Ep #192: Calming Fight or Flight and Holding Space

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 192. A few weeks ago, I was hosting the 2K for 2K weekly coaching call and I shared some thoughts having come back from maternity leave. I’d been thinking about my journey and my capacity to hold space for my son’s crying and the journey a life coach goes on to make money and how those were correlated. And I wanted to share that conversation with you today. I really think it is the skill set that will make your first dollars and every dollar after that.

And then I want to invite you to join 2K for 2K. We have an entire module devoted to teaching you to hold space or the selling world, I call this clean selling, so being clean in your mind when selling is how you hold space for someone to make a financial decision that involves you. It’s so important to be unbiased and in service for your client. And as you are about to learn, how you know you are doing this, how you would know you are holding space or not is by how you feel.

Your emotional world will tell you everything you need to know about your effectiveness as a coach and your effectiveness at holding space and selling. So here we go, let’s dive into this conversation I just had with my 2K students.

If you have not listened to the guest podcast hosts that we have been hosting every couple of weeks I just want to highly suggest that you do. I have been listening to them now that I am back from maternity leave. This is what we did. We asked some people, I have been following along some of my clients’ journeys and we just invited them to come guest host and I told them what the topic would be based on what they have been working on in their own coaching.

And all I gave them was an idea or a concept like getting intimate with negative emotion. I didn’t give them any guidance. I didn’t tell them what to talk about and I didn’t listen to them before they went live. We didn’t have any sort of approval process. They submitted to us the recording and we aired it.

And what’s been so fun is as I’ve been listening to them, these are things I teach, hearing it from their lens. This is also by the way for all of you such a good representation of how even if you were to go out and teach someone else’s work or you’re influenced by someone else’s work, you could literally do, if you’re a business coach and you did this entire 2K process. Sometimes you guys are afraid as business coaches to actually go through the process of 2K or 200K because you don’t want to be influenced and you’re afraid then your work will look exactly like mine.

But I have been hearing things that I have been teaching for years said in these episodes in a way that feels like I’ve never heard it before. Completely different and it’s been blowing my mind, the things that have been said, I mean I just listened to Paige Bowman’s if you haven’t listened to it. Again, you’ve got to listen to all of them, they’re so amazing, my mind has been transformed. So, I wanted to just offer that to you all, make sure you’re listening to them.

But I’ve been thinking about you, and this is what I want to offer you today as well. And then we’re going to dive into the coaching. You all know I just had a baby and have gone on the first time mother journey. And something I want to offer you that as I approached 12 weeks postpartum, 12 week with my baby that I want to offer you is that the hardest part ends. It does get easier. So, for those of you, some of you all come in and you make your 2K back in 24 hours.

You sign up and you’re like, “I signed up and then someone reached out and wanted to pay me for coaching.” But some of you all, it takes a couple of months. It might take longer than a couple of months. And I just want to offer that our brains want to believe that however long it took us to make the first 2K is how long it’s going to take you to make the next 2K, or how long it takes you to make your first 25K is how long it’s going to take to make the next 25K. And that’s not true.

The hardest part does end, it does get easier. So, the first 12 weeks of having my baby, especially the first month and two months were the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. For those of you that are moms, you know what I’m talking about, or dads, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Did not think I would survive through it, it was intense. And now as I look back, we’re getting in a groove, things are happening, they’re working out. It’s just something about it is so different.

So that’s the first thing I want to offer is that however long it took you to make your first 2K, it’s not going to take that long or be that hard as you make more money. The other thing I want to offer is that the hardest part, and I’ve really seen this mirrored to me in my journey as a mother, the hardest part is for you all in this journey is clean selling and holding space. That’s the hardest thing. When you get it you’re going to make so much more money for every minute you’re in your business after that.

And so, I’ve noticed that on my journey as well, for me the hardest part has been holding space for my baby to cry. In the beginning it would literally, I would wail when he cried. We would be driving in the car, he didn’t like driving in the car so he would be screaming, his face would be turning beet red, and I would be wailing with him. His crying would send me into fight or flight. It would be the most aggressive fight or flight response I’ve ever had in my life when he would cry.

