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Hey guys. Welcome back. We are on episode number four. So I am packing up and heading to Dallas in the morning, so it is like 10:30 at night. I’ve had a crazy busy day because I’m getting all the extra consultations and clients in and wrapping up so I can have a few days off. Actually, more than a few days off.

So I’m heading to Dallas to go meet with my mentor and coach and other coach peers. We’re going to be doing a lot of business stuff. So this is like, my dessert. This is like, better than vacation to me. I love business and life coaching. If you haven’t been doing it, you really need to get a coach because there is just nothing better. It’s been life changing for me.

So going for a couple of days. Let’s see, I leave for Dallas Thursday and I will be there until Saturday night, and then I drive home – and get this – I’ll get home between 12 and one, around midnight, and then will by hopping in the car around 4am and heading to Disneyworld with my daughters and granddaughters.

So this is a girls’ trip to Disney, which means I have to pack everything before I walk out the door because I will not have time to pack in between. So that’s what’s on my mind right now. And on to today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about why we suffer and how to stop.

So this was something when I was willing to give up these three things and really be willing to lose it all, let it go, everything became available for me. So I am super excited to share this with you today. And this goes for what’s happening in your life, your personal life with your children and your relationships, as well as what’s happening in your business.

Because how we do anything is how we do everything, so it affects all parts of our life and because I work with coaches and I have a coaching program and because I love business so much that I have to bring both in for you guys because it just helps us to see it from all angles. It’s easier for me to teach by example and kind of gets the point across a little bit clearer.

So the reason that I believe most people suffer, number one, is because we judge. We judge how things are, how we think they should be. Like, think about it. Even what’s the appropriate age to get married or if it’s okay to get a divorce, or how many kids should you have. Should you have kids before you get married? Should you have kids before you’re 30? Is it okay to have kids after you’re 50? What age should you marry? Should you get married at all?

You know that my first run in with someone who chose not to have children was not that long ago. Probably about 10 years ago. I was blown away. I was pretty big in the yoga community, I was doing my 500-hour training and I came across a teacher and we were just having a casual conversation because I have five kids. That’s a big thing for me to say.

And so I was asking her if she had any children and she was like no, and I was like, oh. I don’t even remember what I said but my mind thought,
oh, she must not have been able to have children. And she says. “Yeah, I just decided I didn’t want any.” I was like, what? You can do that? Seriously, you can decide not to have children?

I didn’t even know that was a thing. I’m not kidding. Like, it never even crossed my mind. I’m 50 so understand that I was probably between 35, 45 the first time I ever heard that and that just aint how it is down here in the South. We have kids, we have – I don’t know, it’s just like, the thing to do. If you’re not married yet and you’re 30 then they’re asking, when are you going to have kids or how many are you going to have or when are you going to have another one.

It’s the same thing with marriage. I think maybe we’re a little bored and it’s just the conversation that we have. Heck, I don’t know, but just saying I guess that you can say that was a judgment I had formed or a perception, a way that I saw things. And it floored me. I’m just realizing that you have a choice, you don’t have to do it that way.

So the other thing is comparing. You know, well your sister had a child at 28 or your sister was married at this point, or comparing to where someone else lives or the money that they make. All of these should’ve, could’ve would’ve kind of thing. And I said this because it’s the same thing in business, especially in the health and wellness business and the coaching industry.

For me in particular, when I notice the judgment and comparison came from – my suffering came from wanting to help people get better. Like, wanting to help them heal, wanting to help them get healthier, to feel better. And it felt like they didn’t want it, and so I was suffering like crazy. I was taking this as personal rejection and there must be something wrong with the way I’m doing it or why don’t they want this.

Because in my mind, I was just trying to get healthy and get better and feel better. I was so miserable and I couldn’t understand that someone else didn’t want the same. So I had this judgment and comparison that other people thought the way I did or that they put priorities in the same place I did.

And where the suffering came in from is I thought they should want it. Not only they should want more or want better, but they should want it now. Like, don’t you see what I have to offer? Can’t you see how fabulous this is? Like, this is amazing. And you know, for me in particular, my business started because of the suffering that I was seeing with my clients and what they were saying, which is, well, if we had this I would do it, or we had this going on here or if it were available or if we had such and such.

You know, this was from hair, nails, fitness, yoga, like, you name it. It was like, just never enough, should I say, or if we had the next thing – like we had a heated pool, then I would come. Or if we had a yoga class in the mornings, then I would come. Or if we had yoga in the evenings, then I would come.

And so I was like, running like crazy, jumping through hoops trying to make that happen. So it was like, started classes in the morning, then I was starting classes in the evening. Then I even looked into getting the heated pool. So I was looking for anything to fix. Can you see the hook? Judging, comparing, and then trying to fix it to be different.

That’s where the suffering was coming from. And what I’m saying about when I was willing to lose it all, when I was willing to give up that need to fix and that need for it to be different, then everything became available for me in business, in life, in relationships. Like, everything changed.

This was mind-boggling. My perception and what I thought, the way things should be or what society had taught me or what I had learned early on in childhood or what I had seen in my own environment and trying to keep that going according to my perceptions and my belief and how I was judging and comparing it to being good or bad or wrong or right or quicker or whatever my thoughts were.

