Music and Intro Message
I’m Dr. Moira. I’m a college professor, instructor, coach, and passionate mentor to health coaches around the world. But I haven’t always been that confident and committed to my coaching career. I was hesitant to take the next step and wasn’t sure what the best approach was to success and fulfillment. I decided to step into my passion and purpose of guiding health coaches on their journey from hesitant health coach to committed health coach,
with a unique approach to coach growth, the Coaching Hive Blueprint combines creating a mindful vision with inspiring guidance and progress-driven learning. The coaching hive podcast is your glimpse into the concepts, ideas, and approaches that underscore the coaching hive while giving you the opportunity to implement tools and tips along the way. Are you ready to dive into today’s podcast, then let’s go and remember that this podcast is family friendly.
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Introduction
Welcome to a brand-new month with the Coaching Hive. And this one is going to be special. This month is all about passion and purpose. And in this month, I have an extra special something coming your way. Next week, I am sitting down with book author, Amy McLaren, to talk about her brand-new book that is releasing on August 10th about called Passion to Purpose. In fact, Amy’s new book is so empowering that I am offering a free virtual book club for Passion to Purpose. If you are interested in joining the book club, we will have a private Facebook group, private Telegram channel with daily inspiration, and live virtual discussions to create authentic connection and progress toward leaning into our passions and purpose. Head on over to bit.ly/passiontopurposebookclub to sign up today.
Before we jump into today’s topic, I just want to share with you a little about the book. I cannot wait for you all to read this book. I have been pouring over it for the last few weeks, and it is already filled with sticky notes and ideas and insights and thoughts and aha moments that are really driving a lot of things right now. I keep going back to it and finding new nuggets of wisdom. Each time I read the book, it is with different insights. I think this book is a game changer. So much so that my Founding Members inside the Coaching Hive membership are receiving a free copy as a gift.
The book club begins this week with our first live discussion on Monday, August 16. Join today to catch the conversations leading up to the book launch. Again, that link to join is bit.ly/passiontopurposebookclub.
Purpose
Ok, now let’s dive into today’s episode with something that I saw pop up in a health coaching group that I’m a part of. It just really stuck with me, especially because I had Amy’s Passion to Purpose book on my mind. I thought it might be helpful to have a conversation here about the post I saw. A health coach posted they were feeling frustrated about how to find jobs and it’s frustrating because the health coaching arena is still very new.
Not everyone respects the health coaching certification, even the national board certification isn’t always recognized just yet. And many employers are still trying to look for nurses instead of recognizing what a health coach, even without that RN degree can offer to their clients. And this coach was sharing that she was feeling very frustrated, kind of beaten down that there weren’t jobs. She felt like it was a situation where it was kind of like that hidden secret until you’re in the club.
You don’t know that there aren’t as many jobs as you might expect until you are a health coach. And while that’s changing, you know, there’s some validity to her concerns. And it does take perseverance in getting a job in the health coaching industry. But I do also feel like that it takes perseverance to get a job in any industry.
Here is what makes this a little different in some cases. A lot of times when we get into health coaching, we’re very passionate. And so when we’re passionate, we think, man, this is just going to happen. And we forget that realistic side of things. So one thing that this person noticed as a lot of people jumped in to comment on her post,
including myself, saying, what is it you really want? What do you want to do? What’s underlying everything for you pursuing health coaching. And she thought about it and really came back saying, you know what? I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me what my purpose is, what my “why” is. I understand all of this. I know what my purpose is. My purpose is to be a health coach.
And in that moment, all I could think was you want to be a health coach, but what’s the purpose behind it, right? Because the purpose itself to me and my Coaching Hive members now know this now too, because we talk about this all the time. It’s not the job, it’s not the job title.
And it’s not even the job with an organization or your own business. It’s not specifically that, that is your purpose. And it is bigger than that. It’s more than that. When reading Amy McLaren’s Passion to Purpose book, I love that she defines passion as engagement with what you love. Okay? So in this case, this health coach is saying her purpose is to be a health coach. So what does she really want out of that? I have a mentor with whom I work. I’ve been working with him about six months now. And one of his big things is always to say your deeper purpose is what happens when you are a health coach.
