The Mindful Coach

00:00:04 Hello, and welcome to The Mindful Coach Association, a podcast where you'll meet the courageous coaches and helping professionals who value mindfulness in their life and work and hear their inspiring stories. Firsthand, you'll hear about new technology that is breaking new ground, as well as discussions with experts to help you be more successful in your practice. It's going to be a lot of fun, and you're going to meet some remarkable people. And I'm your host, Brett Hill. I'm a mindful.

00:00:32 Somatic coach and founder of The Mindful Coach Association. I meet a lot of coaches working with The Mindful Coach Association. I'm so inspired by their stories and the courageous work that they're doing that I created this podcast so you can hear them too. If you're aligned with this work, then join us@themindfulcoachassociation.com where you can list your services for absolutely free and receive invitations to community meetings where you can network and meet your colleagues. We hope you'll join us.

00:00:59 And now The Mindful Coach Association. So welcome to The Mindful Coach Association. We have a special guest today, Elizabeth Swan. Elizabeth is a member of The Mindful Coach Association, and I ran into her, and we started talking, and I said, I've got to have her on the show. She has a really unique background and a special point of view I just wanted people to hear.

00:01:22 So here's her background. Elizabeth spent over 20 years in transportation, operations, logistics, and consulting services before turning to life coaching. As she likes to say, she's always been in the business of getting people where they want to go, as she really is. You're going to really appreciate her very practical point of view when you hear from her. She studied Earth Systems as an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management as a graduate student at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and she's been a certified planner with The Mindful Coach Association since 2018.

00:02:00 She lives in Seattle. In addition to having her heart's home in Fairbanks, Alaska, she's a writer, a musician, a mother, a sister, a partner, and a friend, and I should say a coach. Elizabeth also is a graduate of the Martha Beck's Institute Wayfinders Life Coach training program and her coaching practice. She helps high achievers and deep seekers realize their full potential in navigating everyday life. So welcome to The Mindful Coach Association.

00:02:30 Elizabeth thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here with you, Brett. Well, thank you. It's been great getting to know you and our conversations. And I just wanted to ask you, like, how is it that you made this transition from all these years of studying, you know, transportation and getting logistics from here to there, and and the complexities of that, which I don't think a lot of people probably really fully appreciate the complexity of that world.

00:02:57 And then you made a Pivot into life coaching. So tell us a little bit about what brought you into this entire world of getting from here to there and then how you got from there to. Here, if you know what I do. I love that question. You've really kind of hit the nail on the head because you can only ever get anywhere else from exactly where you are right now.

00:03:19 Right. And there were a lot of reasons why I selected the training that I did as I was moving into life coaching, because this idea of wayfinding really speaks to me. Because if anything about even just how you introduced me speaks for itself. I have myself been finding my own way for all of my 43 years now. And on paper, the dots are pretty meandering.

00:03:42 But when I look backwards about how I've always navigated my own life, my own decisions, what am I choosing and doing next, it's all very clear to me because of what I've been following internally as my guide. And I think as I've moved toward coaching, all of these experiences, especially the ones I've struggled my way through, are serving me now. Because I understand how important it has been to really listen to that internal knowing, even if on paper or to anybody outside of my inner self, it's like, what is she doing and how does this follow for what she was doing before? Yeah, and it was delightful to kind of transition from transportation to coaching. I still work in transportation, but the lessons that I've learned there, especially the business of really drilling back down to the fundamental thing we're doing here, and I would tell this to my dispatch teams and my drivers, and everybody that ever worked with me knows, at the end of the day, we're just getting people from A to B.

00:04:42 It's a really beautiful thing to know the fundamental you're falling back on and everything else is just the idea of how we want it to go. The journey, the getting from the A to B isn't the point so much as how you're doing along the way. So I really am grateful that all of the washed out bridges and flat tires and breakdowns and maintenance issues and no showing drivers and all of the teams I've worked with for really teaching me inside of that world. What it means to think ahead, to plan, to be prepared. And then, at the end of the day, be willing to let it all go for what really matters fundamentally.

