Garry Schliefer:
Welcome to the choice Magazine podcast called Beyond the Page. choice, the magazine of professional coaching, is your go-to source for expert insights and in-depth features from the world of professional coaching. I'm your host, Garry Schleifer, and I'm thrilled to have you join us today. In each episode, we go, go figure, beyond the page of articles published in choice Magazine and dive deeper into some of the most recent and relevant topics impacting the world of professional coaching. We explore the content and interview the talented minds behind the articles and uncover the stories that make an impact. choice is more than a magazine. For over 22 years, we've built a community of like-minded people who create, use and share coaching tools, tips and techniques to add value to their businesses and, of course, make a difference with their clients. That's what we love to do.
Garry Schliefer:
In today's episode, I'm speaking with speaker, author and coach Paul Boehnke, who is the author of an article in our latest issue "Unspeakables Uncomfortable Topics we Avoid that Impact Coaching Outcomes. His article is entitled Beat the Gremlins how your Inner Critic Affects your Clients inner critic affects your clients. Paul Benke is a speaker, author and coach who helps millennials and business leaders become more effective by clearing the self-criticism and overthinking that provides them from realizing their true purpose. He's also a classical musician, and he stumbled on a unique process that not only helped his performances but could easily be applied to taming his inner critic. He then realized that this process not only works for him but for everyone, musician or not, and I'm hoping for coaches. In his book, "thoughts on emand ~ turn negative self-talk into unstoppable confidence," e shares a process that transforms the voice in your head from an adversary into an ally. Awesome. Oaul, thank you so much for joining me today.
Paul Boehnke:
Thank you, Garry. It's my pleasure to be here.
Garry Schliefer:
I always like to ask what called you to write the article. I think I kind of know what's behind it. But why now?
Paul Boehnke:
Why now? You know, the opportunity as it arose in your magazine, sort of gelled with thoughts that I was having about the work that I do with transforming that negative self-talk with my clients, and also how it impacts coaches and the work that we need to do, that we ask our clients to do. If we haven't stepped into this ourselves, then we have trouble sort of leading them or partnering with them through that process. And so it all just sort of came together and seemed like this was the right time.
Garry Schliefer:
Yeah. Well, thank you. It was an excellent contribution and for those of you that are subscribers and or have seen the article, isn't that a great treatment with the gremlins, just right on target and, as Paul said, we laughed out loud about it. When I was reading the article like you got me right from the very beginning, because this really what was and continues to be my own experience and I can think of a client right now.
Garry Schliefer:
But I'm going to quote you and you said right off the bat, "you're in a session with a client. You're just getting to the juicy part. When they bring us up a struggle, they're experiencing the very same issue you're dealing with right now. It's amazing how we attract clients we can help, but who also inadvertently help us. They so often remind us of the parts of our own life that need attention." I just think that was just a brilliant way to start into the whole conversation about self-talk, not just self doubt, not just from our clients, but also from ourselves. What triggers us?
Paul Boehnke:
Absolutely. I cannot tell you how many client sessions I've had when the client brings up something, you're thinking how did you know that's what I'm dealing with?
Paul Boehnke:
I don't usually say that, but I certainly am aware of it, and it is amazing how our own issues, our own questions, our own challenges, they impact how we coach. What we're comfortable looking at or uncovering or asking our clients about, how comfortable are we with these same questions and when we're not comfortable, that's when we get into little troubles, I think.
Garry Schliefer:
You know, it just occurred to me, I was thinking about something. So you suggest in your article that coaches do their own work. Obviously, we know that's part of the core competencies and let's say doing our own work, but it still comes up. How do you get rid of the negative self-talk, that thing in your head? That's going on.
Paul Boehnke:
Yes, so it is a process. It's not like a switch that you can just suddenly turn on or off. But you know there are a number of different ways to go about it. In essence it has to do with sort of reprogramming your brain. If I am not mistaken, the last issue of the magazine was about neuroscience and so it has a lot to do with that. The negative self-talk that we experience, all these inner critic messages are just thoughts. It's what happens in our brain. That's a thought that happens in our brain, and it happens for lots of different reasons. And these thoughts become habits. When we can recognize the fact that first of all these are just thoughts. They're not who we are. That helps us separate ourselves a little bit from the impact that those messages have on us.
