Navigating Communication and Personal Growth An In depth Talk with Yarona Boster

Have you ever witnessed the transformative power of communication, not just in words but in the unspoken language of our actions? Join me and communication maven Yarona as we explore this fascinating world. From Yarona’s pivot from public health to early childhood development, we examine how non-verbal cues parents give off can shape their children's emotional security. We also venture into the gray areas of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, weighing its potential for influence against the risk of manipulation. With her upcoming book, Yerona gives us a preview of her invaluable insights into nurturing children within the complex communication landscape of today's world.

The path less travelled is often littered with obstacles, and our conversation doesn't shy away from the resilience required to navigate them. As Yarona and I trade stories, I open up about my own journey—how personal loss reshaped my perspective on success and instilled in me a deeper appreciation for authenticity in the face of adversity. There's a rawness to our dialogue, a shared understanding that while the entrepreneurial road is rocky, the views gained from climbing over each hurdle are well worth the effort.

In the realm of coaching and mentorship, ethics and transparent communication are king. We dive into the delicate balance coaches must maintain when personal and professional lines blur in client relationships. I recount a particularly poignant episode with a client at the intersection of personal strife and career advancement, illuminating the ethical duty coaches uphold. Concluding on a note of continuous growth, we celebrate the reciprocal wisdom of mentorship and preview my initiatives designed to provide practical support for parents and individuals navigating the high-speed demands of modern life. Join us for a journey through the complexities of human interaction and the beauty of lifelong learning.

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Effective Communication and Authenticity in Coaching
• 16:32 Lessons Learned Through Loss and Resilience
• 31:13 Navigating Emotional Healing and Autonomy
• 37:41 Professional Ethics and Client Support
• 44:36 Learning and Growth Through Mentorship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Rice Me Ashes podcast. It is a privilege once again to be here with my next guest, yerona, and I really hope I've said that right. I know she'll correct me if I haven't because she'll stamp on my toes and say get it right. I love her. She's an amazing colleague. We co-authored a book together. That's how we met. I invited her on the podcast to tell her story and to get her little message out there along with what she's doing in the world. Yerona, how are you, and welcome to the podcast. It's a privilege to have you here.

Speaker 2: 0:34

It's an honor to be here, honestly, and yes, you got it right, so happy, very good, I am great, I am busy. You know what they say if you want something done, ask a busy person, and I have had to kindly tell people to stop asking.

Speaker 1: 0:48

So what do you do in the world and how do you do it? In a roundabout way.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Sure, I believe communication is everything, so I have taught people and worked with people over the last 17 years, primarily in the fields of early childhood, human development, psychology and coaching, to hone the art of communication, and my primary focus has always been on parents, land, world stages, including TEDx stage and many others. To really hone their ability to communicate with the audience and to communicate effectively with whether it be with one person or the masses requires the art of learning how to function and be flexible in all different avenues and areas and arenas.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So how did you? Firstly, how did you get into that? And let's rewind 17 or so years ago.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Sure, let's rewind 40 plus years ago. Okay, I didn't want to go back that far.

Speaker 1: 1:58

I wouldn't give nothing away. 17 plus years was good enough, but okay, 40 plus years. How did you get into this? Well, it's funny.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I will tell you a really funny story. My mother used to call me my sister's little lawyer because I would speak up for her on her behalf when my sister couldn't. So I'm pretty sure I've been doing this all of my life. But I landed in the field of early childhood many years ago. I came from the public health arena, moved into early childhood specifically for children with developmental delays and disabilities and ran a program for 15 plus years specifically to deliver services to children who were dealing with a developmental delay and disability from the ages of birth to three.

Speaker 2: 2:43

One of the things over the course of my time is that I learned in human development all about communication, what it is and what it isn't. And, frankly, people have a very base level understanding of what communication is and that's not from any fault of theirs. It's because communication is a behavioral skill. It is a learned behavioral skill and it's processed in the environment in which we're raised and it then worked through as you move through all the different environments of your life. Because it's a behavioral skill, I've learned that it can and should be practiced and honed and the more we do it, the more we practice with it truly practice with it the better we can get at it, and I started to really develop the understanding that the way adults communicate and parents communicate with their children was oftentimes extremely dysfunctional and just based off of what we know versus what we don't know, and what we don't know tends to be a lot more than what we really do know. So I started to really work in that environment of ensuring that parents could effectively communicate with their children. I'm actually right now writing a book called Unspoken Signals Essential Parenting Skills to Raise Emotionally Secure Children.