00:05:23 What am I really doing here in this moment? I really like that there's something really perfect about the career of logistics and moving objects from point A to point B as a metaphor for one's life. Absolutely. And all of the things that you mentioned, the flat tires, the washed out bridges, I mean, that's in some ways not that different in concept from, hey, I got laid off from my job. Oh, that's a washed out bridge.

00:05:55 What are you going to do? Well, find another route. Exactly. So does that play into the way that you work with people? Absolutely.

00:06:03 I think what I encounter most often in the coaching space, people come because something's not quite right, usually because we don't tend to have a problem with things we agree with. We don't tend to have a problem with things that we're enjoying and that are going right for us. And they show up in the coaching space because something's just kind of off. And often what I find is that there are thoughts or ideas about the way things that maybe they thought were going to they were supposed to be a certain way or they imagined them being a certain way. And the reality that they're experiencing the daily life that they're living, either it's not lining up with something that they had in their own mind and we can take a look at that.

00:06:45 What are the thoughts, the beliefs, the imaginings that were there, or this is a lot of what I tell people that discomfort is actually a really perfect place to start because it means that you have something you already know inside of you that either isn't being affirmed or supported or reinforced by the everyday life that you're living. But the good news is the discomfort is telling you that there is a truth that you know. And hopefully through this process of being together and getting curious and asking questions, we're going to find what it is that you're feeling that you know, that isn't quite lining up with the everyday life that you're living. Again, back to that, I had this imagining of how A to V was going to look and it's not looking that way. And so let's take a look at why it's uncomfortable and what's really important to be focusing on in this moment.

00:07:33 And part of the reason I think that when I speak to working with these high achievers and deep seekers trying to navigate everyday life, particularly if you're a person who's compelled to be up to big things and you really feel like you're called to more. But every day you wake up and you're faced with getting up, getting dressed, brush your teeth, go to work, get the kids to school. I mean, life is just right there in your face and that's what you're living in every moment. That life thing. It's easy to lose sight or feel like you've gotten lost in your own life.

00:08:03 And so I love the coaching process for getting people reconnected with what is that? A to B? What were they imagining it was going to look like, what's it actually looking like? And how do we get you feeling like you're enjoying the journey and taking the journey you want to be taking in the first place? Yes, exactly.

00:08:20 There's a way we can bridge through some of the concepts of mindfulness here in the sense of the traditional definition of mindfulness by John Capazan includes component of being non judgmental or accepting things as they are. And so when I hear you say what did you think was going to be happening versus what's actually happening? And then rather than railing against that, you don't have the trip that you were imagining you were going to have just accepting the fact that it is what it is and then making plans from there. Absolutely. This is The Mindful Coach Association.

00:09:00 Are there any other tenets of mindfulness or mindful practices that you use that you found valuable in your work? Oh gosh, I mean that's sort of it right there. Really being present in the exact moment where you find yourself you're not going to be anywhere else. Coming right back to the moment where am I really? What is really happening around me?

00:09:23 What are really my resources? What is it that's really important? Taking the pause in any moment to just be exactly where you are is kind of where we started at the beginning. You cannot get anywhere from anywhere except for exactly where you're at. And so anytime there's this moment of disorientation or disruption or suddenly the expectation is not the reality, really pausing being present with who you are, where you are, what is happening, what are the resources, what's important?

00:09:56 That really grounding moment is going to be the moment from which you go anywhere next. So how do you help people discover that, like, somebody comes to you and they're all been out of shape because their journey isn't what they thought? They have a layoff, they have a disruption, and they're not connected to the trip that they're still they're connected to the trip that they wish they were having, and they don't feel resourced. How much you go about helping someone orient around the principles that you just mentioned. Sure.

00:10:31 I think we all have our couple of go to questions, right? One of the ones that well, a couple of things, what could be better? Is always a general starter. But sometimes when people go on about what the problem is and they'll think it's really obvious and depending on my relationship and the partnership, I might be so pointed as to say, well, what's the problem with that? And sometimes there's this moment of indignation.

