Aila (01:11)
Hi everyone, welcome to Inside the Practitioner's Path. My name is Ayla and I want to talk about something that occurs to me frequently in my line of work and it's coming across people who are like, I want to be a coach. You I want to do what you do. Where do I begin? So this is...

super common for me. get whenever I'm out in the world and I talk about what I do and how I help people, it just, you know, I would say one in three are like, wow, that sounds so meaningful. I want to do that. How do I do it? Where do I start? And, you know, and this, so this is, this is fun for me to do a podcast episode around this because it feels like

It's such a good topic of like really being in this field now for 20 something years, being a professional for the last 12, ⁓ longer than that, not so professional, but, ⁓ you know, really in the work and really coaching day in and day out, lots and lots and lots of people running a coaching school.

It's really, it's, it's something to consider. Like, what do I recommend to people who are really interested in this really interested in helping people in a way that maybe doesn't require a becoming a licensed therapist or, you know, a PhD or anything like that, but they want to help. And what do I recommend? And the truth is I don't, I don't have, I don't have all the answers around.

for sure, but I do know what makes sense to me and that if you want to help somebody and this really applies also if you're already a coach or you're already a therapist, you're already a helper, you're already a practitioner in some way, but you're not, it's not going as well as you'd like it to. Maybe you don't have as many clients as you'd like or you're not making the impact you want to make with the clients. This kind of covers that too, where it's like

The place that I would start if let's just say my kid came to me and was like, mom, I want to be a coach. What do I do? I would be so curious to have him. Let's just say sit down and consider why, like, what is it that is inspiring him to want to help people? Is it to get out of suffering? Is it to create in the physical world things that they love? Like, what is it? Is it to.

feel energized and healthier. Like, I wonder what it is. And again, knowing that this would be a starting point, but whatever that is, my, the thing, the logic here is like, I'd be like, Orion, go and get into your own life and, and get so curious about your relationship with suffering. What do you

do when you're suffering? How do you help yourself? Do you? Do you help yourself? ⁓ What do you, what's your relationship like with your world? Are you doing, are you letting yourself pursue things that are really meaningful to you? Do you have a yes inside? Why? Where'd that come from? Your amazing mom? No, I'm just kidding. I'm joking. ⁓

But like, I'd be like, Ryan, what have you had to overcome in order to give yourself permission to pursue things that you're really interested in? Like, what is that about? What have you, what do you do in your own world in relationship to your own energy and your own vitality and your own health and your own wellness? What do you know about this? Not as an expert, but as a person that's, that's evolving.

And that wants to help others. just totally makes sense to me that you would want to understand how you help yourself. And, and I'd have to say things like, can you make your life as beautiful inside and out as meaningful and rich and satisfying and, and purposeful as you can.

And yeah, start talking to people right now. Like you don't have to wait for perfection here. That's not real, but, but right away you could start sharing, you know, your desire to help people and have conversations with people right now. But along the way, and as you're going and for all of us as seasoned practitioners, there is this integrity piece of

What is my relationship like to suffering, to awakening, to remembering who I am in the deepest way, to waking up to the illusions that thought creates and snapping out of those illusions, to unraveling my old unhelpful ideas about identity and what I am.

and awakening more fully into the truth of what's happening here. Like, where am I at on my journey with that? Am I tending to that? Am I going deeper and seeing more? I think often coaches and healers who have been doing this a long time and their work is feeling stale or they're not making money like they used to, or they're not getting referrals, or they're not having the impact they want. This has got to be the place to look. It's like, what is going on inside yourself?

Are you healing? Are you remembering? And for me, those two words are synonymous. Are you remembering that you're free or are you feeling stuck and trapped? How quickly are you getting support yourself? You know, either from a friend or a family member or a peer or a coach or a healer or a therapist. How quickly are you allowing yourself to remember the truth? This is why I hired coaches.

and still do. It's especially in the beginning of starting my practice, it was such a minefield for me of limited ideas and perceptions all around me around money and value and running my own business and what I'm allowed to do or not allowed to do that I had coaching. I had, you know, Steve Chandler for many years as a one-on-one coach for me and it was, it was light.

Light touch coaching in a way, meaning I didn't, mean, gosh, it was rich and beautiful and meaningful, but at times it was like, was using our sessions simply as like, I, I'm not willing to forget what's possible here. I'm not willing to forget that I'm creating my life day in and day out, that everything that's unfolding in my life.

unfolding for me and not against me. That any any quote failure that I'm experiencing is really just another starting point with so much learning baked in. So I would forget all that and I had Steve to be like ⁓ good job Isla, good job keep going here's here's things to think about this you're right on track this is good this is for you it's not against you what do you want to create?

Who do you want to be in the world? You know, I had that support. And also my very first year of really making a living as a coach, I think this was like, when was it? 2010, 11, 12, somewhere in there. I had a friend that I talked to every day. And I just had this support from her to really stay. What we did, we called each other and we had a little process that we did for ourselves.

We would connect and I would share what was going on that was hard for me and I would respond to myself from the loving. We called it dialoguing with spirit, but it was really accessing the spirit within the loving, ⁓ resilience, the compassion within myself. And I met myself every day for a year in this little process that we did.

And it was so helpful, was so meaningful because there was a lot of material, there was a lot of conditioning, like, sloughing off and coming to the light as I actively pursued what I really, really wanted.