Speaker 2: 4:03

The reason for unspoken signals is because it's more often than not the unspoken signals that people pick up and that they learn from and how they actually take that perception and process it in their own lives and integrate it into what they believe is the right and healthy way or the default way to communicate. So I started to realize we need to do that better and I do believe that when we actually learn that skill and are always in honor of progress, not perfection, because it's impossible to pursue perfection that's unrealistic, but progress is absolutely possible. When we are in pursuit of progress and don't beat ourselves up for the mistakes, but rather make those mistakes transparent with our children, we can actually effectively communicate what we want them to know by talking about it, by opening up those lines of communication and by opening up the unspoken signals so that they become more spoken. And then I had the opportunity to become a certified speaker coach and I really started to delve into all the components of it and, with my background and with all the psychology and the learning of communication, development as a human being, I started to understand what we could trigger within us to be able to communicate.

Speaker 2: 5:23

Because here's the thing 70 to 90% of communication is nonverbal and some people would even say actually more than that. But on the generous side, let's say 70 to 90%. So it's not always what they're, the words that are being formed in our mouths. It's not that which people tend to pick up. The words that are being formed in our mouths. It's not that which people tend to pick up. It's the tonality of our voice, it's the pitch, it's the pause, it's the speed, it's the volume and it's all these other psychological components, like the emotional contagion. What emotions are you invoking that they're picking up? What emotional intention are you putting out there that other people are being influenced by? And I've seen how much we can affect change when we actually think about the way in which we are using all forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I love that. I want to delve quickly into I know this is going to be, I hope I don't put kind of worms here the concept of NLP and there is a lot of stigma around it, especially in personal development world. I personally believe it's been overused and it's been manipulative in order to gain transactional agreements via money or whatever the agreement is via money or whatever the agreement is. Is this some of your experiences? When you look at this as you've gone through your career, is that your experience or has it been something different?

Speaker 2: 6:55

I'd love to hear an example of what you mean by that, where you see it going wrong.

Speaker 1: 6:59

So I've seen it a lot on stages. You mentioned stages earlier. I go to many in-person events now COVID's over and done with, thankfully and I see tactics that were being used 30, 40 years ago that are say yes and repeat these things and then goes to the back of the room. They're directional, but they're very subliminal. I'm of the concept and of the structure now of you either work or you don't work with me. It's that simple. There isn't any sales tactics to get you to sign on the dotted line or give me your credit card. I don't agree with it. But when I'm in these environments, I see a hell of a lot and I see, if you don't know what you're looking for, the new people coming into that environment go, yes, I can do that. And you're thinking, oh my God, why are you doing that? Is that your experience?

Speaker 2: 7:53

I have seen this. It's very surface level and what happens? So what happens to the let's say the buyer, right, let's say the person who you're trying to sell to? What happens for them is a bit of a cognitive dissonance. So they're hearing something and they're here, and they're feeling something come to you that's not authentic, that it's coming to them and it's not authentic. What happens is there's this little seed of doubt that niggles at the back of their brain, but they can't quite identify it, and so they may jump in, but they may jump in reluctantly, and eventually they will learn and discover that they've been or were manipulated, and that will destroy their own personal confidence and their ability to regain their competence in what they were actually looking to do.

Speaker 2: 8:42

I don't believe in this strategy. There is an effective way to do it, but it has to be done truly authentically. For instance, one of the things I see is the idea of the toxic positivity idea, the idea of fake it till you make it, not understanding the nuance of what fake it till you make it really is, but rather they're truly faking it, and so they're pretending to be positive when the reality is they're not feeling it. Here's what happens to an audience. They see that positivity and, hey, maybe you've worked it so hard that you can put on that fake coat really well, and it's going to buy some people in. But what's going to happen is there's going to be again that niggling doubt in the back of their minds. And if they can't pick that up, because they haven't learned how to learn what that really is and how to unpack it for themselves, what they do is they buy in and then they regret, and so they have that buyer's remorse, whereas let's say I'm going on stage and I don't feel well. Or let's say I'm having a conversation with somebody and there's something going on with me in the background.

Speaker 2: 9:44

If I openly and honestly speak that I've just, I've taken away, I've just distilled or disabled, I've disabled that feeling. Let's say I, I'm, I just had a migraine and I'm just, I'm still feeling the effects of that migraine. And I walk into a situation, maybe with a client or on a stage or in a podcast conversation, and I have that. If I don't mention that but I tried to just grin and bear it there's a feeling that resonates and that's what's called the emotional contagion. So the emotional contagion which is really at the heart of what we actively pick up from other people's emotions that are being dispersed across the mirror neurons in our brain. We always pick up that underlying true emotion oh, she's not feeling well, but what happens is the words come out of our mouth and maybe we use a couple of those trick words and things like that, so we try to dispel that for them. They're still picking that up. But if I say to you listen, I just had a migraine, I'm still feeling it a little bit. So if I'm a little bit off kilter today, my apologies, I'm really not trying to, I don't want to. I don't want you to think that I don't want to be here Now.