00:10:55 It's like, well, I just told you I lost my job. All these pressures. It's like, yeah, but what's the problem with that? That's what's happening. And I also like to call this sometimes when I'm workshackling with people how to live a self centering life without feeling self centered.

00:11:13 And sometimes it's just this really simple trick of making yourself the actual own literal subject of your sentence. If I say what's the problem? It's like, well, my boss laid me off. Well, your boss is the subject of that sentence. So getting people to the point that they can say as the subject of their own sentence what the problem is.

00:11:33 So maybe I lost my job. And then the question is, well, why does that matter to you? That's the statement of the problem. But what is it that really matters to you that's in conflict with the fact that you just lost your job? And usually it has something to do with fear of uncertainty or feeling like you have this obligation to provide, and you can go even deeper than that.

00:11:53 Why is that a problem? Why does that matter to you? So getting to be the subject of your own sentences and then really getting down to the root of why that's important to you sometimes will turn up things. Like, for me, fundamentally, one of mine is usually that, like, oh, I have a deep desire to be witnessed, or I want to feel connected, I want to feel more freedom. These problems that we started with, like, I don't like my job.

00:12:21 If you really dig down, what's the problem with that? Why does that matter to you? We can get down to these really kind of heartfelt nuggets of what that deep longing is inside of a person. And from the knowing what the longing is, then you can work back outwards again and say, well, what would it look like for you to feel witnessed? What would it look like for you to feel connected?

00:12:42 And then you have something real and tangible you can talk about bringing into an everyday life. Exactly. Yeah, that's beautiful. And the thing that you've helped them connect to, there is something that isn't so situational because it's personal. Right?

00:13:01 Okay. That job I don't have anymore, but I can feel connected to a lot of things. Right. And back to sort of that A to B from the work I've done on myself in my own life, I know that myself is expressed really through service, creativity, and love. And I have things underneath those headings that I know I can do in any moment to bring myself back into service, creativity, and love.

00:13:25 And so sometimes when I'm feeling really disoriented, I just got really mad at my partner and my daughter because they left their dirty dishes in the sink again. Like, what do I want to feel? And I'll go and I'll sit down at the piano and I'll play for a couple of minutes, or I'll just walk out onto the back deck and pull in a lung full of backyard air. There are things that I know can bring me back to the present moment and back to the expressions and experiences of self that really keep me feeling the way I want to feel in my life. And so these sort of deep explorations really can bring you back to very practical ways to feel connected and moving forward in daily life.

00:14:04 Yeah, those touch points are really super important. I use that in my own coaching a lot, where I actually give people assignments to go find those moments, go find those things make a list of them and deal them into your everyday life multiple times a day. Because it is about practicing. I think of it from a neurological point of view. The neurology in other ways, say it is simply the habit of connecting to those grounding experiences, those non egocentric nourishment, Ron Kurtz from would call it, who founded the Hokomi method of connecting to that fresh air, connecting to the beauty of the piano.

00:14:43 And that connection, practicing that connection to those things. Because those things are not dependent on any particular kind of thing happening in your life. You create those moments by stepping into them, giving them to yourself, and that becomes a resource that you can have any time, right? You add a bunch of those to your day, suddenly your day is better, right? And you have a bunch of better days.

00:15:06 You've improved your life, right? And I think something you said there's really important, too, in terms of finding what those things are inside of yourself. This touches on some things I know you and I have discussed before, what it looks like or what can happen in a life when you don't know what those are. One of the things I work with clients on, too, is making sure that those are things that are within your control. My sense of gratitude, gratitude for me, is really an easy gateway emotion for getting back into myself and back into the moment.

00:15:34 If you put all of your motivations or connections to self in things that are outside of you, that are external to you, you kind of lose your power and control and responsibility when it comes to getting back to yourself. So, for example, if I go, well, I can do anything for my daughter, it makes my daughter this external locus of meaning and value. And so, as much as possible, finding those things inside of the self that you can always in any moment connect back to, that's really important, I find when people are they've been lost a little bit in their own life, they're trying to find their way back. What is it inside of you that you can reconnect with in any moment that brings you back on course and feeling good about the experience that you're having? It's so interesting, you're saying that.

