Annie [00:00:02]:
Hello everyone and welcome back to the whole assistant podcast. I have a very special guest. Lisa, will you please introduce yourself to my audience? Lisa is also my community manager Inside Empowered Seat. But we're going to have a conversation today. But before we get started, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and give everyone a bit more knowledge about you.
Lisa Philyaw [00:00:22]:
Hey everyone, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. My name is Lisa Philia. I've been the community manager over with whole assistant and before that have been a life coach. Gosh, I guess it's been since as I'm like looking back now, it's been since 2018, it's been a little while. And have always been interested and fascinated in psychology and coaching was really a natural next step for me with that.
Annie [00:00:51]:
Yeah. So Lisa and I went through the same coach training to the life coach school and she also coaches in my program as well. Just by the very nature of her being present on the calls and helping my people and all that sort of stuff, helping the whole assistant community and the Empowered Seat community. And she is a great resource. So if you join Empowered Seat, you will get to know Lisa. Today we are talking about the subject of the month with in an Empowered Seat, which is how to coach yourself through any situation. And I have to say this podcast episode and this month inside Empowered Seat is the most coaching coach like content you will ever hear probably on the podcast. But I do feel like it's a worthwhile conversation.
Annie [00:01:42]:
There's so much value I have received in coaching myself. There's so much resilience and resourcefulness and all that that is created whenever you develop the skill of being able to coach yourself. I. I'm also a big fan of getting outside input and having someone else help walk you through your thoughts as well. But I have to say I have walked myself through some very interesting and challenging situations in my life as a result of developing the skill of self coaching. So Lisa, would you just share about your own personal experience coaching yourself and a little bit maybe even about what you go into inside the training inside Empowered Seat this month?
Lisa Philia [00:02:25]:
Yeah, yeah, I would love to. And before I go there, I just want to say the magic of coaching yourself, it's sometimes lost in translation because I think what happens is we see other people's actions, we see how they show up and we see the results that they create, but we don't really see how they get there. And so we come up with our own made up versions of why we think People get where they get and we, if we don't really stop to ask ourselves, well, what, what was their approach to that? Or what was even my own approach to creating the results in my life? We miss out on the magic of our own self coaching. I mean, those listening to this are interested in personal growth, personal development, professional growth too. So they are probably doing some sort of coaching process. They just, they don't really know what it is yet. And so the, the hope and the desire for this podcast episode that, that I'm coming with and also within the training in Empowered C is to help create a little awareness for how we do tend to coach ourselves. There's a framework that I share in there that came from the life coach school and then also draws from, it's called the cognitive triangle as well, in order to help us understand what results we're creating and how we got there.
Lisa Philia [00:03:40]:
And so I, I began this journey as I mentioned, I started coaching in 2018. But really what, what started was it was the night before my wedding and everything was set. Everyone was in town and I was in this hotel room by myself. And I realized, okay, there's nothing more for me to do other than fall asleep. And it seems like the easiest thing in the world. You just close your eyes and you drift off to dreamland and then you wake up on your wedding day. That is not what happened. I've never had a night where I didn't sleep before.
Lisa Philia [00:04:16]:
And the first night I had that happen was the night before my wedding. And I just went into this crazy anxiety spiral that took me down. Thoughts about basically a huge shame spiral too, of everyone's here, how come I can't just fall asleep? What's wrong with me? This is the simplest job in the world. How will I impact my wedding day? And it was all about me. And it was all this self frustration, self flagellation really. And it made it so I didn't sleep the whole night. And my wedding ended up going quite beautifully. It kind of just felt like I had a little bit of.
Lisa Philia [00:04:54]:
I don't know if I can say this on your podcast. I felt a little bit buzzed without having any alcohol or anything to drink because I hadn't slept. And so then that day went beautifully. But what happened was every big event I had, I went through this spiral of anxiety and then self frustration, self criticism to the point where I was starting to turn down events with friends. I was considering leaving my job that I loved because I just didn't know if I could handle the press and it was on and on and on. And I realized something had to change. Like either I need to change the outward life or I need to change. So I decided, okay, I don't want to change my life.
