Make Some Noise with Andrea Owen

Warning, this episode contains talk of attempted suicide and harm to children.

The Lindsay Clancy story may not have made national news, but you’ve probably seen it if you live in the eastern U.S.

Lindsay was a mother of three, who allegedly killed her three young children while suffering from postpartum psychosis. This is an absolutely unimaginable and tragic case, and one that opens up a bigger conversation about women’s mental health. As well as a personal one for me, as I struggled greatly with postpartum anxiety and some psychosis after the birth of my son in 2007.

Lindsay was being treated for her mental illness, and allegedly was on several medications. A recent article quotes an OB/GYN nurse and perinatal mental health advocate by the name of Melissa Anne DuBois, where she explains, “The rhetoric coming from the prosecution and other people in authority hazardously distort the medical complexity of this disorder. When they paint Lindsay as a monster who carried out an elaborate, premeditated murder, instead of as someone suffering from a serious mental illness that wasn’t properly treated and who subsequently had a psychotic break, it sends a message to all the struggling parents out there [that] nothing can help me.”

This episode shares Linday’s tragic story, my own personal journey here, touches on how privilege is operating here, as well as what we can do.

http://andreaowen.com/511

I don’t very often write about or talk on the podcast specifically to coaches. Personal development is my game, BUT, I know there is a decent amount of you that listen to the podcast as well as those of you who are interested in pursuing this profession.

First, the world needs more great coaches. This pandemic has whispered in all of our ears how precious and fragile life is, that no one gets out of here alive, and the time to live our lives is NOW.

Second, many newer coaches might be worried their business isn’t viable right now. You may believe that life coaching is a luxury afforded to few. But, just like there are many ways to coach, there are many ways to offer value and help your clients and audience.

And before I jump in, we do offer consulting here (both with me and my team), click here if you’re interested.

Here are ten things I highly recommend doing if you are in the beginning stages of your coaching business, and many of those hold true even if you’re a seasoned coach.

1. Get training. Since the coaching industry is currently unregulated, anyone can call themselves a coach, hang a shingle outside and be open for business. And I know some good coaches who have no training, only years of experience. However, coaching requires specific skills that matter for your clients. Plus, clients tend to bring emotional and heavy topics to sessions, and an untrained coach can end up causing more harm than good. So, please, get trained.
2. Get support. Building a coaching business is like building any business, you can’t do it with zero dollars and zero support. I’ve talked to people who’ve got their training and think it’s like moving from one job to another. You just quit your other job and start life coaching, right? No. Coaching is not a business, it’s a skill. You still need to build your practice. You are going to have overhead and need time to build, so have savings, a business loan, or a partner with income that can help (and is clear on the fact that they are supporting your business).
3. Make goals but be flexible. Like anything, make goals. You don’t necessarily need a traditional “business plan”, but you need something in terms of goals and not just fly by the seat of your pants. How many clients do you want or need? Do you want to build your audience to offer group coaching? Speaking? Write it down like you would any other goals. And if you find out you don’t like or aren't good at one aspect, pivot and try other things. Once you make goals and plans you don’t have to marry them.

Read the remaining 7 tips HERE.

If you’re a coach and you feel like you need support-- we offer consulting, as well as coaching packages. We can help you with nailing down your messaging, figuring out what’s the best way for you to market yourself, and even if you want to write a book or start a podcast, we can help with that too. Click here to read more and apply.

Plus, if you’re like, “Wow, I should probably work on my fear of visibility or my nasty inner-critic so I can really get my coaching business off the ground”, we're epic at helping people do that too. (Andrea facilitates specific deep, transformational work here, or you can look at a shorter package here.)

http://yourkickasslife.com/335

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My guest this week is AH-mazing. During our conversation, I even referred to him as an evangelist for love. An evangelist. for. love, y’all. Yes, I’m excited to introduce you to Kute Blackson. Kute is a charismatic visionary and transformational teacher who offers a fresh, bold look at spiritual awareness for a whole new generation. Oh, and did I mention, he’s also very intense. I love intense people. Kute joins me to talk about love; including self-love, living your own truth and what it means to live a fulfilled life. Plus, we talk about allowing yourself to feel pain, coping mechanisms and conditioning, questioning who you truly are and what Kute means when he says, “we are born-free.” As Kute so eloquently stated, love is the most important thing on the planet and the most important thing to experience while we are alive. And lastly, “Real healing happens in the space of love.” Hell-to-the-yes.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Kute’s deep calling to serve humanity, following his own truth and integrity and how he began on a path to helping other people find themselves (8:15)
• What stops us from being fulfilled and free (13:23)
• How to reconnect with your heart and body to get to your own truth, plus 3 questions to ask yourself to help you get there (14:38)
• The layers that cover up your true self, coping mechanisms and shifting your conditioning (18:31)
• Creating your own opportunities, and add value to others lives (43:05)

http://yourkickasslife.com/261

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http://yourkickasslife.com/R1

Original post from September 27th, 2012.

This is the first in a ten-part series I’ll be hosting on alcoholism and recovery. If you don’t want to miss the rest of the episodes, make sure you sign up here to be notified when a new one comes out.

And stick around until the end where I’ll share a clip from next week’s recovery post!

My stomach lurches as I begin this post. I considered not going public with this, but that damn intuition of mine had other ideas.

