You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 88.
Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here’s your host, Tobi Fairley.
Hey there, friends. If you are in the US, happy Thanksgiving. This is my favorite holiday of the year. And I’m partly thankful today because I have my voice back a little better than last week. It’s still a little not quite myself, but that’s totally fine. It’s plenty strong enough for me to tell you all of the things, well really five key things, that I’m grateful for today, so that’s what we’re going to talk about.
But I especially love Thanksgiving and yeah, I love Christmas, of course, how could I not love Christmas? I love decorating and all the things that go with the Christmas holiday and family and traditions and all of it, but there’s just something about Thanksgiving that has always been my favorite. And I think it’s because usually it follows a very busy fall where I usually have a really full workload and travel and it’s the first real mental break of the season for me.
So I always enjoy that time at home and spending time with my daughter and my mom and cooking and baking and making the house pretty and all the stuff. But it’s really more than that too. It’s always about gratitude for me. That’s the reason I love it. And of course, Thanksgiving, that’s what it’s about.
But to me, it’s such an amazing reminder to just take the time to slow down and look at the many, many, many blessings I have because I am so blessed in so many ways. And I love turning my attention to that whole experience and to really getting in that loving and mindful spirit for the holiday season, starting with Thanksgiving. It just fills me up so much.
And I think it’s even more special because Thanksgiving doesn’t bring some of the harried hustle and bustle that the Christmas season does and there’s no gifts to buy. It’s really just about togetherness, and for me, it’s a whole lot of love.
So I love it. It’s exciting, and I hope that you love today just as much as I do if you’re here in the states. And heck, if you’re not in the United States, just feel the love with us anyway because we’re grateful for you and for you being here.
So, in that spirit, today’s episode is about five things that I’m most grateful for in 2019 and these are really big things for me and they involved humongous mindset shifts and have really gotten me major results in my life, some of the biggest results I’ve ever gotten. And they may not all be things that you can see outwardly. In fact, a lot of them aren’t necessarily.
So you don’t necessarily know this stuff about me, that’s why I want to bring them to you today. And in case you want to get similar results and transformations in your life in the coming months as you celebrate the holidays or in the New Year, I just want you to know about what these things are that I’ve gone this year, what I’ve been working on, how I’ve been changing and growing and hopefully it will inspire you.
So, since it’s not quite my year-end yet and it’s not exactly quite time to do my year-end review that I do every year in December but I’ve always started thinking of it by now; these five things that I’m going to talk about today really sum up a lot of 2019 for me and how it was so life-changing. And I think wrapping up this year is really special because we’re not just closing another year and moving into a new one in January. We’re closing a whole decade.
We’re moving into an entirely new decade and I think that’s just an amazing time to focus on what we’re grateful for and what we want our lives to look like in the next 10 years because now’s the time to start planning. That stuff doesn’t happen by itself. So, let me tell you what I’ve been doing.
Here we go, what I’m most grateful for this year in no particular order, because they’re all incredible, but I want to tell you about these five things. So, number one, I want to talk about my team. And of course, it sounds very typical for a business owner to be grateful for our teams, right?
And yeah, I’m always grateful for our team, but this year it’s different. It’s really, really different for me. I have had a team of people for 20 years, y’all. Literally, from the day I opened my business, I had someone on my team. And I’ve never, ever in the 20 years that I’ve been in business felt this supported and this surrounded by excellence, or the ability to scale my business like I feel right now.
Because it takes a whole different thing to scale your business, to grow, and it takes a lot for me and my mindset and the way I’m releasing things to other people, but it definitely takes the right people and the right structure and the right follow through and a whole bunch of other stuff. And that is exactly where my team is right now.
And just to be clear, I haven’t spent the entire year cultivating and training this team to get to where we are. A couple of the key team members who are part of this growth have just come onboard in the last month or two.
So I have been working very hard this year to get the right people. We’ve tested some people out that weren’t a fit. We’ve done all sorts of things, none of which was easy, none of which was comfortable for me or some of the other people, probably anybody, but we’ve done this in order to go where I want to go in my business in 2020 and beyond.
