Ep.33: What’s Actually Changed for Me Since I Started Working with a Coach

This week’s podcast ep is a personal one - I'm giving you a list of what’s actually changed for me since I started getting coached. While coaching isn’t for everyone, it might just be for you, and hearing the ways it’s impacted and improved my own life might be the nudge you need to start investing in yourself. From mindset management to money management to overcoming regret to weight loss, coaching has changed everything for me, and I'm unpacking the specifics in this episode. LFG.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. My name is Stephanie Finigan. I'm your coach and host, and this episode is all about things that have changed in my life since I first hired a life coach. Honestly, as I was kind of brainstorming for this episode, I came up with a list of many, many things, but some of them are less tangible than others, and I think that's a little more interesting for a separate conversation or a separate episode. So I'm gonna do some more of the tangible things that have changed for me since I first hired a coach and then became a coach myself.

So my history with coaching was pretty simple. I sort of thought life coaching was a joke for a very long time until I started following a couple of influencers on Instagram. I was following them primarily for content on money and entrepreneurship and other things under those topics and came to quickly realize that they were actually coaches, life coaches that I was following that had worked in related fields, money and finance and entrepreneurship, but they were coaches. And so they were talking a lot about coaching. So I became a little more curious about coaching at that point because I realized, oh, these people that I like and respect, at least from what I see online and learn something from are actually life coaches. That's really interesting. And then I started to learn a little bit more and I first started paying for coaching in 2018. And I believe, I was trying to go back in my emails and confirm this, but I believe I first started by downloading freebies, of course, and free workbooks and those types of things. I then started paying for online classes that were offered by some of these coaches that I had started following and liking in 2018. And then I think 2019 was the first time that I paid for group coaching and one-on-one coaching.

So it's been a while since I got into coaching. And then as I kind of dove more into coaching and personal development, things of that nature, and then became a coach myself, went through a certification process and got even more involved, I have continued to hire coaches and continued to study coaching and take courses for myself as a coach, as well as apply all the tools and knowledge and things that I'm learning to my own life. So the changes I'm going to list here are things that some of them started way back when I first started getting coaching in 2018 and some of them are much more recent as I found other coaches to work with and other authors to read and things like that.

It's been a huge journey for me. I definitely think a lot has changed in terms of my mindset and my perspective and that has really opened me up to a number of results that I don't think, I really don't think I would have come to prior to 2018, prior to getting involved in coaching. So, with that, I'm gonna give you the 10 things that have changed in my life since I hired a coach because it might help drive home for you some of the things that could potentially change for you if you are going to make the investment of hiring a coach as we head into the new year or any time that you're listening to this.

So the first one I'll talk about is sort of the obvious one. I am on this podcast right now and this podcast is a marketing tool for my business. So that first one I mentioned is I became an entrepreneur and launched my own business, which is Pivot Coaching. And I had been working with entrepreneurs and working with social enterprises and other small businesses for a long time in my professional life had never considered becoming an entrepreneur myself, or at least not seriously and never really considered having my own business. I always thought I wanted the security of a paycheck. And not only that, I really had the self identity of somebody who wasn't much of a risk taker, particularly when it came to money, in addition to not having the confidence to put myself out there in the way that you need to when you're an entrepreneur. So being an entrepreneur never came to mind.

Fast forward to getting coaching and recognizing a lot of the things that were limiting me in terms of even thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. Some of these I'll talk about a little more in the rest of this list, but definitely changed my mindset around money, realized I had such a scarcity mindset that I didn't need to have, changed my identity around money, and it turns out I actually now am somebody who does not need the security of a paycheck, while it's fantastic to have, but I don't need that. I've spent plenty of time without that, and I am still here to tell the tale. I can say that at one time in my life that was important, but I let myself evolve and change and became somebody different when it came to money and business and entrepreneurship, and even somebody with the confidence to put myself out in the world as an entrepreneur or as a life coach. I mean, there's really no more sort of glass house to put yourself in, I think, than to say that you're a life coach. It's like, oh, you're a life coach. You must, you must really think a lot of yourself or really think you have your shit together. And so to have the confidence to put yourself out there and face that kind of judgment and criticism, when in reality, we're all kind of a hot mess behind the scenes. I have a podcast called I'm the Problem for a reason, right? So all of these things were things that I became aware of in terms of the stories in my head and the limiting beliefs, and then overcame when I first started getting coaching. So that is the first one, becoming an entrepreneur and launching a business.