There’s a part of me that wants to make this post bright and cheery somehow, but I’d be lying to you and me if I did that. I’d like to preface my story with this: I know there are so many more women like me. So, I chose to go public with my story because of that. There is a part of me that has massive amounts of shame around this, but coming clean helps heal. And if only one woman gets sober on account of reading my story, then all the shame is worth it.

***************************************** Hi, my name is Andrea and I’m an alcoholic.

Yep. Me.

If you’re anything like me, when you hear the word “alcoholic”, you get that vision of the homeless man in the gutter, drinking from a paper bag, or maybe the leathery skinned, worn-out woman at the bar, falling off the barstool, or any other pathetic image you conjure up. Not often do you picture a successful life coach, living a great life in the suburbs. And that story is a big part of what kept me drinking.

I’ll start by backing up. My battle started in my late teens with love addiction. When I was 25 my struggle grew into an eating disorder, and thankfully I got help and healed from those when I was 31. It wasn’t until years later that I realized and admitted the eating disorder was bad enough that it could have killed me. To add fuel to the fire, when I was 26 I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and panic disorder, which at that time, was being helped with medication prescribed by my doctor.

Throughout my 20’s, in terms of drinking alcohol, I was a “normal” girl . I drank socially just like all my friends, but could always put down the bottle without a fight. Sure, there were episodes where I made bad decisions (does anyone make good decisions drinking?) and had some embarrassing moments, but nothing so humiliating to write about. Looking back, I believe I didn’t need to rely on drinking then to cope, because I had my eating disorder to fall back on, as well as an addictive relationship with my ex-husband. Those behaviors fed the addict me and I didn’t yet need alcohol to numb me.

Upon recovering from the eating disorder and love addiction, I skipped along into my new life with new tools and thoughts to cope without turning to a relationship, a man, or my eating disorder.

When I was well into recovery from those two addictions, I was so proud and happy. I was convinced I was finally “mentally stable”. But, little did I know, my alcoholism took its place. Quietly, it snuck in like a lethal, poisonous gas that I couldn’t see. I really had no problem quitting drinking when I was pregnant, but after the birth of my second child in 2009 is when my drinking picked up serious speed and momentum.

Read the rest HERE

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Today starts a new thing over here-- daily emails and podcast episodes (weekdays only) I’m calling them the DAILY DIARIES! I’ve kept them short, sweet, to the point, with lots of content to hopefully help you! Enjoy...

It all started with a damn upper limit problem.

Let me backup. If it’s one thing we all want-- it’s to be seen and heard. We want those loving connections with the people who matter to us. To know our struggles, our stories, and our celebrations matter. To know that we matter.

And for some of us, our path includes being seen and heard by lots and lots of people.

In 2013 my first book came out and I was catapulted into the spotlight. I’m not talking Beyoncé type spotlight, but a spotlight nonetheless in my industry. No one can really prepare you for this and it was one of the most exciting and terrifying things that had ever happened to me. More people watching, judging, criticizing and loving me (which can also be scary). Over the last few years I’ve been unpacking this and getting curious about why this scares me, what it stops me from doing, and how to move past it.

Fast forward to 2017. I knew my second book was coming out and I was more prepared for the epic explosion that was about to take place (that’s dramatic, but that’s what it felt like). I also knew I wanted to talk more about this to my YKAL community (you!) because I know most of us deal with this on some level.

The fear of shining too bright.

The fear of shining at all.

The fear of not shining at all.

The fear of getting it wrong.

The fear of what people expect of us.

The fear that we can’t measure up to what we expect of ourselves.

The fear of failure.

The fear of success.

The fear of moving too far forward in our lives and leaving people behind.

The fear of what people will think.

Basically, the fear of raising hell in our lives, causing any attention to ourselves that might cause us to not have it all under control.

So, going back to the “upper limit problem” that I mentioned before. You might be wondering, what is an upper limit problem?

The “ULP” term comes from the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and in a nutshell, the theory is this: We all have a certain set point of success, happiness, health, and love. How much of it we can take. A “comfort zone” of all those things. When we get more, say a promotion, a new amazing relationship, a fantastic opportunity, finally lose that extra 15 pounds we’ve been carrying around, we get extremely uncomfortable for having it and therefore sabotage it. I wrote a whole chapter on self-sabotage in my last book so you probably are familiar with it.

When I write books I can’t control whether people like my writing or not. I can’t control whether they like me or not. I can’t control that I’ll always get it right. I also can’t control if the books will sell or not, which not only affects my emotional state, but my livelihood and my future.

So, it might be easier and safer to stay under the radar, not do too much to cause too much attention. Hide. Be quiet. Do things like not write books.

As 2018 approached and How To Stop Feeling Like Shit was about to be born, I knew this was a topic I couldn’t avoid with all of you. So, I set out to untangle it, rectify it as best I could, and help all of you in the process.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be walking you through that journey, as well as talking about other topics that happened to pop up along the way. Tomorrow’s episode I’ll be telling a story of a meeting I was a part of in October, which made me feel like a failure, not enough, and incompetent. I’ll tell you how I got through it, the tools I used, and what ended up happening.

Stick around for Friday’s episode where this all comes together and there’s an assignment for you.

http://yourkickasslife.com/200

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