Lisa Philia [00:05:32]:
I want to change me and let that allow me to show up the way I want to. And so I found a coach, Jody Moore, you might know of her, she had a membership. She also is a life coach, school alumni. And she coached me in a group coaching call. And she said, what if not sleeping was not a problem? Which is a thought that I couldn't believe in that moment. But I didn't have to believe it. I just had to believe in the possibility that it could exist. And what that did is it.
Lisa Philia [00:06:03]:
It didn't just change my ability to fall asleep, because then I was. I was actually okay. I was. I was able to take myself down that road each night to the point where it let me calm down and then, ironically, I could sleep. But I allowed myself to see that as this opportunity, that if I could change that, what else could I do? And from that point, I went a whole year without eating chocolate. And chocolate was my go to emotional crutch. So I did that. I ran a half marathon.
Lisa Philia [00:06:34]:
I got promoted in my role and I just kept seeing these different results that I could create. And it wasn't this major outward shift that was like one moment of a leap. It was more so these micro thought experiments that I played with myself that I then took action on that allowed me to change, change my life through changing me first.
Annie [00:06:59]:
Yeah, that is just so powerful. And this just goes to prove that how we're choosing to think about things does play a role in outcomes. And I have a mindset training that I walk people through the process of like leveling up their mindset. But I will also say I love this lens of taking ownership of ourselves and coaching ourselves through any situation. I know for me, I was giving away so much of my personal power to circumstances prior to discovering that I could stand in my own power in any situation through the process of self coaching and taking full ownership of my contribution to any situation and deciding on purpose how I was going to show up for any situation. And the situation that stands out the most in my head right now as we're talking about this is giving birth. And my mom was big into this idea of like, you're made for this, you've got this. It's not that big of a deal.
Annie [00:08:04]:
Yes, on social media, in the media, like people talk about birth as being like this painful thing. This painful experience. She's like, it's a moment in time. If you actually allow yourself to sink into that discomfort, everything goes so much more smoothly. And you've got this, like, you're strong and you can. You're capable, and you can make. You can do this. And I did not go into my birth, either one of them with a plan.
Annie [00:08:29]:
Like, I wasn't bent on no drugs. I wasn't bent on no. No medication or anything like that. But I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna go in curious. I'm gonna go in curious about myself and just see what I can handle, see what I can manage. And I was actually able to manage it without any pain medication, anything. I was just able to give birth naturally. And to me, that was such a big flex.
Annie [00:08:57]:
So it will be like, oh, my gosh, I did this. I did this. And this is a result I created. Not being tied to that result, like, I totally would have had. I felt the need to gotten a. Gotten, you know, an epidural or whatever, but I was just curious about what my body was capable of and what it would do if I let it. And I think that that was really empowering for me in the moment. And I have no judgment at all for anybody who wants to get an epidural, for anybody who wants to go any route.
Annie [00:09:32]:
Like, it's an individual choice, an individual decision. And like I said, I totally would have gotten the drugs had I felt I needed to and had I felt that discomfort. But I think it was allowing myself to sink into the discomfort in the moment and being open and curious about what was possible or what I was capable of. And I find when I approach things from that vantage point, I am so, so much more resourceful and resilient than I ever previously gave myself credit for. And I think just that curiosity alone around, I wonder what would happen if I approached it this way. I wonder what would happen if I just changed this thought or like, leveled up the way I'm thinking about this and was just more curious. And I find that curiosity is a huge tool when it comes to self coaching.
Lisa Philia [00:10:22]:
I love that you share that story because it also is reminding me of the birth story that I had. And I did not come in with curiosity. My plan had been to do a full natural, and what I called natural was a hospital birth without an epidural. And that's not what happened. I ended up going into, honestly was the most immense pain I've ever had in my entire life. And in that moment, what I needed. What I believed I needed was the epidural. And so I then allowed myself to do that and to get the epidural.