Speaker 2: 10:56

We've dispelled that and then, once we can do that, we can engage authentically, and that actually speaking it aloud also sometimes has the positive effect of dispelling it in and of itself for you as much as for your audience. But it has to be done authentically. If it's not authentic, there's always going to be a niggling of doubt which eventually will have people doubting you, but not, I feel here this is worse not just doubting you, but doubting the values you bring to the table, the belief system. You're using the process, you're using the strategies, the techniques, they start to doubt everything because you're at the center of all those things. So the worst thing you could do is be disingenuous with your audience. That is absolutely the worst thing, because they might buy in and look, if you're just trying to make money, they might buy in initially, but you as the seller, you as the engager, you have to sustain that level of constantly trying to manipulate people.

Speaker 2: 12:00

And that's not sustainable in the long run, because it beats you down just as much as it beats them down as much as it beats them down.

Speaker 1: 14:51

Yeah, explanation I'm going probably now. If you don't understand it, please press pause, go back and listen to it, go and get a notepad and really write that down and let it soak in, because what you have here is expert knowledge and the neuralistic side of it and how the brain actually works psychologically. I don't have that knowledge to build it up. I know about energy and how that works and the transition of energy through quantum physics and all that jazz and that's another lens you could explain it in. But what you have here is psychological knowledge and the psychology of how it works, which is phenomenal. So thank you very much for that.

Speaker 1: 15:28

When we talk about a defining moment in life or career. Is there anything that defined your entrepreneurial journey? Everybody was that catalyst going to that next level, which is what you're doing, obviously doing now. What was that like?

Speaker 2: 15:43

It's funny. I look at everything I've experienced with a lot of contemplation and I have seen a lot of my experiences be very build the trajectory of where I'm going. What's interesting is that I've had really negative experiences that have pushed me there, and I've had really positive ones too, and I try to take a step back from those experiences and look at what I've gained from them, whether they're negative or positive. So, for instance, one of the biggest pushers for me to jump into this entrepreneurial side of this, I always worked in a field where I was employed and I worked for the state and the federal government in what I was doing prior and I kept bumping this ceiling of I can't climb this because there's policies, there's procedures, there's guidelines, there's this, there's that. Granted, they were always tweaking and playing with them, but every time I tried to push against them I would meet resistance. Every time I was the squeaky wheel at all the meetings. I'm pretty sure the Department of health hates me. No, I'm joking Just not really.

Speaker 2: 16:48

But it finally dawned on me that I was trying to fit into a box that I should never have been in in the first place, and that was when I realized, ah, okay, I'm trying to make my own space in this box, but the box doesn't really want to contain me. I had to walk away from that and that really helped me, even though, in my personal opinion, the way that I had to walk away was not the best, and I had a huge part in that and they had a huge part in that. So it wasn't as I would have liked it to have been, but I've learned so much since then, and I've learned that each mistake I make is just an opportunity to learn how to do something differently and, hopefully, better. So that's really helped me. So I'd say, leaving that job, leaving the traditional forum, and it's not a space for everybody. Entrepreneurship is really not a space for everybody. It's ruthless. It really is. It's really ruthless, and I'm not a space for everybody.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Entrepreneurship is really not a space for everybody.

Speaker 2: 17:50

It's ruthless. It really is. It's really ruthless, and I'm not a ruthless person, so I try to do it to the best of my ability, with the integrity that I want to maintain intact. And I think it's really important for you to assess your value system when you're doing that, because here's the thing Over time, your values and your beliefs can change and in fact they do change. But if you don't know what they even are, how can you even start? How can you start on a journey that you know nothing about? And you're going to take a lot of hits before you keep moving and course correcting. And there's something I've been listening to recently which is very interesting A lot of people who see people in really high positions or who have gotten a lot of accolades or their career went boom and stuff like that, they often think it's one particular eureka moment or a particular twist of events that culminated in this wonderful opportunity, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 18:45

It's usually triggered on one thing that's what people think perceptively, but it's not true. It takes a lot of effort, and sustainable effort, and working through those progress and doing the menial tasks to the big stuff and not handing off those menial tasks to other people to just say look, I just want you to platform me. It really takes a lot of effort and a lot of genuine courage to maintain that progress and keep course correcting and keep acknowledging your mistakes. If you can't acknowledge your mistakes, stop right where you are. Stop, because you'll never get higher than you are right now if you can't own your mistakes and allow yourself to improve upon them.

Speaker 1: 19:33

I love. You've just mentioned that there's one of my mentors actually told me to that point every uber success you ever see, everybody who is the top of their game, is, on average, 15 years in the making. And these people who are successful whatever you define success as have slogged. They've been without sleep for days. They've been nearly broke, if not broke homeless. They've lost multiple businesses. They've lost nearly all their friends. They've failed forward, failed hard, but they've all got one thing in common To your point they've got back up and learnt, and they've learnt humility and how to rise above something that they originally thought was impossible. When you learn that the right way, when you learn that the right way, maybe you can speak to this in defining a situation where you bounce back from. Was that true in that instance? Can you share that?

