Doug Spence: Hey guys. Today I'm gonna do something a little different. Basically I'm gonna do a walking, talking podcast recording for ya. And I wanted to answer the question, what is coaching? Because if you've never really been coached, it's something you've never it's difficult to understand. It's very difficult to understand. You you have no reference point. because we we know what it's like to receive advice from people. And we know what it's like to be told what to do. And but and we also know what it's like to discover something on our own through our own thought processes, through our thinking, through our problem solving. And then we come to you know some conclusion, some epiphany. And these can happen, and these do happen naturally and But somewhat rarely. So a person may go through a series of relationships, for example. And then, you know, by the fifth or sixth or twentieth relationship, they will start to see a pattern. They'll start to notice a pattern that's repeating itself. And then that is when they have this epiphany. And they realize something about themselves, why they have been attracting a certain type of person this whole time. And they'll realize that it was something about themselves that they were not honoring, that they were not loving. Maybe something they didn't believe in themselves or they were minimizing themselves in some way. And they will have a huge epiphany, and their life will change. Their life will go in a different direction. They'll start being attracted to and attracting a different type of partner. So Someone may have this kind of epiphany, you know, once every decade, once every five years. kind of a rare event. So what coaching does is it allows you to have these epiphanies, these realizations much more frequently. Within one hour a person may have three to five of these epiphanies. Within a three hour coaching session, a person can have massive life-changing epiphanies. And over a weekend, sometimes you know like a twelve hour, two day, twenty four hour kind of event. People will have life-changing perspectives, life-changing shifts. And this would be like the seminar style of coaching that happens. And all of these are life-changing, whether they're happen in an hour, whether they happen in, you know, over a period of 12 hours where they have hundreds of insights, hundreds of realizations about themselves. Where they have tears of gratitude, tears of understanding, several times throughout the weekend or You know, this is what growth is. And I always recommend people if they're hiring a coach. The coach's job is to help you have epiphanies, to help you gain greater awareness, greater understanding. So if the coach is if if you're going to a coach or a counselor or a psychologist or whatever it is, and you're not having these epiphanies, or they're just not happening, you know, frequently enough. then it's time to get another coach. It's time to look around. Cause that's the purpose. That's the point. And and if yeah, if exactly if if that's not happening, then then they're not doing their job or they do not know how to do their job. And because so what happens a lot is people will get stuck in their stories. They will tell the story about what has happened to them and what they've been through and who did what and why and all of this stuff. And this happens in coaching sessions, this happens in counseling sessions and psychology sessions. And the coach or counselor or whoever will listen patiently and then they might end the session after an hour. So where is the insight? If the individual being coached s has the same perspective from the beginning before the meeting and after the meeting, what has changed? How has that person grown? They repeated the same story over and over again. So As they're repeating the same story over and over again, nothing is changing, right? They're gonna their behavior is not gonna change, for one. Their feelings are not gonna change. They're gonna have the same story, so so they're gonna have the same beliefs and the same perceptions and the same story. So they're gonna have the same feelings. And from my point of view, when it comes to entrepreneurs and taking action, content creators and business owners, we want to take greater more greater and greater challenges on. So we need to be constantly growing. We need constant epiphanies. We need to see ourselves as more and more capable, more and more able to take on greater challenges. And if I just tell my same story over and over, then nothing is gonna change. And my behavior is not gonna is not gonna my performance is not gonna increase. So So my job as a coach is to ask questions. I I take several approaches to helping people to have these epiphanies, to have these people grow, have these clients grow. The the simplest way is through questions going through the mind. You know, we if you ask a question that's counterintuitive that the person has never thought of before. They're gonna have an epiphany. they're gonna have a realization, a new perspective. And I've been studying questions for fifteen years and looking at what questions create the highest change, the highest perspective and the highest level, the greatest epiphany. So my job as a coach is to ask questions. Now, there are many coaches out there that will ask questions because there are several different coaching styles. And some of the coaching styles will ask the question from the point of view that the person has all the answers within themselves and all the resources within themselves, which is true. But again, what happens is it becomes sort of it's too random. There's there isn't enough direction to Find the the the growth. So there's no there's no like real purpose behind the questioning. So my style is I have I have two goals when I'm asking questions. Number one is to remove any limitation. So the questions are designed to help the person see themselves as unlimited, of as not having a limitation. The assumption is there that there is no limitation. And whether it's within their abilities, within their skills, within their time, within their resources. Because this is the greatest way for them to do the next thing. It makes them the more resourceful. It makes them to see things see more of what's actually there. The second part, the second objective of these questions is to get them to take action. So the questions are specifically designed to help them to be able to take action. And we get we get stuck in our minds, we get stuck in procrastination, we get stuck in overthinking, we get stuck in perfectionism. And these are all just protective mechanisms to to protect us from feeling a feeling. We have a we when we have a limitation in our programming. Now it causes us to when we start to step out of our comfort zone, causes us to feel uncomfortable feelings. And then we procrastinate and then we try to protect ourselves with ov perfection and procrastination and overthinking. So I help people to I ask the specific questions that help them to take action. So going through the from the direction of the mind will help people to raise their awareness so that they can take action and see themselves as less limited than than they do at the