00:16:20 I was just writing yesterday around using sort of a metaphor around coaching and saying if someone comes into your world, into your coaching practice and they say, I'm having trouble figuring out I was literally talking about this A to B sort of destination scenario. So this is so interesting. This comes up in this particular conversation, but someone says, oh, I feel like I'm not headed to the right place anymore. And I said, well, as a coach, you can help them figure out where to go, or you can help them figure out where their North Star is so they know how to navigate. And so I'm hearing a lot of this, what I would call this North Star focus.

00:16:57 Like, how do you create within yourself a way to navigate your world from a place of center, from a place of connectedness that allows you to orient in times of stress? Absolutely. And that's a tremendous gift to give people, a tremendous thing to tell people. Absolutely. I know that we've touched before on the experience I've had over the last three years of losing my big brother.

00:17:26 And there was so much of my life leading up to the time I was losing him that prepared me to be really present with that experience and to really be conscious about holding space for what he was going through. And I think we were talking before about learning the right lessons from the wrong examples. He was a beautiful human being. And so often in the weeks leading up to him passing away, the thing he said over and over and over and over again was, I don't know what to do. He was brilliant.

00:17:57 I mean, in a textbook way, but also in terms of his humor and his brightness in the world. But he was, I think, very disconnected from this kind of internal knowing we're talking about. And he really struggled to know how to look inward. And I believed him when he said, I don't know what to do. Because it was very much this cerebral trying to figure out what's the right thing to do next, what's the expectation I'm supposed to be meeting, what's the role I'm playing?

00:18:25 What are the responsibilities that I'm satisfying? And really what mattered was kind of that inner knowing about, am I happy with this? Am I self expressed with this? Am I satisfied? Am I loving the life that I'm living?

00:18:38 And that's not a thing that, you know, intellectually. It's really something you cultivate internally and that you feel and you learn to recognize and affirm as you're living your life. And when that is absent, it has these really devastating consequences for people. That's very real to me in my coaching. I really do feel like sometimes you really are up to the business of saving a life by getting someone reconnected with what is really important to them.

00:19:08 Your words are really impacting me. I'm feeling them really deeply. And I appreciate what you're saying and the depth of your connection to this is impactful. I'm sure your clients benefit from that too. I wanted to ask you a question about moving from the world of logistics to the world of coaching.

00:19:26 Like, what was it that caused you to turn that leave to change your focus? Because as you've been talking about, it's an interesting journey. Journey, yeah, it's an interesting collection of interests. And the way that they align with you is very fascinating. So I'm just interested in what was it caused you to flip that switch and now you're doing coaching?

00:19:52 It was a really long way home, I think, is a quick way to start. So originally the joke was that I ended up in transportation because I wanted to write about landscape. So that was a fun one for a while. And where that came from really is just this lifelong deep interest in people's stories. I love asking people, Where's home for you?

00:20:16 And I don't necessarily always just mean geographically, like, what is the landscape that speaks to you? What's the coffee shop that you just feel like you want to be in? Or if people tell me their jobs, I'll say, and did you start doing that on purpose, or did that just kind of happen to you? And people always have a story. I've always been really interested in what drives people, what motivates people, and I also really just love the outdoors.

00:20:43 And so I had an interest in kind of writing about people's connection to place, writing about our human experience in parallel to natural Earth processes. And I wound up at college. I was a little bit disillusioned. I majored in everything, probably ten different things, for about five minutes apiece. But all really was I had this kind of just passionate interest in people's stories, what motivated them and what made them make the decisions that they made.

00:21:10 And it just so happened that as I was being realistic about what it would mean to write about landscape, I felt like I should be knowledgeable about that. So I took an Introduction to Mountain Buildings course in my three and a half year of college and fell in love with the Earth sciences, with shifting continents and understanding the tilt and the wobble of the planet on its axis and where the seasons come from. And it just really pulled me in. And so I switched from the humanities into the sciences, like, seven semesters into college, and I had been working at a student. It was perfect.