Number two, which is closely aligned to that, is that I also launched a non-profit based on a pilot coaching program that I started back in 2021. And launching a non-profit is not necessarily something that's that unheard of for me in the past, you know, honestly, like two decades. It's largely the work that I've done and I've engaged with a lot of non-profits and other social businesses. And so it wasn't that strange to think that I might launch my own non-profit. Certainly it was more likely in my head that I would do that than launch my own for-profit business. But to have an idea about doing something like launching a non-profit and actually moving forward and doing it was very scary for me until I got involved in coaching. And I think that's the case for a lot of people. A lot of us have ideas to do something. We get too scared to actually rip the band-aid and just go for it because of our own self-doubts, our limiting beliefs, our fears about what other people will think, which is a huge issue for many of us. Anybody can have an idea, but actually making it happen is the difference. And so when I launched the non-profit, that was a huge win for me because I realized, oh, this is something that even if I had wanted to do, I don't know that I would ever have been the person who actually ripped the band-aid and did it. I think I would have thought about it a lot and talked about it a lot but not actually done it until I got coaching and broke through all those limiting beliefs and stories in my head or at least became aware of them. So those were the first two things that changed for me since I hired a coach. Becoming an entrepreneur and launching my for-profit business as well as launching a non-profit.

Alright, number three thing that's changed is I lost weight which is wonderful because that was something that was sort of a torture of mine. Like many women I know, sadly, I would say like most women I know, for most of my 20s, a big chunk of my 30s. And when I finally started to get involved in coaching, I realized like this just doesn't have to be something that I wrestle with. So while the weight loss itself has been a nice kind of icing on the cake, I guess, no pun intended. The real win of the coaching that I got around it was getting to know myself well enough and realize that actually me, like truly me deep down, doesn't really give a shit about this because I'm way more interested in so many other things and I'm so bored of talking about this and thinking about this. And just so, it's just not inherently who I am, even though it's who I was for a very long time, somebody who obsessed about that.

So, that was the change number three, was not only the weight loss itself, but also just the mindset around it. Number four was that I moved on from some major past regrets, and I've done at least one podcast episode on regret, maybe a couple more, I can't recall off the top of my head, but I have made, I made some pretty big choices around finances and professional choices and personal choices that I later came to regret and truly regret, like was sort of haunted by. And because I was haunted by those choices and could not stop beating myself up for those choices, it was really hard for me to move on from them or change courses and move in a different direction or let it go. It was just this crazy cycle. And I have a course coming out about moving on from regret, which I am really excited about because I'm applying all the tools that I learned through coaching to do so. But that has been huge because it's just been so freeing for me to be able to look back at my past self and say, hey, past self, that was the capacity that you had at the time. That's what you knew to be the right choice, even when you knew it was the wrong choice. And then also recognize that that version of me no longer exists. It's a different version. And in freeing myself up from past regrets, I've really been able to make large steps forward in those areas, personal life, professional life, financial life, in a way that was much faster. Once I let go of those regrets, I was able to make changes much faster in my life and really make some big quantum shifts there. So that's been really exciting.

The fifth thing that has changed in my life since I hired a coach is that I'm definitely much better at managing bigger emotions, particularly around highly sensitive issues in my life. Right now, we are in the midst of a fairly fraught adoption situation, which may or may not end up as we wanted to. We meaning my husband and I. But there are days where my emotions feel big or overwhelming, and I can apply coaching tools to help me manage them better, so that I can focus on work or focus on parenting or focus on doing other things that I need and want to get done without letting the big emotions and the fear and the worry and all of that sort of, you know, crush me or sink me. I've been really grateful for the tools that coaching has given me and to my coaches who really helped me with this. The number one tool there is learning to process my emotions and allow them, which sounds, I know, really like woo-woo and sort of annoying. And I roll my eyes when people every single time, a coach or a coach friend or whoever it is is telling me I need to like feel my feelings. I hate it. But at the same time like that's exactly what needs to get done and through coaching I've learned when I need to do that and when I need to just say fuck it I don't want to do that I'm gonna do that later and kind of really tell the difference from where I'm at about what I need in the moment in order to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Very grateful for coaching for this specific challenge in my life.