Speaker 2: 20:37

I learned this lesson through death, so that's probably the hardest lesson anyone will ever have to learn, and I learned it through death, my experience and my history. I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and I learned pretty early on that humans could be really cruel. But humans could also be pretty heroic, and we still got a choice as to whether or not we chose to look at them heroically or evil cruelty. We get that choice. That's one of the few choices we have in life. And then, as I started to learn that lesson and I really acknowledged it for myself when I was a teenager I started to choose those paths more often than not, and I was like you know what? Here's what I'm witnessing here.

Speaker 2: 21:19

I don't want to be resentful of those poor experiences, of those pain-driven experiences like death. So I've had the loss of a lot of people in my life. I've lost my niece, lost my father, lost my mother lost my nephew lost my brother, lost my father-in-law, and those are just the top ones. If I went on, we'd be spending the rest of the episode talking about all those. So, when I was dealing with the dying experience, though, of my father and my mother, not just being a witness to their dying, but also being an active participant. And I don't mean killing them, I didn't kill them, I promise.

Speaker 1: 21:59

But I believe you thousands wouldn't.

Speaker 2: 22:01

While they died. I was their caregiver. I was their primary caregiver. I watched something that a lot of people shy away from witnessing or being a witness to or being a participant in, because we don't want to think about death, because it's the antithesis of what we're currently doing. It's also the only inevitability. We're all headed there. Unless somebody figures out how to stop us from aging like, truly stop us from death, we're all inevitably going to die.

Speaker 2: 22:30

And I started to realize that there were conversations around death that weren't being taken, that weren't taking place. And when I realized that those conversations weren't taking place, I was like, why do we have these conversations about? Oh, I don't want to talk about when you get older, it's not going to be for a long time. I don't want to talk about what we should do for you. I don't want you. No, we've got a long ways to go.

Speaker 2: 22:56

I realized how on earth could people actually say that, when any day, anything can happen to us and we're a lot closer to death than we realize. And it really taught me the most valuable lesson, which is that if we are now not if, but when we're inevitably facing death, the best thing we could do is prepare ourselves for it. And that lesson helped me realize I've got a lot more resiliency in me than I could ever have possibly imagined. Because if I can handle those deaths and come back, not just living the rest of my life but living with the ones I've lost by keeping them in my heart, moving forward, it changes everything I do because of the finite nature of living. And here's something that I'll never forget when my father passed, I had a friend come and visit and they gave me a card and in the card it said to live in the hearts of others is to never truly be gone.

Speaker 2: 23:51

And in that moment again I learned such a valuable lesson that as long as I figured out how I could help my parents and my loved ones and all of my loved ones live within me, they would never be gone and that energy would sustain beyond their mortal form. And that really helps me continue forward with all the lessons. And I'm still learning lessons from their deaths. I'm still learning lessons from what life and death really has to offer for us. But I fear that so many people are locked in the place of being incapable of moving forward that they don't realize that they're doing their loved ones a disservice because they're not living on with them. They're barely existing in spite of them, in spite of losing them.

Speaker 1: 24:45

I love this topic and that's because it's not addressed the way you've addressed it as much as it should be. And I know for a lot of people the losing or passing of somebody or transition of somebody is extremely painful. But, like you said, it should be celebrated and the celebration comes every day by living in the present and having the experience and having the privilege of lived with these people. And they're still, like you said, with you always. The experiences, the emotion, the love, the energy is still there. And I'm not going to go build for everybody today how the energy works and etc. But it's that feeling, it's that spark, that's the redefining moment. From going I've lost something to. I don't lose anything apart from the physical experience, but the memories are still there, the energy is still there, the love never goes Medium psychics, energy, exchange, that whole thing. We all have that capability, every single one of us. But if you're willing and brave enough to go and face that fear, yes, yes, and I want to talk about facing that fear.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Here's the thing that I've heard countless times, over and over again, from people who have loved their lost ones. I'm afraid that I think about them. I'm afraid that if I dwell on who they were to me and how much they meant to me and all of these things, that I'll lose myself. I'm afraid that the pain will be too much and I'll never get back up again. Here's the amazing thing about pain when you lean into it, really lean into it, just keep leaning as hard as it gets, as hard as it gets, it's like a pressure bubble and the more you lean, the more and suddenly, the more you keep pushing and leaning into it and let that pain come and let the tears come and lay in bed for the days that you need it to lay there, for eventually the bubble bursts. It cannot stay contained. The more you lean into it and I promise when the bubble bursts you'll find the gloriousness at the other side of it. You will find the magical quality of your memories. You're even looking at your hands and saying, wow, my hands look like my mom's hands, and just being able to see them in everything that's around you, when you listen to the wind brush by and you remember a moment with your mom or your dad or your sister, all of those things will come rushing back because here's what's happened. When you avoid the pain, you also mute the beautiful quality of who they were to you and what made up and crystallized their love. You don't want that to be muted because, yes, then the memories do fade. So when you lean into the pain, you burst that bubble. It comes back in glorious technicolor, in the most amazing sound and space and time, and it exists outside the bubble of your linear, chronological living. This is a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2: 27:46