00:21:45 I got to study with Lynn Margulis, who was just a really formidable and powerful scientist and woman, and gave up a job. I'd been working at a student run business and got a bus driver's license because I could drive a bus without getting super involved emotionally. And it just turned out that I. Took the other thing was emotionally, right? Yeah.

00:22:08 Well, I tend to get myself hung up on whatever I decide to care about. But it worked. Obviously, it worked. I took my Earth sciences degree, my management experience, my bus driver's license, and I went and I drove. I was a tour guide in Alaska for several years.

00:22:26 I loved it. It pulled together storytelling. Exactly. I have so many guests. It was beautiful.

00:22:32 I loved encouraging people to look out the windows, and here's how to interpret the landscape. I got to participate in powerful moments in people's lives, legacy trips, bucket list trips. And I loved sharing just enough that people could look out the windows and interpret things for themselves. I still kind of feel that way about coaching. But as I grew as a manager, and I think that's the other piece of it was everywhere I worked, I ended up in leadership and management.

00:22:58 And my most fulfilling aspects of all the jobs I've ever had have been working with employees, really developing people, and again, getting them where they want to go. What do you love about this job? What connects with you? Where do you want to be? How could this job serve you in getting you where you want to go next?

00:23:15 And as I continued to grow in my career and I worked with more and more people, again, back to the people part of it, I loved working with people and understanding them and figuring out how to help them get where they really wanted to go. So that's been the through line for me, just this deep curiosity in people's stories and wanting to see people connected and fulfilled in their own lives. I mean, that's the name of the game for me. Living connected, fulfilled lives, whatever that looks like for you. When you say it like that, it seems like, well, of course it worked.

00:23:51 Out like rocks and buses and riding. Oh, my. Makes perfect sense, right? Obviously, right? In all of it, you were helping people get to where they want where they want to go and taking yourself there too.

00:24:04 And so there's something very profound about that in you. My curiosity gets piqued a little bit. You were talking about how you like to hear people's stories. And I wanted to ask you almost a coaching question, like, what does that do for you? What happens to you when you hear people's stories?

00:24:20 What does that connect you to?

00:24:23 Oh, funny, I didn't imagine talking about this today. I mentioned, well, I guess I revealed a little bit of my own secret, that I have this deep desire and this longing to be witnessed. But that's also a part of me that shows up powerfully in these experiences with others. I was just sharing with a friend recently that I think an inseparable element of me. And my story is that I think I was sort of a born witness or a born mirror.

00:24:49 I think that when people encounter me, what I can offer back is just this very clear, non judgmental, no expectation reflection of your purest loveliest self. I think this is part of one of the most intoxicating things about falling in love that when we're falling in love with someone, romantically speaking, I think part of what we're really encountering is the lovable parts of ourselves. Suddenly we realize we have all these stories to tell and oh my gosh, I'm funny, and I forgot that this person laughs at my jokes. I think that we remeat ourselves in the process of falling in love. And I think that part of what we train in ourselves as coaches is being this clear space.

00:25:34 I think that's a space that has been very natural for me my whole life. And when I encounter another human being, I'm really calling on myself to just clearly, plainly cleanly mirror back the qualities of their highest self that they bring into the space. And so I really truly feel like I get to encounter the best in other human beings in the coaching space. It's really beautiful, wonderful, calm time for me where I get to reach in, pull up my mirror and just reflect back. And in so doing experience for myself these really enduring beautiful qualities and other human beings, they're inside of every single one of us.

00:26:21 And it just so happens that now by vocation and calling and profession, I get to mirror and thereby experience these beautiful qualities in other human beings. It's beautiful. I keep saying the word. It's just I feel it when I reflect it back in another person. It's wonderful.

00:26:39 It's a somatic experience, a whole body experience. Yeah, I love that so much. And you're really saying in your own words the kind of work that I do a lot of as well. John Eisman, who created the recreation of self method, his language for that kind of thing is he calls them the absolutes truth, beauty, justice, peace. And so accessing those absolutes in yourself as a reflection of someone else and then just being in that space while someone else who's got some problem intergages with you, just that connection in my view, is healing and helpful for the client.

