Episode 169 - The Me-First Coaching Trap

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There's a growing pain in the evolution of my clients. I've been watching it for years and recently it's started to click what's really happening.

When we start our coaching journey, most of us clean up a lot of old wounds, frustrations, and resentments. We might not COME to coaching to do that, but we have to -- because they hold us back from our goals.

Our goals are modest at first. Feel better about our marriage. Get out of debt. Stop yelling at our kids.

Then we actually get there. We've worked through what's holding us back and we're on to the next horizon.

The experience was magical. So we go for bigger goals. After all, if this felt so good, won't it feel even better to get the dream home, become wealthy, or get a huge promotion?

The goals are never the problem--the belief that achieving the goal will make you feel better is.

You didn't feel better in the first place because you hit your goal. You feel better because you dropped all the old weight that you were carrying around every day--the resistance, the judgement, the negativity. Achieving your goal was just a byproduct.

And what we know is that our biggest achievements will never be reflected in our bank accounts, the trophies on our mantle, or whether we got honored at the last dinner.

Our biggest accomplishments are about what we contribute to our world--whether on a micro scale or a macro scale.

Our biggest accomplishments are on the soul-level.

I'm all for you earning a million bucks and getting your dream house, if that's what you want. Just know that those achievements won't make you feel any different. But the work you do on yourself absolutely will.

What are you meant to contribute?

WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:

1. The me first coaching trap

2. Clearing things up

3. The end goal

FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE:

Join How to Glow: And if you're ready to take this work further, visit https://kaylalevin.com/coaching and join the program to get live coaching and work directly with me on mastering your brain and improving your life.

Episode 169 The Me First Coaching Trap

<00:00:38> Kayla Levin: Hey friends. Okay. I have wanted to talk to you about this for a little while. I'm excited to jump on. It's probably gonna be a shorter episode this week. I, um, I just wanna drop this little idea with you, especially those of you who've been here longer, But if you've been here for, for less time, then I'm gonna give you a little bit of a background.

I wanna start with just talking about a problem that I'm seeing, that <00:01:00> comes from how incredibly amazing coaching can be. And it's so amazing that we get ourselves into a certain problem sometimes and what I think that you can do about it. Okay, So this is the me first coaching trap, like when we use coaching to get to a me first place and when we need to do that, and when we need to move beyond that.

So the problem that I'm seeing is that coaching is amazing. It's not a great problem, right? the problem with coaching being so amazing and life changing. Is that when you, when you really dove in, and those of you who've been listening to this podcast for a long time and you haven't ever come to a coaching call with me, I wanna tell you like you're really, really missing out, right?

Like you're getting kind of like the cloud around the whole thing and not the actual thing. So the way to come to a coaching call with me is to get into the program and I have a call every single week. You can just raise your hand and get coached or watch other people get coached.

But why? Why is it <00:02:00> so amazing. When you get coached, you will completely rethink your life and your struggles in a new light. All the things that you're trying to use, self-control or good middos or whatever, to like overcome or become more positive about. They just get cleared up. The issues just get cleared up.

And especially for people who are new to it, it's just this crazy thrill. It's like, Oh my gosh, how did this happen? And one of the things I love seeing inside the program for the women who've been there longer is that. As soon as something starts to even like smell, like it might turn into a problem, we're just like, Nope, we're just gonna coach on that.

So like never even happens. And it's such a thrill that what happens is we just wanna go searching for more and more things to clear up. Makes sense, right? Like if you think, you know something's going on with your husband and it makes you feel really frustrated. And you're able to clear that up. You're like, Wait, what about my mom?

What about my boss? Where else could I use this? What about myself? Where else can I use these skills to clear up this <00:03:00> stuff? I've been carrying around with me that I've been putting all this energy into that I don't need to anymore. And we just start to feel better and better. Coaching does make you feel better, right?

Because when you drop all of that, we feel so much lighter. We have so much less to fight against. To push against, to resist. But the best that we can feel isn't when we've cleared everything up. The best we can feel never comes when we're ultimately focused on ourselves. So you really have to know where you are in this process.

If you still have a lot of work to do, if you have a lot of frustrations or difficulties or challenges that you're carrying around with you, if you're not feeling balanced and positive on a very regular basis, if you even feel yourself recoil at the idea of showing up for other people, because it just makes you automatically start to feel like a martyr, then I want you <00:04:00> to know that that recoiling energy, that recoiling feeling is so good.

That's your body telling you you're not ready. You gotta work your stuff out. But even if you're busy cleaning up all your own stuff so that you can get out there and start to give and become a giver and become a bigger person, even as you're focused on your things, you have to do it knowing the end goal.

And the end goal is to be a giver. The end goal is to show up as your best possible self in your marriage and in all your relationships. The end goal is to be a growing bigger person than you ever knew you could be, right? The end goal is ultimately spiritual growth. And what I see sometimes is that we get all those things cleared up and we're like, Okay, I guess what else is gonna make me happy?

Right? Cause now dropping all that baggage made me really happy, but now there's nothing else really to drop or I, I'm so efficient at cleaning it up when it comes <00:05:00> up, what's gonna make me happy? I, I guess now I just want a lot of money. Or I guess now I just want a bigger house, or I guess now I just want like we start looking to up level and I have no problem.