Lisa Philia [00:10:59]:
But what I realized now, looking back, because I did, I honestly took, it took a lot of time for me to integrate and process that that decision was okay because it wasn't my plan. And I did want to manage my mind to the point where I could come with this precognated plan and just follow it to a T. But what I lacked in that adventure or that perspective was remembering the human that would be going through the experience. It's easy to come to a plan when you're separate from the situation. But when you're in the situation and you're feeling the pain and you're experiencing the emotions and you don't know what's going to happen, how can you meet yourself in those moments? And I think that's where knowing how to stay in access of yourself or even beyond yourself, whatever you believe from a higher power perspective is so crucial. And so I love that the idea here is that you have to come to a decision and stick to it non stop. There is flex in there and there's flow and your curiosity. Such an example of how you did that and that emotion and how that worked for you.
Lisa Philia [00:12:06]:
And I think for me, just as I'm listening to this, and one thing I'm taking from it here is being curious for those situations that don't go the way you plan them to go either. And how can you help yourself see the beauty in that too? And so for me, I learned so much about my own perspective on drugs and healthcare and our whole medical arena and what spirituality really means to me when you're in that amount of pain. And it was transformative and worked. I made it work for me. But even though in the moment it didn't feel that great. So sometimes the coaching comes afterwards too.
Annie [00:12:41]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think especially for those of us who are dealing with situations where we don't have all the control because it's outside of ourselves, like we're, we're coming up against executives who we have to deal with, we're coming up against colleagues and co workers, we have to deal on a consistent basis and how do we navigate those situations and really staying in touch with what I like to refer to as your inner Spidey sense or your inner North Star or that like Holy Spirit, whatever you want to call that part of you that intuitively understands the next step and leaning into that piece of self trust in order to be able to actually access and hear that voice and really relying on it can be paramount to success. And I think for a long time, I didn't trust myself to be able to hear it. And so I relied on outside sources to be able to point me in the right direction when what I needed was to trust myself on a whole new level and to access my inner knowing and access what I knew to be right in that moment. Or for what? For any situation. Right. Because I feel like the only time, like I've gotten really burned, and I think actually my burnout story happened as a result of lack of self trust and lack of staying in touch with what I needed in the moments in. In certain moments throughout that journey to the point where the universe was like, no more reset button.
Annie [00:14:12]:
We were done, like, end of, end of scene. Now we're going to start over. We're going to start from the ground up. We're going to build our lives back up. And part of that was really leaning into. Part of the success of building my life back up was really leaning into trusting myself to know that I could hear from God, to know that I could hear from the divine and universe, to know that I could access that and trust that. And that was really a challenge for me at first. And now that I have mastered it, I mean, I've created so many amazing results, and I have really leveled up every area of my life.
Annie [00:14:52]:
And it's such a great skill to hone, and it's such a great skill to have. So, Lisa, if somebody is new to the work of self coaching, where would you have them start?
Lisa Philia [00:15:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. So what. What really helped me in the beginning was the question, is this a thought or is it a fact? I mean, it's such a simple question, but what I realized is how many things I believed to be true were false facts. That they were my interpretation, my lens of the situation at hand. Even things like, my boss is always late. That's not really a fact. The fact might be that your boss came five minutes after the scheduled meeting time.
Lisa Philia [00:15:40]:
You call that late? Maybe in your boss's world, that's right on time. Who knows? So when I ask myself, is this a thought or a fact? What it does is it shows me my power. Cause back to your point earlier about trying to change the circumstance, you can't always do that. You can't always change what's outside of you. And a fact is the circumstance that you find yourself in, but you always can change your thoughts. So when I stopped labeling thoughts as facts, it gave me those thoughts back to my own power and it gave me control over that aspect. And it's not that you need to control your thoughts, it's more so which thoughts you focus on, where do you shine your focus, what do you lean
Annie [00:16:22]:
into versus what you are trying to avoid?
Lisa Philia [00:16:27]:
Yeah.