So it’s not bragging that I’m saying that we can now scale or do all the things we can do. I just want you to see how I’ve been on a mission and my team’s been on a mission to get the right people that uplevel our ability and really my ability to step out of the things that I don’t do the best, that aren’t my zone of genius, and step more fully into the things that I can do that make the biggest difference in the world and for my audience, for each of you, that is exactly what the goal has been.
And where I step into the places in my business that can make the biggest difference, for the most part, that means the front-facing stuff, being with all of you, with clients, with Design You members, with my listeners, on social media with my tribe. And the more I’m stuck in the trenches doing things that aren’t my strong suit, because let’s be clear, those of you who’ve read the awesome book Rocket Fuel and you know the difference in a visionary and an integrator, let me just tell you, an integrator I am not. 100% visionary is this girl right here.
And I’ve spent way too much time for way too many years being in the trenches doing stuff that does not move the company forward. In fact, I’ve been the bottleneck in so, so many ways. So for all of these years, I’ve been partially able to connect with you at the level I want, but for the first time ever in the lifetime of my business, and it’s truly 20 years. I started it in 1999, so for 20 years I haven’t been able to fully realize the vision I have for my company and for the first time, I have the people taking on entire roles in my company and doing them far better than I would do them to increase our ability as a company, to serve more people, to make more money, and to make a bigger difference with my message and my passion and our passions as a team and our talents than ever, ever, ever before and it is one of the most satisfying feelings that I have ever had.
And I have literally been going to bed regularly, especially in the last few weeks, and waking up regularly, almost every morning, feeling so supported, literally before I think my last thought before I go to sleep and the first thought I think when I wake up is how grateful I am to these people who are helping me implement our mission to make a difference for creatives and entrepreneurs all over the world.
And, y’all, it is incredible. And finally, we are primed and ready to scale my business from a seven-figure business, which I’ve been for years, or multiple seven-figure business, to moving towards an eight-figure business over the next several years or decade. And, friends, that makes me so incredibly excited.
And it’s not just about the money. It’s about creating things and services and programs that literally change the world and it is exhilarating. And what we’re doing in 2020 alone blows my mind. I can’t wait for you to see it. It’s all so exciting. We have so much coming that we’ve never done before. And that’s just the beginning of what the next decade will look like for my company thanks to this crew of people.
So I just have to name them by name because that’s show much difference they’re making. And I just want to say out loud how grateful I am for Devin and Macy and Karen and April and Josefine and Zach and Kaitlin and Claire and Pavel and Terry and Christie and Nancy and Selena and Lynn and yeah, that’s a heck of a lot of people.
And some of those people work with me fulltime and a whole bunch of those people work with me in some contract way. And those aren’t even all the amazing people that we work with because there’s other people that play a part and play support roles for our companies in a whole lot of different ways. And for all of those people, some of which are the support teams for a lot of the people I named, I thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you are allowing me to grow and be in my company and I just couldn’t thank you anymore.
Okay so that is the first one. And I hope that feels as exciting to you and I hope it inspires you to think, not necessarily that you have to go out and build an eight-figure company like I do, but to really go after the type of company or the difference that you want to make in the world and believe it can happen and believe that you can create the money and find the people to help you get there.
And I just can’t explain what kind of level and what kind of shift we’ve made in our team this year, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. So that’s the first thing I want to talk about.
So, for the second thing that I’m crazy, crazy grateful for, again, in no particular order because I can’t even put these things in order. They’re so, so important to me and so life-changing.
This one goes back to my number one goal and really kind of my only goal for 2019, which was to create optimal health and wellness. And you may remember me talking about that back in January. And when I started the year, I probably thought optimal health and wellness looked a little bit different than what it looks like as I sit here today.
And I probably wouldn’t have wanted to admit it, but somewhere in my mind, it accidentally probably looked like some things that had to do with some old diet mentality that was hanging around, maybe fitting into certain sized clothes or maybe achieving a certain weight. That might have been part of it a little bit.