I think you should all have as much money as you want, and you should have as big a house as you want. And I have no issue with that, but I want you to know that that's not what's gonna make you happy. It's not the natural extension of the work you've been doing up until now. The natural extension of the work you've been doing until now is to say, all this goodness that I've just created for myself is now an investment in me, that now I get to be the person that.

That I dream of being, I don't even know to dream of being, trying to be a giver in a marriage when you're usually feeling resentful. Doesn't work because what it does is it actually compounds the resentment. This is again, why, you know, you might have tried this and you like might have that kind of recoil energy when you think like, Oh, I should just be the bigger person.

I should just, It's because when you're operating inside of a story in which you are the martyr or you are the <00:06:00> victim, or you are the one who isn't getting her needs met and he's taking advantage or he's un inconsiderate, or whatever your story is. Then trying to be a giver will usually just make you feel even more resentful because you're pushing it down.

You're not giving it the space to articulate to you what you need to hear. If this is where you are, you need to come and get coached so we can clean it up. Right. Or you can even watch other people get coached and that will clean it up too. That's the cool part. You don't even have to be the one getting coached and you can watch my class on resentment while you're in.

You should definitely watch my class on resentment while you're in there because the thing is you don't need to be feeling resentful And I don't know your particular situation, but I have coached on this emotion enough times to know that resentment never gets your needs met. It is always sticky glue on the bottom of your feet in your relationship.

It is always going to keep you exactly where you are and <00:07:00> shut off your ability to find better solutions, better ways of communicating anything like. So it's really valuable information to know that you're feeling resentful because it's telling you there's something here that wants to be heard, that wants to be dealt.

But when you do start to do this work and you start to see those resentments dissipate, and for some women your first time with that experience will come from a coaching call. And for some women it might be like a paradigm shift. Like you learn something about the way he communicates differently. Let's say even if we just go back to the example, I love this example cause everyone understands it and knows it introversion and extroversion.

Like you find out that, oh my gosh. Introverted. This isn't about me. This isn't about me. He doesn't wanna show up for me. This is about, he just needs some space to himself and I'm extroverted and I need more contact. And we can accommodate for that. The resentment that you might have been carrying around before that of like, Why doesn't he show up for me?

He knows how important, you know, quality time is. That's my love language. All that. Kind of thing, <00:08:00> right? When that gets cleared up, it's like this magical experience. Or maybe it's from coaching. Maybe I see that when I start thinking he's not prioritizing me in the relationship, what I do is I just stop prioritizing him, and that's not what I wanna be doing.

So now I'm able to find a new way of approaching the same challenge that is so much more empowering. So either way, you go at it, right? I think these are the two main ways that we get to this new place in our relationships, either from a paradigm shift or from a coaching shift.

However you get there, I want you, I want you. Encourage you, don't stop there. Like you just did the groundwork, right? Like that was just the, and I'm totally sending this out to my entire community cause I wanna make sure that even those of you who are getting coached every week and showing up, not all of you listen to the podcast and that's totally fine.

But I wanna make sure y'all hear this. That is the groundwork. Don't, don't like shoot for something so achievable. It's so achievable to be feeling pretty happy and content. <00:09:00> Not so frustrated with the world. We can get there. Once you're there, now we get to do really fun work. Now we get to start imagining like, what's my contribution?

What's my mitzvah? What's my middah? What's the place where I wanna grow? Like what feels magical to me? What am I drawn to? What am I called to do in this world or in my family, or in my marriage, or even between me and myself or my relationship to Hashem, This is the really good work that we get to do. So this is just my pitch for not stopping yourself at getting out of negative.

After all, that's what the whole coaching industry started from. The therapy model came off of the medical model. We have a disease and we need to fix it. And of course there's therapists who do more proactive work than that, but that was the original model.

The coaching model came from business. It came from let's achieve more things, more money, more whatever inside of our business, and let's get there. <00:10:00> So the coaching model has always been to start at zero and go up, not to get to zero. I just wanna make a really, really, really strong pitch for all of you that you need to take the time to feel ready for that.

You need to get your feet under you. You need to get that grounding. And if you're not in this place right now, then you totally deserve to love yourself enough to take the time to get there, and you can just plant that seed in the back of your head that I'm not ready to do that work yet. But I do know the reason I wanna get.

Partly it's outta love for myself, which I deserve. And partly it's because I have something really amazing to contribute in this world, either in my teeny tiny little world or in the greater world. And this is the groundwork I need to do to get there. And for those of you who've been doing this work longer, who are ready to take it to the next level, I wanna plant that seed for.

<00:11:00> Where is that next place? What is it that's very, and this is gonna be so unique to each person, but where could coaching take you next now that you've cleaned it all up, now that you've gotten yourself to baseline, to neutral, what is exceptional for you, and really challenge yourself to think big about what that might look like.

Okay, my friends, I really wanna hear from you all, so please email me back. I wanna hear what you wanna work on or just where, how this is landing with you, where you think you might be in this process. If you are on Instagram, you can also reach me at @KaylaLevinCoaching. Um, I love just having that dialogue with you and hearing back, cuz you know, at the end of the day it's just me and my Zoom screen recording these podcasts.

So I do love to hear from you and, and, and whatever. Your emails are just always amazing, so, Take it and run my friends. You are all amazing. You all inspire me every single day, and I can't wait to see what it is that you end up contributing in this world. See you next week.