It’s not health coaching. That’s not your purpose, that is your job. It’s what happens because you’re a health coach. And if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve seen me talk about one of my purposes. One of my deeper purposes, isn’t to have my own business. It’s not to work with lots of health coaches. My purpose is that health coaching will be so normal that there will be health coaches available for anyone,
anyone, and everyone. That’s my deeper purpose. And so I work in the Coaching Hive to help coaches get to that point where they are out in the world. Then there are more coaches, they are confident, they are committed and they’re taking action. Because when they do that, then to my mind, I am helping support my deeper purpose, which is having health coaching, health and wellness options available for everyone.
So what is this coach’s purpose? Is it health coaching? And I would argue the purpose is not health coaching. The purpose might be to help others avoid chronic disease. Her purpose might be to be financially independent or to give back to her community more effectively, it might be something that her deeper purpose is to have time off more regularly.
Regardless of what this specific coach’s purpose is, the key is that you want to make sure that you’re exploring your purpose from a place of your passion. What is your passion? I love working with other people. I love helping them kind of think through their options and then figure out what next steps to take.
That’s one of the reasons I mentor. It’s one of the reasons that I sit down with coaches every single month and talk about the possibilities. And we talk about, you know, where do you feel stuck? How do you move forward? Because my passion is really to help other people make the progress that they desire. I love it. It lights me up.
Every single time I get off a Coaching Hive call and come out of my office. I’m like, wow, this is so fun. And I’ve done a couple of things in my life. I’ve taught at the college level and I still do. I teach health coaching occasionally. And this is the one that my husband’s like, wow, Moira, you walk out of your office lit up. And he is right, I just come out and grinning like a fool because it’s so neat to be a part of those conversations and to watch that momentum.
So purpose, what is that purpose? When you think about purpose examine what you want to have happen. And one of the ways my mentor has talked about it with me is what happens when you’ve worked with 10,000 people,
what happens? And so that’s why I say, well, when I’ve worked with 10,000 coaches, everyone has an opportunity to have access to a health coach. And it just becomes very real that if I can work with coaches day in and day out and help them to move from hesitancy to commitment, to action with my Coaching Hive Blueprint, then the world has more access to health coaches.
And that means that I get to see little kids growing up healthy and nothing would make me happier. I get to see developing nations who don’t have the access to health and wellness opportunities and resources that we have here in the United States. They don’t have access to that. It means that developing nations have that access just like Amy McLaren has helped make education possible in Kenya with her foundation, Village Impact.
With the proceeds of Passion to Purpose, Village Impact will be building a girl’s boarding school in Kenya. And that is opening the doors to education for women, for girls that has not existed previously. And so when I think about their purpose, to be able to educate those who would otherwise be without the opportunities education affords. It gives me goose bumps.
Although the Coaching Hive operates on a much closer circle for now, I think about working with coaches in that same way. In guiding coaches to confidently stepping into their role as a health coach, that allows more people to have access, regardless of situation, circumstance, education level, financial wellbeing, that everyone has access to someone to help guide them through the choices they’re making for their health and wellbeing, what a better place we would be in. What a better place we would be in if that were the case.
Even if it’s talking about sleep hygiene, even if it’s talking about at the end of a hard day, you’ve worked 20 hours in the field coming home and sitting for just 60 seconds and breathing. By having those conversations about health, coaching can change so much. It doesn’t change everything. Absolutely not. But adds to all of these other, humanitarian efforts.
And so is your purpose to be a health coach? I would argue, no. I would say, what are you hoping to have happen? Because you are a health coach who is actively working with clients. I would argue, take it a step further. And my clients who’ve worked with me. My Coaching Hive members who have worked with me say no, health coaching is not my purpose.
You have to keep peeling back the onion, keep peeling it back. Let’s take next level down. Let’s keep going. Okay. So what happens when this happens? What happens? What’s Y when X what’s Z, when Y and as we do this, we keep digging down and it allows us to come to our coaching business from a place of deep authenticity, deep awareness.
And when you are aware of what’s going on, you can explore with new eyes, new perspectives. You can look at the options in a different way. By doing that hard work, you’re giving yourself the gift of exploration. You are giving yourself that opportunity to tell yourself a new story about what’s happening.