But it was way more than that and I knew it, I just didn’t know exactly what it looked like. So I was on a mission to move beyond things like diet mentality that had been so ingrained in me and so many of you and I was just committed to figuring out how to show up as this version of myself.
And when I went on that mission to figure out what this looked like at a deeper level, I found something that I couldn’t have known. And sitting here in November on the other side of almost a whole year of working on my wellness, really mostly my mindset about my wellness, I’m a completely different person than when I started this year.
And there are a few people I need to thank because I’m so grateful for them for my role in this. So first of all, one of the people that I want to thank is a lady named Corinne Crabtree. And she has an amazing business. She’s a total powerhouse. Her business is called PhitNPhat, PNP, and she has an amazing team of women, Betsy, one of which is a personal friend who lives here in Arkansas, and Kathy, who work with her in her program.
So she has a membership like I do but it’s all about weight loss and wellness. And I want to say first that I’m so grateful for these women for teaching me things that I didn’t even know were possible. So if you don’t know Corinne, please go check her out. Hopefully you’re not offended by some salty language because she loves to drop in a few f-bombs here and there.
But she is a powerhouse and I know her because she is a Brooke Castillo and Life Coach School alum like I am. The cool thing about Corinne, nothing to do with really what I’m talking about here, but a testament to her work with people is she’s been Brooke’s top earning alumni for the past two years in a row. And when I was at Brooke’s mastermind back in September, Corinne was announced as the winner this year because she earned four million last year, friends, four million dollars.
And I think she’s on track to do something like six million this year, and I think that is not so much about money, but a testament to the work she’s doing for women, She only works with women. And it is just truly incredible. She’s an incredible businesswoman. But she is an incredible human being and I admire her so much and I’m so thankful to her for the things she’s taught me.
So she has absolutely taught me to think differently about food and to undo years of emotional eating and buffering with things in my life. And the progress I’ve made is just mind-bending. There’s not another word for it. I can’t even fully comprehend it most days. And thanks to her this year I have completely recovered. Of course, I don’t know if I should say completely because is there ever completely, but I would say 99.9% recovered from the behaviors that I’ve practiced for years and years and years around emotional eating, sometimes drinking, and numbing out feelings that I didn’t want to feel, like stress and overwhelm, that were part of my daily life.
And I know so many of you know what I’m talking about and so in the past, where I would have been on a path to optimal health and wellness, it would have been more about the outcome, you know, physical outcomes and results that I had achieved, and I’ve definitely achieved some of those too. But what I had no idea was that I’d be sitting here nine months later having changed everything about how I think around food and diet and exercise and myself and who I am and how I show up and how I love myself.
And it’s just been an incredible journey thanks to Corinne, and I haven’t even worked with her all year. I think I joined her program in April and I really didn’t fully tap into it until June and I have made so much progress. Thanks to Corinne, I’m freer than I’ve ever been from a lot of emotional and mental chains that were attached to food and alcohol and other things.
And really, it’s what I used to use to deal with the 50-50 part of life, like I talked about on last week’s podcast, the suck, embracing the suck. Corinne has been a huge player in how I’ve embraced the suck and really felt the feelings for the first time ever instead of eating them or drinking them or shopping them away.
And it really is the most incredible gift to myself that I could possibly imagine and I could not have done this without two other incredible women who’ve been my accountability partners in this, Becca and Jenny, Becca is a longtime friend and has been a client of mine and Jenny is a Life Coach School alumni and we just kind of got connected as accountability partners. It’s a whole other story.
We can talk about it on another day. But now, they have become not only my partners in this journey, but truly two of my dearest friends. And we text dozens of times a day and we’re still on this getting healthy journey and I think we’ll be on it together for a long, long time and we all still have some work to do and we’re not there with where we want to be from those outward facing outcomes and rewards, but those are irrelevant at this point when we all know the changes and the mindset that we have really tweaked and evolved in our time working together.