Paul Boehnke:
The process that I use with my clients is actually sort of a four-phase process. I don't think of it so much as steps because we go back and forth between them constantly, but it has to do with recognizing the fact that these thoughts are just thoughts that have become a habit. We recognize the fact that at the bottom there is some sort of a lie that we've been telling ourselves that isn't true and when we can uncover what that lie really is, at the very bottom, underneath all the surface level lies. It's easy to find there's something underneath, and when we get there, then we have a sense of, oh, this is the real habit, the real belief that I'm dealing with. And once we do that, then we can craft a new belief, a new affirmation, if you will, to help us move into a positive direction with this.
Paul Boehnke:
Now, affirmations some people love them. Some people say, well, I've tried them, but I find them kind of useless and ineffective. They don't work. And for those who fall into that last category, I would be willing to wager that, regardless of how powerful any particular affirmation was that they were using, it wasn't quite the right one for them. You see, the affirmations if we're going to really be changing the way our brain works, the neuroscience in there, we need something that moves us emotionally as well as intellectually. If it's just intellectual, it's not going to have much of an impact. But when we can craft a statement that really fits your underlying belief, that really speaks to you in a way that is not only encouraging but inspiring, then we can bring about that reprogramming so much more quickly and easily and effectively and sustainably. I love that additional word, emotional, like intellectual and emotional.
Garry Schliefer:
I love that additional word, emotional, like intellectual and emotional. So do you have an example that might resonate with our listeners?
Paul Boehnke:
So I will share an example, actually from my own life. How's that?
Garry Schliefer:
Oh, even better.
Paul Boehnke:
There was a time in my life when I was feeling a bit sort of unsupported, like I had no help. The weight of the world was on my shoulders sort of poor, poor, pitiful me syndrome. I'm guessing others out there maybe have had a similar sort of maybe. I started looking at so if this is an inner critic message, what are the lies that I've been believing about this?
Paul Boehnke:
Well, I could quickly find evidence that I did have support, easily find evidence that there were people in my life who were helpful to me, and this felt better. I thought okay, this feeling like I have no help isn't actually true. So that released a little bit of the weight. But I also realized it felt a little bit surface level. It's like, okay, this is a great start, but this doesn't really change that much for me right now. So I kept digging, I kept peeling back the layers of lies. What's underneath this? What is this really about? Why is this important to me? Eventually, I came to the realization that the lies underneath all those surface ones was that I didn't deserve the help or support that I wanted. That was a very different message. Now I had something to work with. This was gold. So that's kind of the importance I think of really getting underneath the underneath of those lies, because then this gives you something really concrete to work with.
Garry Schliefer:
Wow, and it reminds me of a section I highlighted in getting ready for today, what you said, "e may even discover that was once so terrifying actually makes us feel more alive than ever," and this just sounds like a perfect example of that.
Paul Boehnke:
Absolutely. You know, fear is one of those things that well okay, our brain develops this ability through the amygdala to keep us alive and keep us safe, and it's been useful for a few million years. As is so common in conversation, these days we don't have that much to really be fearful about, relatively speaking, in our day-to-day life anymore, but it still really has such a huge impact in our life and the fear usually isn't true depending on if we can step back far enough from the situation, we begin to realize that what we see as dangerous isn't so dangerous. And emotions, they feel terrifying when we're not sure where they're going to be going, but they are just emotions and rarely does anyone die from experiencing an emotion.
Garry Schliefer:
True that.
Paul Boehnke:
Absolutely so when we can go in and we can actually experience it, we realize it's not as scary and it opens something in us. Opens us to a new way of being in this world, opens us to deeper compassion for ourselves, for our clients, for everyone in our life. So that's why I see this is so impactful and so important.
Garry Schliefer:
Well, I will quote to you yet again, my dear Paul. "When you do this, you realize that, instead of a dangerous place that you might not survive, it's a place of healing, and that change generally lies as a monster but leaves as an angel.
Paul Boehnke:
I love that image. I got that from Joseph Campbell. That's not my phrase, but he said that in mythology often change approaches as the demon. It's terrifying as a monster which like, oh my gosh, life is going to end here and as it passes through us it creates this transformation and we realize this was no monster. This was an angel, bringing us healing and openness and abundance and worthiness.
Garry Schliefer:
Yeah, and to that point, so an excerpt from my life when I was working with, we called them gremlins. I went to coaching school back in the day and they called it gremlins, and you mentioned that as well. Many names saboteurs. I remember one that was a money gremlin and I was, you know, guided by my coach to have fun with it and it was literally a monster. I remember picturing it being three stories tall. It's funny because we have these images here. It was a combination of the fire-breathing dragon in Shrek, one with all the lipstick, and Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. So it was that combo, right, and it could be three stories tall. I actually found there was a. What was it called figment? There was actually a doll, a character at Disney World called Figment, and it looked just like it and I ended up getting one of those.