Annie [00:16:27]:
And I also feel like a huge piece of this is actually sitting with and processing through emotions. Because for me a big barrier to my success and self coaching was the I was trying to skirt around all the discomfort that I was feeling in that moment. And there are kind of two ditches with this. There is the ditch that goes into self pity and wallows and then there is the ditch that's like, oh, this feels uncomfortable. I'm gonna try and think a new thought so I don't have to experience this discomfort. I'm gonna get out of this discomfort by like trying to adopt a new way of thinking about this and I'm just gonna think positive. And both ditches are not advantageous or not helpful to you in your long term growth. So for me and for a lot of us, a lot of the people that I coach who are high performers, we tend to be the people who try to avoid the emotion instead of allowing the emotion to pulse through our body instead of processing, instead of allowing that charge to lessen and dissipate, it won't always go away.
Annie [00:17:32]:
But allowing that charge to kind of relieve itself and, and come to some kind of understanding of where we're at currently. I just find that that is such a useful skill to be able to sit with and process through the emotion as opposed to try and skirt around it. And I think also I want to touch on something that you brought up a while ago when you were talking about people judging themselves and all of that. That is a whole other added layer that we can just decide to stop.
Lisa Philia [00:18:06]:
Yeah, yeah. I remember one of the things that I did as part of that process to, to get that self judger not working against me was I sat down and I did a fireside chat with, with myself. I had anxious Annie, which is what I named my anxiety. And I had refined Rhonda, which was my frustration because it, it was like all tight and inward facing. So it looked refined. Anyway, so I had a conversation with these aspects of myself. I asked it, what was your goal? What are you looking for? What do you need? And I approached it from this point of assuming that. But those emotions were working for me.
Lisa Philia [00:18:43]:
Annie and Rhonda weren't against me, they just were trying to help me in A way that was not helpful. And so this got me back to the source of what their purpose was. And I was able to see, okay, both of them had, it was to keep me safe and to keep me successful. Were the, were the two really themes that came up? And so then from that point I asked those emotions, hey, here, here's what I need from you. Can you do that for me? And I asked them to stand down. I asked them to have a little more self compassion for each other. I asked them to allow me to drive. Because we are not our emotions.
Lisa Philia [00:19:21]:
Even though we say, oh, I'm anxious or I'm disappointed, whatever it is, it's just that feeling, that vibration in the body. It's our signal, not, not our affect or not really who we are.
Annie [00:19:34]:
Yeah, I do like this idea or notion which you've alluded to around our emotions being guides. Typically there's some underlying need that is needs to be met in order for the emotion to relieve itself. And the one emotion that I regularly bring up on this podcast that I love to experience is resentment. Because resentment is always an indicator that I have not used my voice, that I need to speak up, that I need to either enact a boundary or set something straight or rightfully place a relationship or something like that. It's, it's, it's an indicator that an action needs to be taken that I'm either too afraid to take or avoiding. And so I love resentment for that reason. But if we can view our emotions as guides and as starting points. I had a priest when I was working at St John's Cathedral.
Annie [00:20:34]:
He leaned in a mystic, like Christian mysticism. And he went to Thailand and spent several months sitting with the Buddhist monks in Thailand. And he was always the first to get up and leave. And one time his friend who was a Buddhist monk was sitting there and he's like, he actually asked him, he's like, well, if you leave so early, when do you get the opportunity to stay, speak with your dragons? And I also love the idea of interacting with your emotions and creating that level of disconnect from your emotions to where you can have conversations with them, which essentially that's what the dragon is. It's an emotion that you're experiencing and trying to avoid that you actually need to sit with and get curious about and ask why it's there. And I just find that such a powerful visualization in terms of really releasing the judgment and getting at the root of why the emotion is there to begin with and addressing that root issue. And look I'm not a big, I'm not a big fan of rushing the process. Like, I'm still dealing with some things from last year's divorce.
Annie [00:21:48]:
I'm still dealing with some, some feelings and different things as I kind of come to a new equilibrium in my life. And I'm still experiencing some emotions around some things not directly related to the divorce, but ancillary. And I'm finding it fascinating. I have no self judgment around those emotions. I'm like, this is where I'm at and I'm not wallowing in them, but this is my reality and I'm slowly working through to some sort of resolution. I have a therapist, I've got coaches, I've got support in my life to be able to help me navigate these things. But I do think that if we can make space for all the inner workings of us and make space for the emotions and the thoughts and the realities of what we're going through and release the initial judgment that we have about those things are going to flow so much easier and so much smoother towards our, towards growth and towards meeting the next level version of ourselves that can be just so fun to do. And I'm always excited to meet my next version.