And I literally do text them every single day. We’re accountable to each other every single day. And I’ve never had a group of people supporting me at this level. So Jenny and Becca, you are both rockstars and you’ve helped me change my life in so many ways and I’m forever grateful to you for that. And I just hope that all of you listening can have the benefit of this level of accountability partner in one or two or all areas of your life because it is really something I’ve never had and it has been such a difference-maker for me.
And so, ladies, I can’t wait for that girls’ trip we’re taking by summer of 2020 to celebrate all the hard work we’ve done, so thank you, thank you. And I also want to shout out, on this idea of optimal health and wellness, to Kim and Caleb, my amazing trainers at the Kick Above because, again, major game-changers for me this year. I’ve never been consistent working out.
I didn’t even want to show up. And the mindset stuff that I would go through and the quitting and starting again for years and just didn’t want to be at the gym and didn’t want to lift weights and, I don’t know, all the stuff that goes with that.
And I’ve stopped and started so many times before until this year. And a lot of this has to do with my own mindsets, but a whole lot of it has to do with these fantastic trainers. And, y’all, I’m still going strong. I’m 11 months in and I rarely if ever find myself dreading the gym anymore. And when I do, I go anyway. And my health is so much better because of it.
So I started January 2nd and here I am still going strong and I don’t intend to ever quit again. And then there’s other parts of my health and wellness journey. There’s Julie-Ann my massage therapist who is so intuitive it blows my mind. I literally do not have to even speak and she knows exactly where to help me heal every single week.
And then there’s Stacey, my Yin yoga teacher who moved away for years and thankfully is back. She was one of the people who helped me overcome burnout when I was 38 and she’s back helping me with her tremendous teachings and her techniques and her own mindset trainings. And so these two ladies have been a huge part of my wellness journey this year too. And they’ve really both been a huge part of this self-love.
So I’m just so grateful for the progress towards optimal health and it’s not at all what I thought it would look like. It’s 1000 times better. And I’m, again, not at the end of that journey. I don’t think we ever are. I think it’s a lifelong journey, but my progress has amazed me and it looks so, so different than I would have written it, and I’m so thankful that it does.
It has not mostly been about weight loss. I’ve maybe lost 15 pounds this year, but that is the tiniest part of what I have changed. Everything about my body has changed. Everything about my mind has changed and it’s because of these people and the hard work I’ve done with them hand in hand with them and the mindset work around food and exercise and myself, that has been huge.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for all you who have been a part of me consistently showing up and creating these solid habits that I know now will last a lifetime. So wow, two huge things, right?
You know, when we think about how we ever get to where we’re going to be our best self, look at all the people I’ve already named and we aren’t even finished with this podcast. We’re like halfway through maybe. But look at that incredible group of people that have been such a huge part of my year and it just fills me up.
So if I was going to rate these – I said I wasn’t going to rate these, but now for probably the most important one for me, if I was going to pick a number one, and it would be this. I am so grateful for the work I have done on my relationships, especially and particularly the one with my daughter and how we’ve been working to regret-proof the time we have before she grows up and moves away and goes to college and soars and loves her amazing life.
So she and I have done some really important work this year on ourselves and also independently and together. And we committed, I don’t know, back in the spring, to digging into how to live our best lives together. And we have invested in coaching and we have invested in therapy and we’ve committed to time with each other and we’ve committed to growing and loving ourselves more.
And because we wanted to not have a typical mom and teenage daughter relationship, we wanted something more than that, and we’ve navigated some really hard stuff this year in our lives, her life and my life. And with the help of our phenomenal friend and therapist Dr. Statia and other people, we have both matured this year, both of us yes, a 47-year-old still needs to grow up sometimes. We have both matured far beyond our years.
And the rewards that now are coming to us, the benefits, the payoffs are just truly priceless. And as a part of our goal for our relationship, we wanted to create just some moments, some weekly moments, some date time moments, mommy-daughter – well, mommy, she’s like 14, lord please don’t say mommy – amazing teenage human and her mom date nights and we’ve done that.