00:27:24 Just the fact that you're sitting in that space and they're engaging with you in some way helps them connect with someone who is reflecting back the very best of who they are in a non judgmental, open, accepted and no agenda way. It's not like you've got to push. It's really important that I tell them. It's just like you're just going to be present. Hopefully I'm not making this up for you.

00:27:48 No, it's true and there's no right answer. Like I was saying before, if someone comes in and at first what they're articulating is the problem, what happened, what was unpleasant, to then have someone receive all of that. I think it's so rare for people now to actually get to be the center of their own attention, to just speak and be without encountering another person's advice, opinion, reaction, to just get to be into a clean, clear space, to say all of that and unload all of that and then have another person say, well, what's important to you about that? They didn't get all hung up on the details. They wanted more.

00:28:25 They wanted deeper. And I think that cues or communicates to a client or anybody that you're interacting with as a person, oh, I have more in there to offer. And they're asking me what that is. They're asking me what else I have to offer. And that alone being witnessed, being the center of.

00:28:42 Their own attention and being asked what's more in you that can come out. That really is a powerful part of the coaching process, I think, for people. Yes, I would absolutely agree. It's like when you ask that question, when you open that door, suddenly you're inviting a resource place for the client to connect to that probably has been ignored and that coming into their awareness has become something they can use to engage with, that has always been there but is under activated in their life. And when you bring those resources forward, it makes a difference in the way you organize.

00:29:22 I use the term organize around your problems because now you're more resourced. Right. And that's a wonderful thing to witness whenever you see clients to sort of automatically realize, oh, I don't have to build this house by just stacking boards. I have a hammer. Yeah, that changes everything.

00:29:42 Exactly. Oh my gosh, yet I'm going to take this back to transportation too. It's like, well, it gives away a little bit of the secret. Right. I believe coming into the coaching space that the client actually already knows everything that they need to know.

00:29:55 I'm just helping them get reconnected to it and for whatever reason, thinking about the experience of raising my daughter, that my greatest hope for her is that she'll come to a place where she's confident navigating whatever situation she finds herself in. Not because I can prepare her for everything, not because you always know exactly how you're going to get there. But really what I hope for people is they develop this enduring confidence that they're going to be able to figure it out. They have everything that they need. And so it's really rewarding and satisfying to kind of watch somebody go off into their own life not knowing exactly how it's going to turn out, not knowing exactly maybe exactly where point B is.

00:30:39 But they really know and they're confident that they're going to figure it out as they go, that they have everything they need, they know everything they need to know to just show up in the moment, handle what's there and they're going to be okay. I love seeing people develop that confidence that they've got it. Whatever it is, they've got it. That'd be great. Where do I sign up for that?

00:31:06 And I wanted to ask you, like you said, and I subscribe to this, but I wanted to get your point of view that people have within them the knowledge of how to grow, how to move forward. But how do you think people get disconnected from that in such a way that they need to seek out help to recover that? Yeah, sometimes really big things happen and we get a really big message disruption or we make a choice and the people around us really disagree. But I think the rest really does happen very subtly and slowly. Not to dig too far back, but right from the moment we emerge into the world, we get these cues and signals from the environment, like, oh, if I cry, mom comes or dad comes or caretaker comes or, oh, if I do that, I get a tisk tisk, and I get a punishment.

00:31:55 We get all these cues about how it is acceptable to be how it is acceptable to express ourself, and we're picking that up all the time. Whether we realize it or not, we're adapting our behavior. And by the time you get into adulthood or early adulthood, by the time I went off to college, well, I knew at least as much that college was where I was expected to go, which is probably why I majored in 15 things for five minutes apiece. I didn't actually know what I was doing there except that I was supposed to be there, right? Supposed to be, yeah.

00:32:25 So you're meeting all these expectations. It builds up and builds up, and I think for the people I end up working with, oftentimes they wake up and they're like, how is this my life? They just have a moment where they look around and don't recognize themselves anymore. And it happens slowly. I know.