Number six thing that changed, and this should probably have been number one because honestly I think nothing in my life has changed more than my relationship with money, my mindset about money, the actual money that I have in in the bank, none of that is the same since prior to getting coached. Money was the number one thing that I started getting coaching for. When I first dug into coaching, that's what I wanted. And when I first became a coach, that was what I wanted to coach on. And I did for a little while focus on money mindset coaching. Now I do that along with other topics that kind of fall under the umbrella of life coaching. I could have a whole podcast episode on just the money mindset shifts that I've made since coaching, but very practically speaking, one of the big things was I made peace with having debt and then I paid it off. That is hands down one of the best things that has happened to me since I started coaching regarding my money mindset and just my life in general. Didn't even make peace with that, I should probably say, I mean, I really embraced debt. And I was really grateful for my debt. And I also recognize that, hey, past me is somebody that was in debt, and future me is not in debt. And so now I'm going to pay this off. And that's what I did. And so knowing that it's been really, really amazing to not only just be comfortable with that, because then every once in a while, you know, I'll run up the credit cards, I'll do that. I did that recently, right. And so then it's like, okay, but I'm going to pay them off. And then I pay it off, right? This was not my mindset prior to coaching. I was convinced money would always be hard for me. I would probably always be in debt. I would never have enough money. I mean, all of that scarcity mindset, all of it. And none of that is my story anymore. I no longer have envy about people with money. I no longer feel less than if someone has more money than me, these are all very old narratives that were in my head and they are just gone. I'm not impressed with money or with people that have money and I also don't dislike money. I actually love money. I love making money, I love talking about money. I just don't have any negativity around it. Even the months in my life where I don't have as much as I want in the moment, it's no longer a problem. Used to be a problem for me, like a problem in my head, no longer a problem. It's just so freeing. And that is probably, I'm actually surprised I didn't make that the number one thing that I learned or that's changed for me since I got a coach because this far and away is the biggest improvement in my life that's okay. Like tacking and that's okay on the back of anything and realizing how little power circumstances have, how little power other things have over us until we give them power has been huge.

So this is related to the money thing, it's related to some of the other ones that I've mentioned already, but it's this idea of like, I'm at a job I hate right now, and that's okay, versus I'm at a job I hate right now, period, end of sentence. Or it's like me just saying, I'm having a really tough day regarding adoption and our adoption story, and that's okay. Like just letting it be okay to be wherever I am, emotionally, physically, whatever. I had a terrible run this morning, and that's okay. Like just letting it all be okay. It sounds so small, I know, like such a small shift or such a small thing to tack on the end of a sentence, but it makes a huge change because then you're just kind of normalizing and not making a big deal about whatever you're going through. And then from there, you are much better equipped and you are in a much better space to actually then take action that will help you move out of where you are and on to where you really want to be. So that's been a huge shift because I never used to be somebody that would just be okay with something being a challenge or be okay with feeling sad. And then I would dwell on it or spin and what would usually happen is I would sink further down, right? And by adding that's okay and learning about shifting my mindset like that, it helps me actually spiral back up.

Okay, so number eight, deciding ahead of time how I want to show up and do things, or another way to put this is acting from my future self in terms of how I want to show up and the feelings I want to have and the actions I want to take. This has changed everything. I just recorded a previous podcast about marathoning and what I learned from running my slowest about marathon and what I learned from running my slowest marathon ever and one of the things I talked about was this that I said All right, my future self who's finished the marathon who's at the finish line, and I said this months before I was ever at the finish line, but my future me who's at the finish line How is she feeling? How do I want her to feel? What do I want her to be thinking and I knew for that race where I had trained just a fraction of what I needed to and I had a feeling it was gonna be a tough day and it was, I knew that no matter what the time on the clock said, I wanted to be very proud of myself that I finished this marathon because I frankly had no business training for this marathon at this time in my life. And the fact that I did it and made it through the training and got myself to the race and then finished it, that is an accomplishment. Like who cares about the clock? That's never been my attitude in the past, but I ahead of time decided no matter what the clock says, I will be proud of myself at that finish line. And then I was, right? I planned it ahead of time, I thought about it, I made a decision to be proud no matter what the clock said. And even though the clock said a garbage time for me, I said, I don't care, that I am really proud of myself. And that is how I showed up. Deciding ahead of time how you want to feel, deciding ahead of time how you want to show up, it is a game changer. This is not something I would have thought about before coaching.