But we also wanted to create some special travel opportunities over the next few years because she loves to travel and I love doing anything that makes her happy. So before she moves away – and we’ll still travel then too. We’ll probably travel the rest of our lives together if she’s lucky enough and I’m lucky enough to live a long life and be as close as my mom and I are.
But thanks to my own life coach Suzie, she really helped me set this path in motion in last calendar year in 2018, but it really came to fruition in 2019 that Ellison and I have designed the way we want to spend time together. And we’ve put it in motion so well this year and the fruits of those labors are beyond my imagination.
So we just had one of our experiences, one of our weekends and trips together last week and I just – I mean, I wish I could just bottle up the meaningful and precious moments we’re spending together. And they’re not all just cookie-cutter sweet. Some of them are hard. But they’re the good stuff.
Last week, we went to a concert to see Old Dominion and opening for him was Scott McCreery and I was sitting there while we were listening, and he has this song called Five More Minutes. He talks about having five more minutes of the good stuff, those moments that you really do want to bottle up. And I was thinking, that is exactly what we’re creating.
And here we are in real time living it, experiencing this together, and that’s just one of the many moments that we have created this year. Some are just everyday moments. In fact, some of the most special ones are just everyday. But you can’t get there by accident.
They don’t just happen. You don’t just have a great relationship with anybody; a spouse, a parent, a friend, without pouring into it. And you certainly don’t have it with teenagers if you don’t put some work into it. And I just can’t recommend enough pouring into your relationships.
So we have gotten to a place that I don’t believe we could have gotten on our own. I don’t believe we could have gotten there without investing in coaches and therapists and people that are pouring into us and people that are helping us get perspective and people that are helping us better understand each other and better appreciate each other and people that are helping us allow each other to show up exactly as we are, challenges and all, mistakes and all, faults and all, amazing creative wonderful gifts and talents and all and just love each other exactly how we are.
And we’ve both done that and it’s just been one of the most important investments of time, money, and energy that I have ever made and I hope that Ellison grows up to think the same thing and I think she probably already does.
So just last night, she and I were cooking together and I was teaching her how I make pork chops in the oven, super simple, marinade them, throw them in there under the broiler. She loves them that way. Super easy, nothing to it, she’s a great little cook, but I just never had shown her how much time and all the stuff.
So my husband was out for the night and we were doing that and I was teaching her so she could do this for herself. And she thanked me. I mean, it wasn’t like super gushy or weird. It was just like matter of fact. She was just like, “Mom, I’m so happy that you teach me this stuff and thanks for teaching me how to cook and throw parties.” Of course, that was on her mind because we’re having a party this weekend.
We have also Thanksgiving, which you’re hearing this recording the day of Thanksgiving, so at that point we will have already set all of our tables and done all the work, and so she’s just saying thanks, thanks for teaching me all that stuff that you do so I can know how. And she even said, not that I always use it and sometimes I even try to get out of it because I don’t want to work that hard, which I thought was awesome and authentic, but she said, “I’m so glad I know how. I don’t always clean my room, but I’m so…” she even said, “Nobody’s better at cleaning their room than me when I want to.”
And it just put the biggest smile on my face because it’s exactly what you want to hear as a parent. And I know so many moms don’t feel like you have the time to take to teach people things and teach your kids things and you just need to get it done. And I just am so grateful that she and I have chosen to do this together and that we don’t take each other for granted and that she does feel this way about the things I’ve taught her and it’s just music to my ears.
So, friends, things don’t grow if you don’t give them attention and relationships aren’t easy or perfect. We’ve been through plenty of difficult teen and parenting situations this year; plenty. We’ve both been at our worst and we’ve both been at our best. But it’s actually through the hard stuff in my opinion where we grow and she and I have both grown more this year than probably any other years for either of us in our lives, and the best part is that we grew together.