Annie [00:23:00]:
I'm always excited to like lean in and there again decide on purpose what emotions to lean into, decide on purpose what thoughts I'm going to onboard as truth and setting aside or making space for the other thoughts but not giving them a whole lot of attention to be able to make that next version of myself more a reality. Yeah.
Lisa Philia [00:23:24]:
And, and I love the way you're pointing out too that these, these things aren't just a checkbox. Emotions and the processing even of past situations in the way that I approached them, it does feel cyclical. You know, it's that, oh, and here it comes again. And here it comes again. But usually that next layer, it's like when you watch a movie, you see things that you haven't seen the first time you saw goes deeper and deeper and deeper. So the, the release is deeper and deeper. Deeper. And the wisdom can be deeper and deeper.
Lisa Philia [00:23:55]:
Deeper too.
Annie [00:23:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you listening, I know this, this episode is unlike any podcast episode I've ever produced before. And it's just a couple of coaches like riffing on coaching and riffing on how coaching can. And self coaching can be a powerful tool in your life. I understand that this is a different podcast episode, but if you are curious on how to leverage self coaching, I would highly encourage you to join us for this month inside Empowered Seat. And if you're listening to this podcast episode after the fact, it will be in a Replay section, so you can come and listen. And this is one training that I would listen to on repeat, especially if this work was new to me, because you will pick up different things every time you listen to the replay.
Annie [00:24:44]:
And I will say that for me personally, this work has been so transformative in my life, and I've created so many results that I never previously thought possible through this work. So please come join us. And I think as of the time of this recording, we still have a discussion session coming up, and we still have a coaching session this Friday coming up. So if you. If you're listening to this the day it comes out, please join us and join. Join the coaching session. And if you want help, you want actual coaching, Empowered Seed is where it's at, too, because we hop on calls where you can get actual feedback and you can get actual help getting unstuck. So, Lisa, can you please share with my audience where to find you and how to connect with you?
Lisa Philia [00:25:33]:
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn with my name there. We can. Can we put that in the show notes?
Annie [00:25:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Philia [00:25:41]:
Okay, perfect. And then I also have a website, beliefseed.com but you also can find me in Empowered Seat. So that. That's probably the best place to find me and where you'll get the most support that you're looking for here. And I just. I want to share, too, about the coaching calls if you can't come live. Honestly, some of the best coaching that I've got is me listening to a replay in the car on the way home from work. Because when I do that, my.
Lisa Philia [00:26:08]:
My mind isn't defensive because it's what it's listening to someone else and their problem. So that egoic part of me kind of takes a backseat, doesn't feel challenged, and then the insights sink in almost more easily because I haven't made it about me, so I don't get defensive. So I hear it at such a direct layer that I'm able to gain so much value from. So even if. If you're listening and you're like, I don't know if I can make the calls or I don't know if I can commit to that. All you need to do is allow yourself the opportunity to. To have the space to join. Whether it's replay, whether it's just being in the community, knowing that you've done that for yourself is a gift is is you showing up for you.
Annie [00:26:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm gonna go into this next week on the podcast because I'm going to be sharing all about how to get the most out of memberships and my own personal experience with memberships. And I'm a few, I'm a member of a couple memberships currently that I get so much value from and I seldom show up live to call. So there you go. And how to approach memberships so that you aren't judging yourself and self flagellating if you would love to participate and love to join but you don't feel like you have a whole lot of bandwidth and also going to share the intention behind Empowered Seed and how it's meant to be a stress free experience and how it's meant to really be something for you that will resource you in your career. So please join us for next week's episode where I'll be covering that. But thank you so much, Lisa for joining me today and for having this conversation and yeah, I mean I think we're crushing it inside Empowered Seed.
Annie [00:27:54]:
I'm so thankful to have you as my community manager and having having your coaching experience also on some of the calls is very helpful as well. So everybody have a great rest of your day. And that is all for now.
Lisa Philia [00:28:09]:
Thank you.