at the at the moment. The other thing that I do is because going through the mind doesn't work with everybody. Some a lot of people are more intuitive, more feeling based. And when you ask them targeted specific questions, it's like their brain starts to kind of shut down. They don't think that way. They need to feel the change. So I have another approach where I take people through the emotion. There's an emotional block. There's a resistance inside of them from doing the thing that they would love to do or be or have or receive. And I help them process that emotion by helping them to first not be afraid of it, not to stop avoiding it. That's step number one. Not avoiding an emotion is the first step to overcoming it. And you'll see this with Any kind of addiction, any kind of trauma, the avoidance ends up with coping mechanisms, self-soothing, self-medicating, with alcohol, with drugs, and on a lesser scale with Netflix, with scrolling, you know, when we're having a when we're going through a rough time, we'll we'll do distract ourselves from our feelings rather than facing them. So by facing them, that's the first step to beginning the process of processing our emotions. And I like to think of it as an electric fence, an electric fence that's keeping us stuck. And when you bump up against the electric fence, you're gonna want to instantly stop touching it. But if you give yourself some time to actually feel it. then you you start to get used to it. Not not that this would work on a real electric fence, obviously I need a different metaphor, but to allow yourself to feel it. Okay. To allow yourself to feel the discomfort. And you start to get used to it. Maybe it's a I don't know cold water or something. And as you begin to get used to the feeling, ask yourself, could I let this feeling go? Just ask yourself, could I let it go? Yeah, no. There's no right or wrong answer. A lot of people, you know, you just say no, right? They're attached to it. Would I let the feeling go? Yeah, that's another question. Because sometimes we like our pain. We get attached to our pain. We identify with our pain. And there's a payoff. There's, you know, it it allows us to kind of stay where we are and And to be self righteous and to, you know, be proud or be better than others or to, you know, suffer in our with all our glory, right? So sometimes there's there's an attachment to our pain. So what's the payoff? Would you let it go? And when? Because how long do you want to live with this feeling? How long do you want this feeling to hold you back? To keep you living small? To keep you suffering? When? When would you let the feeling go? And another question that I ask after that is who would you be without the feeling? So imagine yourself in the exact same situation that you're in now. Or the exact same situation that causes the discomfort, that causes the pain, or the anger, or the shame, or the any kind of suffering. Who would you be in that situation without? That feeling. And this is where you know you close your eyes, think about it. Close your eyes and be in that situation. Who would you be without that painful emotion? You're in the same situation. The other person is still doing the same thing that caused you pain or it caused you discomfort, and you're doing the same action that caused you c discomfort. Maybe it's public speaking. Maybe it's Recording yourself on social media. Maybe it's presenting to a group on online. Maybe it's calling and making contacts and networking and cold calling or going door to door, doing whatever activity you know you should be doing, but you're not doing it. Who would you be in that moment without that feeling? Think about it. And be it and allow yourself to be it. A lot of the time. It's just a person. It's just a person who has goals. It's just a person who wants to be loved. who wants to achieve, who wants to grow their business, who wants to share what they know and what they love and what they've learned over their lifetime. To share something they've built. Sometimes it's there'll be someone who is just more loving, more caring, without those negative emotions, when you see who you would be. You become, you start becoming your higher self, your authentic self. And all those illusions of who you thought you were and what you thought you were and those limitations, as you start to let go of those and let those dissolve, you begin to see yourself and others and the world from a much higher perspective. From a much more less limited perspective, a lot less bias perspective. A lot more open perspective, and you actually become free. So you start to feel a lot more free to take action and to do things. So going back to my original question, what is coaching? If you've never experienced something like that before, it's very difficult to describe. And So I guess coaching is growth. Being coached is growth. It's accelerating the natural process that we have during our lifetime. The wisdom that we get through the ages, we are accelerating that process. So we're getting the wisdom without the age. And That's my answer, I guess, for what is coaching. So if you like this, then you'll love my school. And it's wisdom and confidence. It's coaching for entrepreneurs, mindset coaching for entrepreneurs. It's there to help you build your confidence. It's there to help you practice your. Speaking skills, your people skills. It's there to help you get gain perspectives. We do actionable specific processes to help you have these epiphanies. I answer questions, I take you guys through processes to help you have these epiphanies. Right now it's forty-nine dollars a month. And when you show up and you do the work, you get the growth. You get the benefit of the the growth and the coaching and the mindset work. And when you do the mindset work with the intention of taking action, then that's where you get the maximum, the maximum The maximum amount from the mindset work. And I say this because mindset work can become sort of addictive, where you just keep getting lots of epiphanies and lots of understandings, but you stop taking, you're not, you're still not taking the action. So the action and the mindset work combined really accelerate changes in your life. That's where the changes start to really happen. And it's real. It's happening in real time. You feel the difference. You feel you know when you're getting experience and practice. You know when your skills are improving. And you know when things are actually changing in your life. And that's my goal. That's my goal. My goal is to help people to live more authentically to design their life around who they are so that they can do what they love and they can serve people by being themselves. They can serve people just by being themselves. They can benefit people and get paid for it. So if you're interested in that, please check out my my link. It's in, well, it's probably all over every social media platform I have now. But it's definitely in this video. And it'll be in Spotify and YouTube. And I usually take a bunch of shorts and chop them up and put them all over the place. But I hope you enjoyed this and I hope this answers the question of what is coaching. Talk to you later.