So going back to this question, it's like, so you want to be a coach, you want to grow as a coach, you want to expand as a coach or a practitioner or a healer. And there are things you can do, obviously, like you can learn how to, you can go through a course that teaches you, you know, how to set the container for a coaching program or the context for a conversation. Um, this is so much of the work that

Barb and I do in our men, you know, she does a mentorship program one on one. run the mastermind group. It's all about like tactical things you can do. And then the program that we're doing in at the end of February this year, the practitioner path, it's the inner and the outer. It's where are you coming from? What do you know for yourself to be so true about your whole, your wholeness here, your whole being? ⁓ what, what are you?

What is your relationship like to your own suffering, to your limited perceptions, to your misunderstandings? Are you letting yourself be free in your life to create and move with the live energy? This is, you know, this, know we've talked about it on this podcast before it was the inspiration for the podcast. It was how do we create a program that is for brand new people who are interested in becoming a coach to not only get kind of the.

the personal transformation that makes all the actual helpfulness possible with clients. How do we bring that into a program along with here's how you can run a session, here's how you can create a client or get into conversations with potential clients. So all of that will be happening inside that program. And I know it's not for everybody, you know, that kind of our program won't be for everybody. But if you're interested in becoming a coach,

Again, even if my son was like, mom, I want to do this. would be encouraging him to like, go do some self reflection and also some tending to your own life, like make your own life feel just as good as it can. And of course it's ever evolving, but if you're secretly depressed, if you're really struggling, struggling with infidelity or drinking or.

under eating or overeating or whatever you're personally up against, like, and, and you're wanting to coach or you're struggling to coach. Take a look at that. Like, take a look at what, what's going on inside of you is your next level of evolution. Slow down and let yourself be tended to.

And I think coaching programs of any kind likely have some of that inner looking baked into it. Not all of them for sure. But my response when somebody asks me this, like I want to be a coach. It's like, get your house in order. Again, not, not in this like perfect way. Of course, if any of you have ever been to my actual home, it is a preschool farm house, gone wild.

There's it's not about perfection. It's about what is your experience like inside your own life? Are you finding out something about contentment and how to experience it? Are you learning about the the heart and the soul of creation and deep deeply listening to yourself and your spirit? Are you tending to your own desires and wishes?

How are your relationships? Are you connecting to your friends and your family and yourself?

Are you avoiding anything? What are you avoiding? Bring it into the light and let it become your own personal lab. And if you get stuck, get help, get support anywhere, everywhere, everywhere you can go anywhere you can go, go get support. But I, I'm, I am on this path with my kids right now of unschooling.

We're doing unschooling and it is so freaking amazing. I love it so much in that it's absolutely transformational for myself and my husband where we are very schooled, very educated, very, ⁓ very trained. And we learned about unschooling and I'm not going to say a ton here about it, but it's really putting more emphasis on.

The truth that we all come in with wisdom. We come in with innate knowing, with common sense, with gifts, with talent, with abilities that don't need to be trained into us. They don't need to be, they don't need to be lesson planned. They don't like we, we learn to walk on our own. learn to talk on our own, just being immersed in life.

So I'm saying all of this because I feel like sometimes I think like becoming a surgeon, I would be like, go to the best school and learn how to do that skill. I would not recommend slicing and dicing a human body without tons of awareness and information. There are some things that if my kids want to pursue, they'll go to school. They'll go to some sort of a thing where they can learn from people who have done it before.

In reality, it's more of an apprenticeship model of learning. ⁓ but to just kind of peel this back more, it's like, when I think about somebody coming to me and saying, I want to be a coach, where do I start? My thought is not like go to a training, go learn how to do it. No, it's more like you have what it takes already inside of you. If you follow your own wisdom, your own curiosity.

to create a life that is meaningful for you and fulfilling and satisfying and rich and, and deep and, and interesting. Go figure that out. Maybe you might need some support here and there, but if you work that out for yourself naturally, intuitively, instinctually,

become a student of yourself, you'll have so much to offer another human. So much. And then yes, there's just like mountains of books to read, mountains of seminars to take, of course, of course. But none of that information means that you're doing your own transformation.

So I think we can often mistake education and school for actually embodying change and embodying principles and truth and it doesn't necessarily translate that way. So if you start with the person, I think anybody can be a fantastic helper, healer, practitioner, coach in the world. And especially if they're living what they're wanting to share.

They're living their why why do you want to coach? want to help people. Okay. Are you helping yourself? Do you need help? What do you do when you need help? How do you relate to helplessness like to get in to your own system and look at like what do I need to do inside my own consciousness and in my own life?

to really become the product that I hope to create out there in the world. Happier, peaceful, joyful, free humans. Okay, let's get on the path to becoming that. The practitioner's path. No, I was kidding. That was like a hard sell right there, a natural hard sell. I'm kidding. But yeah, if you're called to joining us in February, please do.

It's going to be rich and fun and beautiful and you don't need it. You don't need it. It's all in you. And if you like that kind of thing though, it could be really fun and meaningful and a good place to start, especially if you're brand new. And the other thing I'll say is if my kid came to me and said, I want to be a coach, I would say, find a coach, go find a program, go find something where the emphasis is on helping you.

wake up to your own wisdom. It's not about strategy, technique, processes. It's helping you follow your nose. It's helping you learn how to listen deeply to yourself and to others. It's helping you awaken your own.

capacity to hold space for yourself and for others. And I recommend that too. I think there's so much promise that programs sell in learning three-step processes or 10 steps to this or, ⁓ you know, and all of that is great. I've learned so much of it, but nothing is as helpful as me showing up with my own understanding of what helps me overcome ⁓

fear, depression, anger, overcome, slash be with slash integrate slash deeply understand. Nothing replaces living the work, living it, being a practitioner ⁓ of and for yourself. All right. Thank you all for listening. I hope there's some helpful little tidbits in here and we'll see you in the next one.