I recently thought about Time. The way we perceive it usually is in the chronology of events that have taken place for us. A lot of times, when we're living our mundane lives, it seems, wow, that just passed by really fast. When an event that is shaped by excessive emotion whether that's pain, anger, sadness, like true, just absolute sadness when it's shaped by heavy emotions, strong emotions, it actually creates its own bubble. That takes its place out of time, out of the chronology of your living. It's one of the reasons why, when I think about my parents, to me it feels practically some days like yesterday was when I lost them, when, in fact, this year it will be. Oh, my dad's been gone since 2011. And my mother's been gone since 2015. In August it'll be nine years since she was gone and there are days where I feel like I could breathe her in, like it was yesterday.

Speaker 2: 28:46

So when we are able to press that bubble outside of the chronology of our time, of our living, with the emotions that are attached to it, it evokes its own really precious space, and that is so beautiful. And even the pain is beautiful, because it reminds us that we're living and we're existing. So I think it's really important to pull it out and to allow it to exist that way and to make space to jump into that bubble of time and live there for a bit. Relive your parents, relive your memories, relive your loved ones who you've lost, relive them in all of the feelings.

Speaker 2: 29:23

So that's something that I think some people sometimes get wrong. When they start talking to me about loss, they think that I've bypassed it, but I don't believe that grief is actually a process that has an end to it. I don't see it as an ending, so you can experience that loss just as fresh as if it happened the day before, and that's okay. But allow yourself again to be present in that pain, to really be with it. You'll burst through it and you'll experience it once again. You'll come out the other side with the beauties, the beautiful side of it.

Speaker 1: 29:55

I love that, I love that analogy, it's great. And for those people listening to this and going, what the hell is it? Because I've just tuned in, because this is quite a deep conversation. Again, pause, go outside, give your head a shake, go get a glass of water, come back and go and re-listen to this, because it's really crucial that you understand from an expert in the field of what she does.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Is this concept of living and pushing into, leaning into these things? Yes, it's can be scary and I want to talk offline about something that I put together and she you may be very interested in what I discovered along the way. Not here, it's not a conversation for here. Certainly, I want to touch on redefining failure as a fuel, because you touched on a couple of points earlier on where you perceived to be hit a rock bottom moment, but it actually accelerated you. Negative and positive does the same thing, but can you touch on or explain to the audience a perceived failure of a moment that was beyond you thought you'd never come back from at all and then, all of a sudden, something clicked and it accelerated your growth?

Speaker 2: 31:04

Outside of the deaths of my loved ones I have had. Okay, I'm going to get. I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to get real here. I am a sexual assault survivor and I was a teenager and it was my first experience with sex. This was the nineties. So I'm dating myself here. It's all good and there were a lot of preconceived notions about sex and premarital sex and there was a lot there and I definitely made a lot of wrong turns afterwards because I didn't own it. I didn't realize exactly what it was it was. I was dating the guy. I was really naive. There was a lot and I did a lot of damage to myself. In the coming years. I really did a lot of self-inflicted wounds because I didn't understand where they were coming from.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Were they physical wounds? Were you cutting yourself?

Speaker 2: 31:56

I was using my own body for sex, so that's the best way I can describe it.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Thank you for your time. It gives context to people who are actually listening to this. I want to reiterate that this is a safe space, yes, and I really respect and understand the severity and also the harshness of this through many other reasons. This is why this podcast exists, because I want people to have a safe space to air, and there is no judgment here. But your experiences may help somebody else, even if it's to reach out for help, if they reach out to you. That's what this is about.

Speaker 2: 32:36

I appreciate that and I agree. I think it's interesting when we get triggered by something that somebody else has gone through that's similar to an experience we've had. We do, and this goes the same way. We want to shy away from the pain because that's our body's natural survival mechanism is to say, ooh, that's painful, I'm gonna shy away from it. But there's a difference between pain and survival.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Teaching you something useful physical pain versus suffering, and we don't have to suffer with emotional pain on our own. So I wanted to make a caveat to the things about when I talk about dealing with pain, you shouldn't be doing it on your own. So when you lean into pain pain, you shouldn't be doing it on your own. So when you lean into pain, ensure that you have the support mechanisms you need so that you can sometimes need to be physically picked back up again. I literally almost fell at my mother's graveside and I had the support of others around me to hold, physically hold me up. So when I talk about my assault, I also want people to understand that, yeah, yeah, the emotional pain and the emotional scarring of it outside of the physical is so detrimental because even when the physical wounds heal, those emotional wounds are just continuously copiously bleeding. Here's the thing, though I learned that the only thing we people, we humans have is our autonomy. At the end of the day, you come into this world with your own body and you leave with your own body. When someone else pierces your autonomy, it creates a psychological and emotional wound unlike many others, because it leaves a scar that you can't always see. It leaves you with these emotional, traumatic pieces that you don't know how to quite put back together, because you say to yourself is my body truly not my own? You keep asking yourself that question, and if you go down that rabbit hole of thinking my body is not my own, then you start to think nothing is my own and you start to just give everything away freely, both your emotional bandwidth, your physical bandwidth, all of those things, because you think, well, just, I guess I'm not my own person, and it's a horrible thing to have to come to terms with.