We grew closer to each other instead of farther away. And to me, that is the very definition of regret-proofing my relationship with her. We only have one life and I only have one kiddo and we’re investing all we can into making that an amazing relationship complete with unconditional love and acceptance of each other and all our flaws and yeah, we still get mad at each other and yeah, we yell sometimes, and yeah, we have challenges, but we also have all of the gifts and the moments and we’re designing a life together that we both really want. And I just could not be more grateful for the fact that my kid is my number one favorite human in the world and she inspires me every day because of the hard stuff she has navigated and how she chooses to move forward and think about things not in spite of those moments but because of them.
Oh my gosh, I could not be more proud of her and I could not like her as a human being any more than I do. Okay, so yeah, that is at the top of my list for this year. So if you want that kind of relationship with your kids, you absolutely can have it. It takes time and energy, sometimes money, and it’s worth every single bit of that.
Okay, so number four, let’s talk about my other children. Well, no, I don’t have any other children, but I think about these people as my children, or my sisters, or I don’t know, sisters from another mister, and there’s a few brothers in there too.
But what I’m talking about is the incredible creative, talented, courageous members of my Design You coaching program. And they are truly like my other children or sisters or nieces or something. They’re definitely family. And I’m not only so grateful for them. I’m especially grateful to them for inspiring me this year and showing me what is possible in so many ways because their successes this year have absolutely been off the charts, y’all.
So my program is going on two years old, and last year I was super grateful for the members in every way because they are amazing humans, but this year, I’m especially and particularly grateful for their successes and their hard work, really almost more than my own successes and hard work.
There’s just something so fulfilling on an entirely different level when you can serve other people, not just yourself. And this year, the work that my members have done with me in their corner, with me as their guide, but them doing the hard ass work is mind-boggling.
And in the same was and when you’re a parent, like I was just talking about a minute ago with my daughter, you are happier for your children’s success than your own and that is exactly how I feel about my members.
We’ve had people with huge outward successes, huge wins, like starting podcasts and launching courses and other service offerings. And we’ve had multiple people, more than five people have $20,000 and $30,000 launches, and I mean in a week or two created $20,000 or $30,000 and it’s amazing.
And they’re leaping into things that feel so scary and so uncomfortable and doing it anyway and it inspires the hell out of me. And that part is so exciting, to see it outwardly, but what is more inspiring than that are the ones that are doing all the work that you haven’t even seen yet because there’s tons of people getting ready for that outward success, but they’re still in the trenches doing the hardest part, the part that is the deep, deep mindset work, and undoing and unlearning some very deep-seated beliefs that they’ve been creating a practicing for years.
We all have to undo that stuff so we can get space to grow into the new stuff. And they’ve just been bucking down and doing the work consistently and creating habits consistently and following through at a level that they’ve never followed through on before. And every time I could even possibly think about quitting, there’s somebody in that group that is pushing through something even harder than whatever hard I thought I was dealing with and it is so stinking inspiring.
And we’ve literally had members who were paralyzed with fear around things like putting themselves out into the world or paying for someone to help them do something. And they’ve leapt anyway, leapt into doing a video or crating a course or something they never dreamed was possible or leapt into spending money they didn’t even know they had or could create.
And though you may not have seen it all outwardly yet, I know how hard that level of self-work and level of personal development truly is. It is the hardest thing because I’ve done it and it takes grit and it takes perseverance and I’m just – I mean, I can’t even pick another word – incredibly, phenomenally, just off the charts proud of those brave humans, those brave creatives doing the work to crush their goals.
And I get the privilege and the honor to be there with them and to inspire them and to help them get unstuck and to help them look at things in a different way or to go ahead of them and do the hard work myself and figure out what maybe would work for them, what doesn’t work, all of that stuff. It is such an honor and a privilege.
And again, there are times when it is so hard and things seem so slow and it feels like you will never monetize what you’re doing and you feel like you will go out of business or that there’s not an ounce of energy or creativity left in you. And guess what, these people keep going anyway.
And that is what deserves so, so, so much applause and credit and celebration. And honestly, I have chills all over my body thinking about it. I just want to say bravo to those people, those incredible women and a few men who are in Design You who are just doing the work day in and day out.