Garry Schliefer:
But I would sit with it and talk and keep asking why? What is it? You know, what am I asking myself? Why asking it? What are you here to protect me from? Advise me that sort of thing? It's really a strange experience, but it was so worth it, and so now I have so still have those conversations, cause, like you say, it's not a switch. These things keep coming, but it's like, okay, what am I missing? And you know, nine times out of 10, I'm out of integrity somewhere in finance. Okay, just saying. A little spoiler alert. Garry has to check his integrity, and away we go. And as soon as I get back into integrity, then usually the world transforms. .
Paul Boehnke:
One of the techniques that I use with my clients is based on internal family systems, which is a therapeutic technique.
Paul Boehnke:
Most of us have sort of heard of family systems that sort of look at the members of a family or a group and sort of figures out their role in the functioning or dysfunctioning of that group. And internal family systems does pretty much the same thing, but within one human being. So we've got all these different parts of us, these parts that are trying to manage our lives, parts that are trying to keep us safe, parts that are doing all sorts of different things, and negative self-talk is usually embodied by one of these voices. And when I will sometimes lead my clients into sort of a meditative kind of place and we have a little dialogue with this part of them and say what is it that you're trying to protect me from? What are you scared of? How would you like to help me? Because actually we're on the same side, we want the same thing. How do we work together? And there have been some really amazing turnarounds and experiences I've had with various clients in this way.
Garry Schliefer:
Yeah, no kidding. Paul, I'm learning so much more about you and about this article and the process and things like that, so thank you very much for that. I would like to ask you kind of one of our last questions, cause we're running to the end of our conversation today, but what would you like our audience to do as a result of the article and this conversation?
Paul Boehnke:
Well, I guess the first thing I would encourage people to do is to look at your own inner critic.
Paul Boehnke:
Move through that monster stage into the angel stage. That would be the first thing that I would encourage people to do and there are a lot of ways that you can do that. I mentioned in the article number of different processes or methods that you can do that, one of which is I've written about in my book, "houghts on Demand, and there's also a video series I've created about the process that I help students with, and if people are interested in seeing that they can have free access to it. They just go to paulbenke. com/ ally and then you can sign up and get this video series for free, which really sort of helps you understand each phase of this process and leads you through it.
Garry Schliefer:
And we'll have that link in the notes section of this recording. So thank you so much for that. And you know, I don't want to skip over this, one of the things that you alluded to that I think is an important aspect of this work is, I remember a seasoned, well-known coach once said, and we were trained never to use this word in coaching in the beginning, why? And what I heard you say is just keep asking why. And I'm saying to you it's like the first answer I give is my fluff answer, it's my, you know, it's just that off the cuff, you know, safety answer for people that aren't working to help me peel away, it's just that protective giveaway. But then he kept asking. He asked why? at least three times, and I think why is a very powerful question. I think we may have turned the corner on that. Remember I've been in this for, and you may be too, 23 years and three months now.
Paul Boehnke:
Yeah, yeah. Why is an interesting question? So much of coaching, it seems to me, is about figuring out what are our clients' goals and how do we help them get there. Not a bad idea, but I find that goals are usually relatively easy to meet, to reach, unless there's some sort of inner block going on. And if we can understand what the inner block is, then this frees up our clients to do that. And the question why is a really good question. Why is this important to you? We have to be careful that we don't ask the question why?
Garry Schliefer:
You're nuts, you're crazy. Why would you think that? Why? Exactly like as in why that, why that, why this? Yes?
Paul Boehnke:
Yeah, out of a sense of honest curiosity then, I think that's a really powerful question because that helps people get underneath the underneath.
Garry Schliefer:
Excellent. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for your offering today. That's so, so generous of you and I'll be one of the first ones to do that. Didn't even know. Paul thank you so much for joining us Beyond the Page episode. Obviously, the best way to reach you is through your website, as you just said, paulbenke. com/a lly. I'm sure there's contact details if people want to go further. I want to thank you so, so, very much. This has been wonderful fun. It didn't kill us to talk about gremlins, right.
Paul Boehnke:
No, that's right.
Garry Schliefer:
Oh, that's right. So thank you again.
Paul Boehnke:
My pleasure. Thank you so much, Gary, for the invitation.
Garry Schliefer:
That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app. I know the favorites out there for us is Apple and Spotify. Key in the word choice or coaching, and we're going to come up. If you're not currently a subscriber, you can sign up for a free digital issue of choice Magazine by either scanning the QR code that's over here, that I keep tilting the wrong way, or going to choice-online. com and clicking the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Thanks again, Paul.