00:32:45 Back in my own journey, when I started working with a coach years and years ago, I was losing my Sundays to dreading my Mondays, and then I was losing my Mondays to just not enjoying the work I was doing and not feeling connected to it. And it just got to a point where I realized how heavy it had all gotten. And it wasn't like there was one big thing. There had been some big things, and I knew I'd made some conscious choices about how to get out of it. But it really is this slow build up over time.

00:33:12 Sometimes for people of meeting expectation, you think you're doing the right thing to get by and get approval. But sometimes you wake up and you have this moment, and you're like, oh, my gosh. I don't exactly know how I got here. I know I did. Here I am.

00:33:29 But I don't recognize myself in this situation, and what do I do about that? Don't know if that answer the question. It's slow and constant, and then it shows up, sometimes all at once, and it's really uncomfortable. Right? It's like I'm reminded of that old Talking head song that has the line, this is not my beautiful house.

00:33:52 How did I get here? How do I work this? It's kind of like just these moments where you just wake up and go, wait. What? What life am I?

00:34:02 And that moment, this is, again, bringing back the mindfulness. I think sometimes we're like the, no, this isn't mine. And you've got to start by saying, yes, it is. This is mine. This is where I am.

00:34:16 This is what is happening, and what do I do next? So you got to get really real with the present. Moment, instead of fighting against it, it's like, no, I'm here. This is it. This is what's happening.

00:34:28 This is my life. And then whatever comes after. Yeah, I love that so much. You have to start from where you are. I think sort of the foundational message I'm getting from you is, like, in your work is like, you've got to start from here.

00:34:47 And that's a big context and no judgment for here. Here is exactly where you ended up with all of your doing right. And trying hard and figuring it out. Here is just where you are, and it's exactly in the perfect place to start. No problem.

00:35:03 Beautiful. We could talk all day. How do people find you so they can learn about their North Star and get where they want to be? Actually, ultimately, I would love to direct people to The Mindful Coach Association. They can find me there.

00:35:19 I'm certainly in and among the coaches, and from there you can find my site. And a little bit about the work that I do, I say all the time, I'm just really passionate about getting people connected with coaching. So, yeah, please come find me at The Mindful Coach Association. And while you're there, if coaching in this process sounds appealing, and it's not necessarily me that you feel called to, there's amazing coaches that are gathering there right now, and so I'd love to direct people to that resource to find me or just find their person. Thank you for that.

00:35:50 Yes, absolutely. We do have a lot of great coaches there, and Elizabeth has been a supporter of the association. So thank you for that and for the great work that you're doing. It's deeply appreciated. So look her up.

00:36:04 Come and find Elizabeth Swan on The Mindful Coach Association. Jump to her website and give her a call and connect and see if there's some goodness that can happen there. I'm sure that there is. So thank you so much for the great work that you're doing and your contribution to helping people become what they can be. I sometimes go so far as to speak on behalf of the universe and say thank you for that work.

00:36:29 Thank you. You're creating some wonderful opportunities for those of us who are out here doing the work. So thank you for this opportunity and for the opportunities you're creating for all of us. It's appreciated. It's my privilege.

00:36:40 And when I have lovely souls like you to talk with, why would I do anything else? It's so beautiful and inspiring to hear the great work that people are doing. It's so necessary and so urgently we needed in our culture today. I just feel like it's irresponsible, in a way, to not amplify these voices. So thank you once again, Elizabeth Swan, thank you for showing up.

00:37:07 Appreciate it and hope you've enjoyed this edition of The Mindful Coach Association. And that's a wrap for this edition of The Mindful Coach Association. We hope you enjoyed this presentation, and if you did, follow us and leave us a review. If you're a coach or helping professional that values mindfulness in your work, browse over to mindfulcoachassociation.com and create a free community profile describing your services so the world can find you. And you'll be invited to exclusive community meetings where you can meet your colleague.

00:37:41 I'm your host, Brett Hill, founder of The Mindful Coach Association. Coach and coach trainer. Teaching the mindful coach method. You can find out more about me@themindfulcoach.com. Until next time, stay present.