My poor husband would be like, “What is happening right now?” It didn’t affect him the same way that it affected me. But what I notice with you all, when you all are in consults and someone gives you an objection, it sends you into fight or flight. And when we’re in fight or flight, I just want to offer that we aren’t our highest selves. Our brain literally goes back to responses that we developed as children when we were in fight or flight situations as children. So, we literally become emotional children when we go into fight or flight. And so, you will react with that way in some way.

So, it will be fighting, so you’ll be combative with your client, it will be flighting which means you will just be like, “Okay, bye, let me know if you ever change your mind.” Or you might freeze in which there’s silence, you have no idea what to say, you stumble. All of those things are completely normal if they’re happening to you, especially on consults.

When a client says something that you’re not expecting, and you experience a very strong negative emotional response in your body I just want you to know that that is completely normal. And what will happen as you work through that, especially now that you’re in 2K, you have the tools to do that. As you work through that, what will happen is eventually you will not have the same fight or flight response when you are on a consult. I was actually walking my baby the other day and he started screaming.

And it was the first time you all in 12 weeks where he was screaming, and I was completely calm in my body. I just want to offer that for you all. There will be a time where you will be on a consult and someone will offer you something that would have normally caused fight or flight in your body, a negative emotion that is very difficult to think beyond that negative emotion. You have a negative emotion that happens in your body, and you literally don’t have the capacity to think and formulate a sentence because your body is so filled with negative emotion.

Sometimes that happens for you all when they say, “I can’t afford it”, or they say, “Oh my God, that’s so expensive.” And your body just goes into the most intense negative emotion. There will be a time where that does not happen for you, when you do enough consults, and we’re going to talk about, I’m going to give you just a couple of little pointers as well to focus on when that does happen. But there will be a point where that does not engage your fight or flight response anymore, where you will feel calm, and your emotions will feel very separate from theirs.

They will not feel tied. Your emotions will not, you won’t have a response to their response. You will not be tied in together. That is the number one thing you have to work on in this 2K process and in your business to make money is disengaging, not shutting off your emotions but just disengaging your emotions from anything your client could be experiencing emotionally or saying to you, whether it’s in the coaching, whether it’s in the objections.

What your job is going to be is you have to grow your emotional capacity to feel negative emotion and to feel anything that comes up and to work through your fight or flight response to where it just stops happening. You start holding space. And so, I was thinking about how can I explain to you all holding space? And for me the two things that happen when you’re holding space and you’re not going into fight or flight is sufficiency and safety for you. You feel safe and you feel sufficient.

So, I’ve been working on that in my own brain with my baby when he cries. I create thoughts for me of I feel safe, and he is safe. And he doesn’t have to be doing anything other than screaming right now. What he’s doing screaming, that is okay. We are both filled up in this moment even if he’s screaming. So, you creating sufficiency for you when it comes to money, when someone says, “I can’t afford it and you’re trying to make a sale”, you have to find sufficiency in that moment.

When someone tells you no and Melissa Parsons talks about this on You Are Not Your Offer. You have to find disconnect between your self-concept and who you are and your worth with someone saying yes to you. If your emotional worth, your self-worth is tied into someone saying yes to you you’re going to go immediately into fight or flight. You’re going to go immediately into you aren’t safe. You’re going to go immediately into you’re being rejected, really strong negative emotions.

But when you feel safe, when someone tells you no, when you feel safe when a baby’s crying, when you can create that safety for yourself you’re going to have access to another level of thinking that you didn’t have access to before. You’re going to have access to deeper questions that you can ask your clients. You’re going to have access to more sufficient responses to your client to where they don’t feel like you’re being salesy with them and pushing them in a negative way.

That is your number one job in this program. So, if you have not done that, if you have not gone to the clean selling modules and really dove in to creating sufficiency and safety for yourself no matter what happens on a consult, no matter how your client presents, no matter what they say, no matter their objections, no matter how they’re feeling, no matter what happens in that space. When you create sufficiency and safety and you never go into fight or flight, that is when you’re going to start signing clients 100%.

So, while you’re working on this, just make sure a couple of things. Number one, you have to be growing that capacity to feel that negative emotion. Basically, you want to grow the list of things that can happen on a consult. Hear me right now when I say this, you want to grow the list of things that can happen on a consult. You want to be able to grow that list to where all the things, anything could happen, and you will not be thrown off emotionally. I also learned that very deeply when I was pitching.