Okay, number nine, permission to re-decide. I love this one too. So, and this relates a little bit to number one where I was talking about being an entrepreneur. At a time in my, there was a time in my life where I never would have been an entrepreneur. And then along the way as I got coaching and understood like I'm not a fixed figure, right? Like I can change, I actually am supposed to. The only constant in our human existence is change. It's the only constant in life. I can re-decide. Maybe in the past I was somebody that was not comfortable taking financial risk or professional risk, but you know what? Now I am. I changed it. Same as like, I was not a dog person. Like dogs were fine or whatever, but I was not a dog person. And then I decided with my husband, we were gonna get a dog. And then suddenly I'm a dog person. Like I re-decided. I decided to become a dog person. I, for a while, didn't really want to be a parent. And then I thought about it and I thought, okay, I'm going to re-decide this. And at some point, I re-decided that I wanted to be a parent. I also decided at one point that I didn't want to have my own children, my own biological children. It just wasn't a priority for me and it just wasn't something that I thought I really wanted to do. I thought if I'm going to have a family, it's going to be through another avenue. And I thought about that again and I stuck with that decision, right? So you can, you don't have to change things in your life, but it's good just to re-decide, re-examine your choices, re-examine what's going on. If you could make a decision right now, today, the marriage that you're in, the partnership that you're in, the city that you live in, the home you live in, the job you have, the money in your bank account, like how your body looks, the goals you have, the hobbies and passions. If you could choose all of that over again, what would you choose again and say yes to, without question, and what would you not choose? It doesn't mean that you blow up your whole life right now, but if you don't want to, you could.

You do have permission to re-decide whatever it is. You could be pursuing a goal for the last year and you could decide you don't want to do it anymore. I had this thought a lot when I was training for the last marathon because I kept having to To ask myself training was so tough and I kept having to ask myself. Do I want to do this? Do I really want to do this? No one would care. No one would even blink and frankly some people in my life would be relieved, if I just said no and decided to not do this and change my mind and re-decide and choose to not do the race. And every time I chose to do it, so there's nothing wrong with changing your mind. There's nothing wrong with re-deciding or changing course. Just let yourself do it. You can do that. You can always re-decide, and that was something that I just didn't realize that I had permission to do or the ability to do before I got into coaching.

And then finally, number 10, is this idea that I'm admittedly still working on, but it's this idea that I can just let things be easy. So I'm somebody that really wanted the struggle. I really wanted to take the hard path in a lot of ways, professionally, personally, all of it. And then over the last few years, professionally and personally, things have sort of fallen into place in some ways that have been relatively easy. There's been elements of my business that have been relatively easy. There's been elements of my nonprofit. There's been elements of my family life and my financial life and my professional life and I think about that and even the weight loss that I mentioned like I think about all of that and I think, oh, like I get surprised when things are easy because I expect them to be hard and in a lot of ways, I've really identified as somebody who's just like a real striver and a real struggler and a real hard worker and not the best at everything, but you know, she really fights hard to even though nothing comes easy for her. And I had this whole story in my head. And then I realized like, maybe that's not true, right? Because if somebody else looked at my life, I think they'd find 75 things that seems like they came easy, and then I got them easily. And I probably did. And I just wasn't seeing them that way. And easy is subjective, right? But why don't I just let things be easy? So I'm still learning this one, but it's definitely one that when I can apply it to my life, just reminding myself of that thought over and over again is really helpful.

So those are 10 things that have changed in my life since I started getting coaching, since I first hired a coach, since I first started paying for coaching. Obviously, this is something that hits home for me because I want people to understand what can happen in your life if you choose to hire a coach, if you choose to invest the money in coaching, invest the money in yourself, in your own brain, in your own personal development, and then invest the time to actually make the changes in your life and see if they work for you. They will. If you invest the time, if you find the coach that resonates with you and you invest the money with that coach, if you do the work, oh my God, the things that will change. I mean, I just listed 10 things for you and like I said, I could probably list you 20 more if I wanted to just off the top of my head. So I really encourage you, if you've been considering coaching, I really encourage you to think about what you want to change in your life and if it's something that a coach can help you with. It probably is.

I'm really saying that seriously unless we're talking about a diagnosis unless we're talking about something that would fall into the clinical realm the therapy realm outside of that anything else you're wrestling with there is a coach for you. I believe in this stuff, I want you to to I want you to try it out if you've been skeptical if you're not sure.

You can come get a free consult with me I use my consults to just coach you for 60 minutes and give you an opportunity to see what coaching is like. So no matter what, you will walk away from that consult with some good coaching and some tools or action items or steps to take next on whatever you're wrestling with. And you'll also get a sense of what it's like to work together and see if that is something that you want to invest in moving forward. I really would encourage you to try coaching if you haven't yet. I can only imagine what could change for you and I hope that this podcast episode helped you get some idea about what could change for you based on some of those examples I gave you about some of the things that have changed for me.

All right, reach out with any questions. You can find all the information you need over at MakeYourPivot.co and I will see you guys on the next episode.