like in Italy in the mountains. So one was at a fivestar resort in Arizona. Like they were not they were not inexpensive.
Yes. And the and a lot of the people in the community were really impressive which I think was the attractive thing for me at the time. Like there were people that were doing incredible work in the world that were really um all about like raising human consciousness and loved that. Um, but then there were just things about the the the ego of the person, as it always goes, the ego of the main person got in the way and the whole thing kind of fell apart because he wasn't trusting the people who were his closest students and were advising him about the way the organization was going. It was just kind of like an admin mess that led to things falling apart. But even though my experience had largely been positive, so many of my core relationships were in that community um when it fell apart, I went through like a good six months where I just felt sort of aimless and I wasn't and the other part is I wasn't really practicing witchcraft throughout those years that I was part of it because it was like anything else any other spiritual experience is a distraction. You should just be meditating. So I was like I kind of felt untethered from the spirituality that I had grown up with and that I had really given myself. Um so when people are going through something where they've lost their core community, where maybe their families aren't connected to them, I get that. I I remember not my family but like the people who I spoke with the most, my my best friends, my core relationships really fell away and even more so maybe for Steve and we kind of suddenly were like we're just on our own being humans in the world figuring out what we want now that there's not this larger global community that we're helping and supporting and doing this work for. Right. Right. This is like not at all on topic. I'm just curious. Yeah. No, just at what point did you start calling it a cult or like when you were in it were you I'm assuming you weren't like referring to it as such. That sounds like a more distanced thing. And in like I'm like in polite company when I you know I won't I won't say that to someone I don't know. Everybody who's listening to this I assume that if you're listening to this much you already know everything about us. I polite, not polite company. There's Yeah, we're just telling Yeah. Like it was it was a spiritual community. Um but there were things that when you look at what makes a cult, a lot of those things were true about this group of people. So, um I didn't start really referring to it as that till years later. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I wasn't like brainwashed or not like living my life, but it was right. It was a big part of my my world. I imagine having that experience like in contrast with your own spirituality as it's developed now makes you like have a really interesting perspective on people who are leaving high control religions. questioning them or even just like developing their own spiritual perspective.
Yeah. And I think it's even I'm even thinking about like someone who wants to start a business like the just even the ways that we've been socially conditioned to live life like the go to school, get a job, have get married, have the kids, like just the sort of typical blueprint for life. Um so funny because now I'm like, "Oh, I' I've followed most of that actually by this point in a really weird roundabout way. Um, but when someone kind of wants to break out of what everyone else expected them to do, I sort of think about like that's that's a cult, too. The way society's conditioned us, right? Um, not to be like flippant about it. And I I don't mean it as like a as a negative thing, but like yeah, we're all living within these conditioned social agreements. When someone decides they want to step out of that, it's like sliding out of the goo in the matrix. So I think and I mean I'm sure you had that experience as well even if it was directed by your your family like what a formative time to have your whole paradigm shift. Yeah. I honestly think that is part of I mean in retrospect at the time I was sort of like h even when I in the way that we engage with the religion like there were certain things that are like tenants of Christianity that even now I'm like yeah I can get behind that like the concept of God as a form of love and like loving your neighbor like mostly the lovey things not so much the other stuff but I'm like like at the time I was sort of like yeah that's that seems fine to me that makes sense to me um But I do think experiencing like at a pretty young age a whole like paradigm shift even in our sense of community and where that came from. I do think that makes me now like it makes it very easy for me to be quite open to questioning some of the big um like ways in which we've been conditioned to just like view um certain paths that you take in life as like the only path that you can take because it is a little bit like you know you experience this this as reality for a while and then suddenly but like as I'm going through puberty it's like oh no there's this other reality that you can open yourself to um that was like a pretty big shift in world view I think for me again I wasn't even that conscious of it at the time but but I do think that's probably why like for me I'm never like I I'm never I don't think like very resistant to questioning some of the basic um paths in life and if my clients are wanting to like challenge certain things that they've been raised with, I'm like, "Yeah, giddy up." Like, "Let's go." I don't feel really threatened by that. To me, that's actually kind of exciting. Yeah. Because there's like so much possibility in that.
