Jeanine: Hello and welcome to Empower World’s coaching and leadership podcast. Again, I'm delighted to be here with amazing Marie Quigley. Hi Marie Good morning to you over there.

Marie: And good evening to you over there.

Jeanine: Yes, thank you Marie. I'm in. Well I'm in South Melbourne in a beach town and it's been an amazing winter. However today it is howling, it is squalling, it is raining, it's everything today. So, if you hear it in the background, you'll know what that noise is. What's it like over there where you Marie.

Marie: It's actually a beautiful day. It’s been great weather for the UK it’s quite surprising. So lovely green I'm looking out my window. It's absolutely stunning weather.

Jeanine: Beautiful. And so, we're here again and we wanted to bring up today, something that has been coming up for us in questions from our trainee coaches. So, people that are training to become coaches, and the questions that have been coming up is to… they're hearing about this re-framing of what a client is experiencing and how to do that, how to support the client to re-frame. So, Marie I know that that's something that you heard recently. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Marie: Yeah, it's interesting. We've got, obviously, lots of exercises in our coach training and this one particular exercise was about our limiting beliefs and the exercise was for example one of the of the statements was ‘I can't begin coaching yet because I haven't got my certificate’. So, what could be a re-frame of that was one of the questions, and some of the participants didn't quite understand what that meant. And so, when we make a statement like that, there's always another way to say it. There's always another potential belief that we can have about it. So, another potential belief about that is ‘I'm already trained so I can begin coaching before I get my certificate’. That's one way. Another way would be ‘I'm learning so much more than I've ever learnt before, that it's my duty to share and coach before my certificate arrives’ and another one would be ‘my certificates on its way and I this is my duty to practice this coaching while it's on its way’. So, do you see how by just changing the way we state something has an impact on us, really. So, you know we talked about this earlier in another conversation Jeanine, but how we speak to ourselves has an impact on our body. So, when we say ‘I can’t’ our body believes that, of course our mind… whatever we tell ourselves is true. And so, our bodies respond to the ‘I can’t’. In terms of kinesiologists, they say that actually when we speak negatively to ourselves, the body becomes weaker. So as coaches we're supporting our clients too, re-frame their statements that are disempowering in order for them to be more empowered. Does that make sense.

Jeanine: Absolutely Mary to me and I'm sure to our listeners and as you say, when we say things like ‘I can't’, ‘I don't know how’ or something along those lines again, we're supporting our mind to shut down as well. And so, if we if we notice that we're using that type of language and we have the presence to realize that we're programming our mind and body to shut down and not see the opportunities. If we're present to that then we can potentially ask ourselves a different question that can support that opening up and even if it's something like “oh what if it's easy or what if I can?”. It starts to open things up. And so, we as coaches, what we're supporting our clients to do is to allow them to re-frame the situations through the questions that we ask. So, it's through those powerful questions that we ask to support our client to understand or appreciate or notice a different perspective and re-frame a situation. So, what's possible, what if you could. So, it's really supporting the client to, again, tap into their resourcefulness, their imagination, their body to identify that new way forward. So, what comes to mind as well as the work that again we spoke about earlier today Marie, as you said, another conversation. John DeMartini came to mind and I you know, I recall his words in terms of you know, there are always… I know it's not just his words, it's many others out there as well… there are two sides to everything. There are two sides to every story. There's a yin and yang. There's a positive and there's a not so positive side to everything so and if we become addicted to one side of the story and choose only to see that side then that's going to potentially continue to create the same old experiences. And again if we go back to that, if we have presence to realize there's another perspective, there's another way we can view this situation or hear it or feel it, then we're able to see the other or many other perspectives as you shared with that example, that lovely example that you that you shared about the you know training and ‘when I get my certificate’. So yeah. So, it's powerful to do this work to support a client through asking those powerful questions about how you know, what is it that they haven't noticed yet? What is it? What is it that they've not picked up yet? What is it that they've chosen to miss?

Marie: Yeah and so those are lovely questions to ask your clients. And in addition to that you could ask them what's not true about that belief? You know if you believe something else what could that be? So, we’re supporting them to look at different ways of viewing their world and sometimes it might be useful to be a little bit provocative and saying your client says “well, I can't start coaching until I got my certificate”. You say “Well of course you can't”. And even that can create a little peak for some people to say “Oh hang on a minute, I’m going to! Don’t tell me what I can and can't do”. So, it's looking at that perspective as well.

Jeanine: Yes. So those provocative questions can be so powerful and they can really create that reaction of “oh no there is something else that's possible!”. Yeah. It's a lovely challenge with those provocative questions. Yeah.

Marie: And of course, we can only challenge our clients when we build trust and rapport and the more we are understanding our clients and supporting them to recognize the best within themselves, that's when we can playfully and provocatively support our clients to maybe not be so serious about how they're thinking, so that they can support themselves to think about a different way. I know that the school teachers say that we learn best when we're having fun and when we can bring a little bit of lightness into our coaching that can often create a wonderful reframe or shift for our clients.

Jeanine: Hmm Yes perhaps a little bit of a provocative and cheekiness wrapped up into a question can be again really powerful. And I know certainly from my perspective that that has worked well for me when I am provided that challenge in a cheeky way. And I know when I’ve been really challenged as well it's sort of like “Right! Let's have a look and let's show what you know what's possible”. So, you know it's used as you said. Not only is that the questions that we can ask in different ways. It's also the way we do it the approach the energy that we use with the questions that we ask that can combine to create a powerful shift for our client to re-frame this situation or what they're experiencing.

Marie: Absolutely. So, think about how you're speaking to yourself coaches and if it's not in the way you want to speak how can you re-frame it. What would that sound like when you do re-frame the question or the statement that you’re telling yourself? And challenge yourself when you're working with your clients this week, this month, to listen to how the clients are speaking and support them to find that different perspectives, different ways they can start speaking to themselves.

Jeanine: Yes, beautiful Marie and I would also invite our listeners, our coaches, to listen out for your own language and support your clients to listen out for their language that ‘I can't’ type language. That ‘It's impossible’, ‘I don't know how’. You know when you hear those kind of clues as to what might be happening inside of you and inside your mind in terms of closing things down, when you notice that just allow yourself to go “huh. Actually, what is possible? What if I can?” To shifting it to “I can”. So, enjoy listeners and again get curious, challenge, stretch, see what's possible outside of the comfort zone. And remember there are two sides to everything. So, it's looking for the gift, it's looking for the learning, it's looking for what's possible. So, thank you for joining Marie and I and wishing you an amazing week ahead.