And if that weren’t enough, they’re in there supporting each other. They’re cheerleading each other. They’re pulling each other out of slumps. They’re showing up for each other. It’s so incredible. And I’m just such a lucky, lucky privileged human being to get to be a piece of this.
And so just to every one of you, whether you’ve been in for a day, or you’ve been in for two years almost, from the day we started, I just want you to know, I’m talking straight to you, Design You member, thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me to be even just a tiny part of your path to greatness.
It’s a complete honor and you have no idea how much you mean to me, every single one of you. And honestly, it brings me truly to tears. It’s almost beyond that. It’s such a heartwarming, heartfelt emotion that I have that I can’t even really put into words.
Just I’m so grateful for you so thank you for the privilege of being a part of your lives while you’re there with me in Design You and I can’t wait for many more years. I know a lot of you are like, I’m two years in and I’m not going anywhere any time soon, and I just love that we can grow together, and I just thank you so much.
And then finally, I’ll keep this one short because I know you want to get back to your Thanksgiving, or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re like, oh no Tobi, I’ve had plenty of aunty Edna’s, whatever, sweet potato pie, and I’ve had plenty of hugs and kisses from relatives I hardly ever see, and I need some space and I’m so grateful for this podcast so I can sneak away and listen.
So if that’s you, then when this episode’s over, go listen to another episode. There’s 87 other ones. But to not keep all the rest of you who want to get back to friends and family, let’s talk about number five. This is the other major thing I’m grateful for this year and it is my participation, commitment, enrolling in, although there was a selection process so I didn’t just sign up.
But being part of master coach training with Brooke Castillo and The Life Coach School and I’m right in the thick of that right now. So back in September when I attended the annual mastermind that Brooke puts on for The Life Coach School every year, which blew my mind in every way by itself, and I could have just come home and put that work into place, and I learned so much and was so inspired by so many other women and men there.
But when I went, I had zero intention of committing to master coach training. I knew it was in my future some time, but I really truly thought it was at least a year away, if not two. But after sitting there and first of all Brooke, you and your crew, as you already know, not that you’re listening to this but that would be pretty cool if you were, can sell the hell out of anything, and you did.
But while I was sitting there being inspired by Brooke and the other many speakers that are her protégés and just I don’t know, so inspiring. And they presented this opportunity, it was just one that I couldn’t pass up. And in the past where I would have scarcity mindset around something like this, like oh, it’s so limited and I better hop in because what if I’m going to miss out, like a FOMO thing, I intentionally made sure that I chose this from a place of abundance this year.
Not because I had to, not because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, because I’ll tell you in a second how they’re doing the program this year, which is different than what they usually do. And it is a once in a lifetime opportunity possibly, but I wouldn’t let myself go there because I didn’t want to be in this sort of fear of missing out but later would regret.
Why did I take on one more thing, or it would become a distraction from another goal? So I sat on it for a few days following the training. I went back and forth on whether or not I was going to apply for this training, which is a big deal, and y’all it’s very expensive. It’s five figures, multiple five figures to be a part of this.
So it’s a big commitment. Time and money. And ultimately, a few days later, coming from a total place of abundance, I just decided this was an opportunity I could not pass up. So I applied for one of a dozen or so, two dozen – not quite two dozen I don’t think – very coveted spots, to spend a crazy, I’ll even say scary, which I’ll tell you more about in a second, but a crazy intensive week in the Grand Caymans in January with 12 other master coaches and the other master coach candidates.
One of those 12 master coaches will be Brooke Castillo, mentor, and getting really what I can only imagine as I’ve heard it described, sort of completely beaten to a pulp and broken down and built back up all in a week. And that sounds horrible, right? But I know it’s going to be amazing.
So really, kind of the goal is to obliterate what is left and visible of any emotional childhood that’s still lurking in me. Childishness, emotional immaturity, and limiting beliefs, get those out and replace them with things that help me soar to a whole new level. And of course, I’m kind of kidding like, there are always going to be some limiting beliefs for the rest of our life but this is some major deep work.