Crazy things would happen during a live show. People would interrupt it. Fire alarms would go off. Tornados would happen. I mean all kinds of things, babies will be screaming, all kinds of things would be happening. And I would have to in my brain, create those list of things that can happen and I will still feel calm. And I will know exactly how to handle it and I will still be powerfully in charge. And the way you’re in charge is with your emotional body. So that’s what you have to work on is what are the list of things?

So, I want to give you homework from this call and no, I don’t usually do this, but I want to give you homework from this call is to make a list of things that happen on consults that send you into fight or flight. And alternatively, that list then becomes the list you’re working on where these things can happen and I’m going to work on feeling sufficiency and safety within them. That is your work, again, the more you do that the more you will make money and you will sell in your business.

And while you’re doing that there is this other piece that I’ve been working on as a mom that I want to offer you is while you’re working on growing this capacity to feel the baby crying or to feel and hear the objection on a consult, the other thing you want to do is you want to actually work on thoughts and feelings that feel good. So, thinking about what are you good at with business and what are you good at with coaching?

When my baby’s screaming it’s sending me into fight or flight because my thought is I’m not a good mom, that he is not having a need that’s met and I’m failing him. Those are the thoughts that send us into fight or flight. So, what I’ve been working on is what are the things I’m really good at? How am I being the best mom for him? How is he getting all of his needs met?

So, while I’m growing my ability to feel this negative emotion with him screaming at me and to feel the emotions that come with the thoughts I think that go along with that, I’m also creating a list of why am I an amazing mom? Why am I so good at this? Why am I giving him everything he needs? So why are you good at coaching? Why are you good at business no matter what happens on that consult, what is true about you that feels good for you?

When you work on those things together they are literally going to balance out your emotions when you’re on a consult. That’s what creates the holding the space. That’s what creates the safety and the sufficiency, being willing to experience the things that you don’t want to have happen on a consult, being willing to hear the things you don’t want to hear on a consult. And also believing about yourself that even when those things are happening, these positive things over here are also true.

It is true that I am this with business. It’s true that I am this as a coach. These things are true about me even when this list is happening, even when any of these things happen on a consult, these other things over here are true as well. And the final thing I want to leave you with before we dive into coaching, and this is what I’ve experienced. I think about you all that have, maybe your journey to making the money you want to make is taking much longer than you think, years longer than you think.

Or it’s what you thought you would accomplish in three months, it’s taking you a year to do. I want to offer, if it feels like it’s taking longer than you wanted for the success to happen, my guess is the reason why, so everybody hear me, the reason why is because you are not throwing yourself in and immersing yourself in failing. You’re not doing that enough. The fast you immerse yourself in failing and learning the quicker you will master it.

So, I saw this Instagram, or this TikTok meme, or whatever and it said, “People are always asking me, how is mat leave?” And the girl responds, and she says, “Well, it’s kind of like you get a new job that you have no experience in and you know nothing about, and you’re not allowed to quit, and your boss yells at you all day long.” That is exactly what mat leave has felt like. But you can’t quit, you’re forced 24 hours a day into this failing, and into this having zero experience, and having to gain the experience while your boss is screaming at you.

But that’s what makes you get through it so much faster. That’s why three months later I already feel like, I’m like, “Whoa.” I went from not having any idea how to be a mom to like I know how to be a mom now. And I’m getting it, it’s happening. But that’s because I haven’t been able to step out of the failure experience and the fight or flight experience for three months straight 24 hours a day.

So, the more willing you are to immerse yourself in failure, the more no’s you’re willing to get from your marketing to your consults, the more no’s you’re willing to get, and you learn from those no’s. You learn from those no’s by coming and getting coaching, by going to Ask a Coach, posting on the Facebook page, by doing your evaluations, by figuring out the thoughts that are creating the negative emotion for you when you’re on a consult, for figuring out the emotions that your body is resisting feeling.

Every time you do those things you get quicker and better at mastering the process. And the faster you master it, the more money you’re going to make, the faster you get to feeling completely calm no matter what happens on a consult. And I’m telling you, when you can get calm with no matter what happens on a consult that’s when you start making money. So, your goal is to fail as much as you can as fast as you can. And figuring out in that failure how to take your body from the fight or flight to the holding space, from fight or flight to sufficiency and safety.

When you do that you will make money and the hardest part will end and everything from that moment on will get easier, I promise. Not only will it get easier, it will be more fun, promise.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.