Speaker 2: 34:44

So for me, taking it back to the idea of failure, I didn't perceive it at the time as failure, the event in and of itself. What I realized later on was that I had failed to pick up those pieces and figure out how they can fit back together. Well, because there's a saying a broken crayon still colors. But the thing is, when you see something break, you don't know how to figure out how to color with it again. It does take outside assistance and outside help in finding this place to be vulnerable with somebody else in non-judgment, who can help you realize that you can still color, and I think that was what I realized. It wasn't that I failed myself. It wasn't that I failed myself in the moment of the assault. It was that I failed to figure out how to piece myself back together again and I actually continued to break myself further apart until I realized that didn't have to define who I am for me to become successful.

Speaker 1: 35:43

I love that distinction. I want to add on to that For those people who think that you cannot change your identity or beliefs or values. We were touching this earlier. This is what I predominantly do with people. I go into a very safe space and, whether you're a fortune 500 ceo to people on the podcast, my passion is to go into the core of things and redefine all of these shitty things that happen to us and they they're just maybe not my new things, but the minute things make a huge difference and it's how you come out the other side of them.

Speaker 1: 36:21

You're not elevating others for your experience. It's not defined who you are. It's a part of your experience. But, like you and many others, you've made a passion out of doing what you love. But you're inspiring not just yourself and pushing yourself to these limitations, perceived limitations. You're going that extra mile when you're elevating others. What was the defining moment for you? Saying actually, this leaving the corporate world, leaving the health care and that I'm going to say a broken system because it is that you can sue me, I don't care. Um, whatever that defining moment from you leaving that going I am and identifying as a business owner, stroke operator at the time, because that's where you transition into as an owner and an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 37:13

How was that moment for you, how liberating was that it's funny because you said something before that I want to pinpoint. It's never one given moment. It can be, but not so for me. I have found that it's in many moments, and I think that's what I why I want people to understand. You get to choose how you perceive a moment, as opposed to just being defined by it and assuming that's correct because other people have said so.

Speaker 2: 37:41

For me, a couple of things that definitely stand out are how many clients I've gotten and primarily through word of mouth because people have worked with me and I've just focused on my clients without the thought this is for the intention of building more of my business, but rather given my clients my full, focused attention and seeing them actively succeed. I will say there's one client in particular that I felt I was being told by other coaches and other people oh, you should drop her as a client, et cetera, et cetera, and that was because she was struggling with. She didn't come out and tell it to me. I actually figured it out after a couple of sessions that she was in an abusive relationship as a coach and not with a therapeutic hat on. For me to be absolutely integral to my work as a coach, I need to ensure that I'm not dealing with an a traumatic situation for them, that we're always in pursuit of progress towards their goals. They need to be actively treading water to be able to progress. I don't want them in drowning mode. So, for anybody listening, if you have a coach who's putting on a therapist hat, now if they're clinically, if they have a clinic, that's fine, okay, but they need to also be identifying that if and it's really hard to do you cannot be a clinician and a coach at the same time. That's not appropriate. A clinician can utilize coaching strategies and methodologies and a coach can understand the behind the scenes stuff of the clinician, but that's not the strategies they should be utilizing with their client. So I always tell people look, if your client is actively, is in active distress, is dealing with past trauma that they really haven't dealt with, they need to be in pursuit of progress to be coaching with you. If they're not, then they really need a therapist.

Speaker 2: 39:38

Now, at the time, my client was actually seeing a therapist and coaching with me and that's fine, you can do that as long as the coach maintains their coaching aisle and as long as the therapist is in that. And then I realized that she was dealing with abuse and she wasn't even fully cognizant of it yet. She was identifying things. There were red flags popping up everywhere, but she hadn't even come to full awareness of it. And so I spoke with some other coaches because I wanted to get everybody's, I wanted to get people's take on it without revealing war, and they were like you should drop her's, not appropriate. Then our next session, I found out that her therapist dropped her and I realized that her therapist there's ethics around that, though there's a lot of my.

Speaker 1: 40:21

I know that because my wife's a therapist and she has, uh, nearly 20 years experience dealing with that. She's now a relationship coach many other things and you've just spent mentioned there. You've got to be careful of what hats you're wearing for what reasons, so I love this analogy. Yeah, I'm sorry. Please carry on.