So what happens if that first job doesn’t work out because they want you to be an RN and my goodness, you’re not. And you have no intention of going back to school to be an RN. You’re a health coach. You’ve already done your other education. You’re good. What if that opens you up to say, you know what, this wasn’t the right place for me and what I want to accomplish, what I want to have happen with me being a health coach.
What purpose am I hoping to achieve to light up, to empower? And it, you have to really ask yourself, what am I really wanting to do? What values of mine does this support? Because that’s when you get to your purpose. And we tell ourselves a lot of times that our purpose is something that we’ve heard, right?
We tell ourselves stories all the time about what’s expected of us, why I need to have this, and they need to do that. And I need to be here and I need to wear this or that. I need to look a certain way. I need to dress a certain way. And these are all stories that we’ve told ourselves, which may or may not have truth.
And they may or may not allow us to grow. I will never forget. It was my first year teaching in college and my best friend. She was a year behind me in grad school. So she was still finishing up and I had finished my PhD. And she said, okay, Moira, now that you’re in the classroom in front of 70, 75 students,
18 year old, 19 year old students, you’re like 25, 26. You need to wear some makeup. It will help distinguish you from your students. And I think it’ll give you a little bit more confidence. And I thought makeup, I’ve never worn makeup who cares about makeup. And at the end of the day, it wasn’t about the makeup, but it was about putting myself together and taking that time in the morning.
And, you know, it was about taking the time in the morning to get myself into the mindset of, I have something to offer these students. And even though I’m still in my twenties and they’re maybe 18, 19, some of them are 21 that I’m teaching them just a few years older than them, and I’m goofy and I’m quirky. And I still have something to offer because I have been through these courses.
I do know what it’s like and intensely know what it’s like, because I just got through these undergrad courses, not that long ago. So I know what it means to be stuck, to have that C come back on a test and you Go, I studied, I don’t get it. So, You know, it wasn’t about the makeup. I didn’t appreciate it.
Then. I didn’t appreciate it for a long time, because I thought it was about the makeup. But what I realized looking back is that it helped me know my purpose better to put on that makeup in the morning. Cause I stood in front of the mirror, I got dressed, put myself together and I thought I could do this. And I have something to offer, whether it’s confidence in being the nerd or working through something that just doesn’t make sense. So that one moment of, I think it’s time to learn how to put makeup on Moira, turned into so much more. What it means is that I sat down on the floor with my students. They would gather when I was at Wofford college, they would gather in a room and I was sit down and talk to them and they would show me new things that they were doing.
And they were showing me apps that they were using. They showed me all kinds of things, but it gave us a chance to sit down. And had I never had that conversation with my sweet friend about makeup. I don’t know that I would have realized one of my purposes was to sit down and to guide and to mentor because I wouldn’t have had the confidence.
Conclusions
So maybe, maybe the job is your purpose, but I would argue it’s something else. It’s something deeper. Explore that this week and know that next week we are getting together with Amy McLaren to talk about her brand new book, being published on August 10th, called Passion to Purpose.
You can check her out on her website passiontopurposebook.com and if you’re ordering several books at a time, you can also get some cool little things to go along with it. As a reminder, now is the time to join the Passion to Purpose book club where we will have open and honest discussions about passion and purpose and leaning into that.
Feel free to bring a friend along.
So until next week, I hope I’ve given you some things to think about in terms of your passion and your purpose, and kind of peeling back the layers to discover the root of everything.
With that in mind, I’ll go ahead and wrap up for this week and I’ll see you back here next week for our conversation with Amy McLaren. Y’all I cannot wait for this opportunity. It is going to be wonderful. I have been participating in a course facilitated by her husband, Stu for the last few months. Having gotten to know them both, Amy and Stu are both absolutely engaging, beautiful souls. So I think that you will thoroughly enjoy our conversation and learn a little bit more about yourself along the way.
Until next week my friends, keep peeling back the layers of your purpose onion.
~ Moira
Important Links
- Join the Coaching Hive Book Club: https://bit.ly/passiontopurposebookclub
- Order Passion to Purpose: https://amymclaren.com/passion-to-purpose-book/