Like, getting some of the huge blocks and limits we put on ourselves removed, released, just dealt with. So according to one of Brooke’s best, I think, master coaches, Bev Aron, who will be part of this training, she said at mastermind, you literally walk into the training an emotional child and you leave an emotional adult, which is both exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.
But I’m open to it. Not just open to it. I’m committed to it. And so I applied and I was nervous, but just abundant. I’m like, if I don’t get in, it’s not my time. And guess what? I was accepted. So I feel so, so fortunate for this incredible opportunity to learn from Brooke and Bev and Corinne Crabtree that I mentioned earlier will be one of the trainers, and so many other phenomenal protégés of Brooke that will be both the teachers and the students.
And I just can’t wait to spend that week with them, but it’s not just that week. Because leading up to the January week in the Grand Caymans, which, who knows if we’ll ever even see the light of day or the ocean because we’ll be doing so much work, but the moment I was accepted in late September, I started doing what is really kind of the pre-work, which is about 30 extra hours a month of intense work on myself, coaching the other candidates, them coaching me, reading some required books, journaling every single day.
Doing major thought work every single day, and it has already been such a gift. And we aren’t even to the live training yet, and I just can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to be there and really what I can’t imagine yet is what my 2020 and all the years beyond that will look like because of this work.
So on January 5th, I fly away to the Grand Caymans to do the in-person training and then after a week there of intensive work, I fly home to start a six month project that’s really sort of, I envision like a thesis. Like you would do for a Masters or a doctorate or something like that.
So think about this experience already that I’m in the middle of, knowing that I will be so grateful on the other side. I already feel that emotion bubbling up in me. And I just wanted to say thank you to Brooke for the life-changing work she’s already done in me over the last three years, and for selecting me, her and her team for selecting me for this opportunity to become a whole new version of myself.
And y’all look, I became a whole new version of myself already in 2019 and I’m basically about to do it all over again. So incredible, incredible opportunity and I just – I’m so, so excited about it. So friends, wow, a lot to be grateful for this year. I said five things, but when you really pick out all the parts and pieces and people that were a part of that, it’s a whole bunch more than that.
And I just appreciate you indulging me today and the opportunity to not only share this with you and these changes I’ve made, but just to shout from the rooftops the names of these other incredible human beings who have made such an impact on me so far this year that I am just so truly grateful for. Again, I just thank you for letting me say it out loud and for listening.
And I hope this episode helps you remember all the things that you’re grateful for, but also that it spurs you to see all the things that are possible. And just envision all the ways that you can up-level your relationships and collaborate with other humans that can really enrich your life in ways that you can’t even imagine yet.
So as I sit here in this place of gratitude, I hope you also are at a place like that in your life and that this time next year, it will be an even different place for you that you have really created by your own choosing and by the people that you surround yourself with next year. So thank you so much and as just a final word on this episode, please know, number six on that list, again, in no particular order is my gratitude for you.
For you listening and growing with me every week and showing up here every week and so many of you send me messages every single week, DMs on Instagram, comments on Instagram, messages on Facebook, when I see you in person. I mean, just every possible way that you reach out to me and tell me how I’ve made a difference for you, how I’ve taught you, how I’ve inspired you, how I’ve changed you.
And you just have no idea how much that means to me and just the fact that you show up here every week is just such a gift that you’re giving me and hopefully yourself as well. But I just want you to know, I know. I notice, I know, and every single time I look at how many people listen to it and download our podcast, it’s not just a bunch of numbers.
I know there’s a human being behind every one of those and I know that is you and I just thank you so much for that. And I hope you’ll meet me back here next week for another episode. It won’t be as lovey dovey maybe. It might be back to the school of hard knocks, but hey, let’s grow together here this year and into next year too and I just can’t thank you enough. See you again friends. Happy holidays. Bye for now.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. And if you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program, Design You at tobifairley.com.