Speaker 2: 40:43

What was yes to fast forward, though I realized that I did not feel comfortable dropping her as a client, but I refocused and I reintegrated, issued that she needs to find a new therapist. We validated the situation and everything, and I continued to work with her in coaching methodology to ensure that she moved forward, and she did. She moved forward with me. She was able to do what she needed to do to jump back on the board and get the right services she needed without feeling like I had cut a lifeline too.

Speaker 1: 41:14

I think that's carried as well, because not just for you as a care provider, wearing the hat and deciding what's in the best interest of her, rather than what a lot of coaches and service providers do, is go well. How's it going to benefit my back pocket? But the integrity that you have. This is why I like and I love interviewing people like yourself and it's about that integrity it's going. I can see all this, but I'm doing what's right. I'm not going to do what the therapist did, which was completely unethical, and you drop her. You took up the reins and you helped her through that. It says volumes about not just how you do business, but who you are as a person. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I don't like to drop the reins on people. So, granted, the other coaches, if you look at it from an objective standpoint, yes, they had a point right. What am I going to do with somebody who's in active distress and isn't even fully hyper aware of that circumstance, where she's actively trying to get herself out of it? So I really focused on what I could. I narrowed my focus with her to ensure that, okay, I cannot step on toes here that work outside of what is appropriate under the guidelines, under the code of ethics. I have to make sure that I'm maintaining that and I think it's really important to help people understand and, by the way, that was one of the things that definitely made me realize that I was in the right lane. But I realized that sometimes we think we need to be everything, when the reality is we just need to be something for someone, and if we can help identify what that something is, we can be. We can also help them identify what other resources and support they need. And it's really and I did this for so many years, even with my staff and with my art, with our clients and patients and whatnot and it's really important to help people figure that out.

Speaker 2: 43:08

But if you don't verbalize that, people will make a lot of assumptions. So it's the most vital thing to communicate what is and isn't appropriate. That is when you absolutely have to be fully transparent, lay it all out there for people in a kind way. I've had people. I had a client who told me this, and this was in my role as a speaker coach. She said Yerona knows how to tell you you suck without telling you. You suck when you're like saying, oh my gosh, you're so right, I totally suck and I will take everything you're telling me and I will fix that. And then suddenly you realize oh crap, because you don't have to be mean, but you still have to be true.

Speaker 1: 43:54

I love that analogy. I want to add on to that when people come and see me for business or mindset or a lot of other things, I will say to them very directly I'm completely opposite of you. I will just be pulling a China shot. Don't do that ever again. This is why, but I will say to them them, don't come and see me for a relationship problem.

Speaker 1: 44:16

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, of that person where you can sit down with me and tell me what's happening and what affairs you're going. Whatever's going on, I am not the relationship guy and I will openly say that to anybody. Go and see so-and-so. I've got a referral network a mile long. Please go and see them. I cannot fix what you are going through if it's a relationship, an intimate relationship, marital or boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever the situation is these days, not that person. But I'm direct with them and I find that approach works better than being indirect and going around the bush, because I know where they stand with me. And I find that approach works better than being indirect and going around the bush, because I know where they stand with me. But that's my personality.

Speaker 1: 44:58

But I'm kind and loving when you do it, but I've had mentors in the past that have already. They've come out of left field and they've taught me some of the skills and I use today. Nothing's come from just out there. I've learned the same as you have. Has there been any mentors that have just come like I've had? I'm saying I'm sure this is your case. They've just come from left field and gone. We're going to do this today and this is how we're going to. I'm going to help you and they've actually helped you with some unlikely tools. Have you got any mentors like that you'd like to share?

Speaker 1: 45:39

I do, and some of them are indirect mentors. And some of them? Do you want me to name them, or do you?

Speaker 2: 45:41

want me to just tell you about them. It's funny I have mentors in the everyday. How I see mentorship is not in that strategic. Okay, we're going to have an agreement where we're mentoring, I'm your mentor, et cetera, et cetera. So I've learned a lot from my own, from my mentees, as much as they've taught me, and there are certain ones who I would say that I've listened to.

Speaker 2: 46:04

Okay, so I've been listening to the audio book. I am now on my fourth go-round of listening to this audio book that tells you something about it. It's Mogadad who wrote solve for happy, and it's okay. The math geek in me loves that. He uses mathematical equations and analysis to figure out how to solve for the happiness equation, and it's so beautiful and even prove intelligent design and all sorts of wonderful things. So I love taking things both from the theoretical, like from the more esoteric place and space that a lot of times people feel is intangible, and taking things from the tangible side of the world and just building the bridge to bridge that divide. And I think Mo does that so beautifully. He bridges that wonderful divide and it's magical, in a way that you can truly understand it, because this is something I've heard before and I'm going to tell people this over and over again Simplicity doesn't equate to stupidity.

Speaker 2: 47:03

Simplicity equates to distilled wisdom. When somebody that you admire can distill the knowledge they have and provide it to you in a way that you're like, oh, I totally get that. Yeah, that makes so much sense. That's when you know you've met a master. When you are listening to somebody who needs an entire 30 minutes to explain something they haven't mastered their knowledge enough. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, does this really well. I am not an astrophysicist by any means, but he has a way to explain things and makes and you're like what? Oh, I understand that. Wow, that's the thing of a true master. They can explain something with simplicity, they can pare it down so that anybody anywhere can understand it.

Speaker 2: 47:56

I do this with children because here's the thing Children are sponges. My son is six. My goodness, he is a sponge and he can pick up things and he is so wise, but he is wise with his unlimited capacity for learning. Where I am wise is in the experiences I've had, and I want to tell this to parents because I think this is really vital.

Speaker 2: 48:21

If you go based on one or the other, you do both yourself and your children a disservice.

Speaker 2: 48:27

If you say my child is my teacher, they teach me everything, you're doing them the disservice of not handing them the knowledge of your experience.

Speaker 2: 48:35

If you say my experience is the teacher and you will listen to me because I know better and I have all this wisdom and knowledge and experience from living here longer on the planet, you do yourself and your child a disservice to not be able to learn with and from each other. So I always say that if you're looking for a great mentor or a great mentee, the best thing you can do is admire that person's capacity for learning and for being the learned, and when you do that, then you can actually start to both learn from them and teach them and work with each other. Because my hope for myself is that when I get into my old, ripe old age, I will turn around and I will go oh, I know absolutely nothing. I need to keep learning. That's my hope for the world that everybody keeps working towards the pursuit of learning. Because the more you learn, the more you realize you really know very little.

Speaker 1: 49:29

I love that. That's beautiful. You mentioned the future and a couple of things that you're up to. I know them, but I really want you to share with the audience because I think they're quite exciting and I'm up for learning. I'm always up for learning. Would you please share the couple of things you've got going on? I know you've got a talking and coaching speaking event coming out. You've got a book, also another one, because you're just an avid author. You can't get enough books going out there. I will keep going. Yeah, please share.

Speaker 2: 49:55

As I said, busy person here. I have my podcast which is called the Evolution of Parenting, and that one is already what's currently going. I've recorded a whole slew of those. I have my book. My parenting book is, as I said, unspoken Signals, but I'm actually launching an ebook prior to that which is going along with my parenting coaching program.

Speaker 2: 50:15

My parent coaching program is really designed to be asynchronous, so that means, for those of you who don't know, that parents can do it on their own time Instead of having to attend a regular class. They have the options that they can tweak to their needs, because parents are busy and sadly, they often think that the last thing they need to do is brush up on their parenting skills. But I promise you, when you brush up on your parenting skills, everything else you do in the world, everything else, starts to fall better into place. So that program is launching in June and I'm not yet taking pre-registration, but I'm probably going to become mid May. So that's a program and it's a modular program, so people get to do the modules on their own, and then there's office hours all sorts of wonderful other pieces to that puzzle.

Speaker 2: 51:07

Then I'm also launching a program that I consider calling. I want to say it's a master mastering the art of communication and in fact, that's what I did call it. So it's launching in the fall, because I'm being extremely strategic for how I'm launching it and this is really designed for primarily for novice speakers. However, I really feel that anyone anywhere who needs to master how they're communicating whether they're in leadership positions, parents, people who have any kind of authority, anywhere from teachers to CEOs can learn how the art of communicating Because, like I said earlier, it's all in the how we say what we say, not just what we say that gets through to people I love that you run a, and is there anything that you before we go?

Speaker 1: 51:58

I love this question because I always have to ask it. If there was a movement, you could start today, and that this encompass anything from the imagination that you can pull in. There's no limits on this. What, what would that movement?

Speaker 2: 52:10

be Definitely people to think before they say something, and learning that we are, by nature, a species of change. If change is the only constant in our world, we have to be willing to be flexible, to learn nuance, to learn context and to achieve balance, to move with the change rather than resisting it. Change as a momentum, as a movement, learning how to go with it. I think that would be the most beautiful thing, because then we could probably solve a lot of the world's problems.

Speaker 1: 52:43

That would be very nice, wouldn't it? Thank you very much for joining me. If you're interested in working with your Honour, please check out the links below. They will all be in there. Go and see her on the social media and would you please share verbally so everybody's got it, but they'll also be in the links below where you can go and connect with her, have a conversation, go and check out courses, go and check out what she's doing in the world, because she's truly amazing and it is a privilege. Thank you very much for joining me today thank you so much for having me, boss.

Speaker 2: 53:18

I am so thrilled and honored to be here with you.

Speaker 1: 53:21

It has been such a pleasure the pleasure and privilege is mine, I will assure you for myself. Please share the podcast, go and inspire somebody's day. If you liked it, leave a little review. It's nice because it helps the program go grow and it's free for myself. I love you all. Thank you very much for joining us today. Until the next time, my friends, live with purpose and, as always, inspire with legacy. Talks you very soon.