And I had to come to that place of realizing that I was causing my own suffering. And even more than that, what I figured out is when I was willing to let go and when everything became available, it was so much better than I could possibly imagine because my perception was so limited.

Like, I remember I had a coach several years ago, probably about 10, 12 years ago and we were talking about retreats and I’ve always just wanted this women’s wellness center or I wanted to have lodging and housing and if they were in a horrid relationship that they would have a place to actually get out of that environment and we could put them up for a few months as they got stronger and found jobs and had a place for the kids, and that kind of thing.

Because I was seeing a lot of this in the fitness center, that they were getting their lives cleaned up and their diets and they were starting to exercise and they would go back into that environment and they would kind of just get deflated and then they would quit. And I was suffering so much from this because I was trying to figure out what else could I do and why weren’t they getting it quicker, why didn’t they continue to come.

And again, judging and comparing, right? It’s their path. Nothing has gone wrong. When we can let go of what we think things should be and how quick it should happen, can you see how we do this in every aspect of our life? How our kids turn out, what kind of grades they make, what are they going to do with the rest of their life, who are they going to marry?

Or we don’t want them to suffer, we think they’re entitled to have this amazing perfect life where they don’t suffer. It’s just this humanity entitlement kind of thing. So I wanted to really talk about a few examples of this and then give you some – maybe something to think about, some opportunities to get out of it and maybe have a little less suffering in your life.

And it’s not always just us judging someone else, but it’s truly probably the worst thing is us judging yourself. How far we should have come, where we should have gotten by now, and we compare it to those that we graduated with or those that we work with. Even our kids. Think about how often you compare one kid to the other.

You’re talking to someone, you’re outside of the grocery store and you’re looking at your three or four kids, and they’re like – he looks like so and so and they’ll go onto describe the differences between them, right? And if you really kind of listen in between there is like, he’s the one who gives me trouble or he’s the one who does it this way.

So it’s like, even for the kids hearing this and so this is how society teaches us and this is how our environment teaches us is like, it’s the measuring stick. How we judge and compare, and then the thing is when we get attached to wanting it to be different – so it’s not so much that he’s tall, he’s short, he’s the active one, he’s the quiet one, he’s the sick one.

That’s not where the problem is. It’s when we want it to be different and then we try to fix that. It’s not that change is a bad thing, but it’s like, for my example earlier about the fitness and wanting people to be healthier, we have this amazing Cajun culture here so we do a lot of eating and drinking and it’s – we’ve got a great community, a lot of great stuff but sometimes our behavior gets a little out of hand.

But I live here and so it’s like, wait a minute, I’m the one who’s suffering, so this is me that’s judging and comparing and wanting it to be different. Like, this is what the culture is like and this is the life that these people chose. That is not my business to try to change that. I can offer different for what I want to bring into my own life and changing my own environment, but if I think everyone else should want to do it too and I’m judging and comparing and then trying to fix them and want them to change, that’s when the suffering comes in.

But I could just decide I want my personal life and environment to be different and it doesn’t have to mean anyone else has to change anything. In other words, we don’t have to change the circumstance. We have to have the change come from within ourselves. When we can drop the judge, when we can drop the compare, and when we can drop the idea that we need to fix anything, that anything is broken, and we’re willing to let go of our ideal of how we think it should be or whatever we’re making up and saying that is not good enough, that’s that comparing.

Think about this; it’s not just marriage and kids and jobs and money that you make or anything like that. But even think about grief. Well, there’s grief in losing something but then think about death. Like, we hear that there’s a certain time when people should be over death. Like what, it’s been six months, you only have six months left. Or it’s been a year, surely you’ve gotten over that by now.

Even that, right? You hear the judgment and comparison in it. That’s not something that we put a time clock on someone else or when we think it should be over and done. Using those kinds of things, that’s where our suffering is going to come in.

Anyone can take an entire lifetime to grieve, to suffer, to get over, to stay in however long they need to stay in their circumstance and situation and however long they want to experience it, and it is none of our stinking business. And actually, we are the ones who suffer when we make it our business.

So think about how often do you judge, first of all yourself, think about where you are in your business, and then think about your clients and how often you judge, compare, or try to fix them. And then think about in your relationships, in your family, amongst your siblings, your coworkers, maybe even comparing the place you work now compared to the place you used to work.

All of that stuff. And I’m not against wanting things to be better. Self-improvement and personal growth and that kind of stuff. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m talking about when we look at it and then we bang our head against a brick wall trying to make it different than what it is and thinking it needs to be better or longer or shorter or sooner. That kind of stuff is whenever we really start the suffering.

So there’s recognizing and then there’s judging and then there’s comparing and then there’s trying to fix it. Can you see the difference? So if there were no perfect and then again, what if everything is perfect just like it is? What if we didn’t reflect on the wrong, the right, the better, the sooner, and we just looked at it as – imagine we’re all on this track and we’re just making loops, making circles because that’s kind of what we do.

We just keep re-experiencing. I like to say it’s like being in theatre and it’s just a new scene, new character, sometimes it’s even the same story. So we’ll bring the experience back into our life if we haven’t gotten the lesson. So we might just keep repeating. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat the same thing over and over until we finally get it.

And so if we were all going on this track and we’re just going around and around, we would eventually get to the finish line. Does it really matter how fast someone gets there? Because you know, oftentimes one person has a really big lead but then they’ll trip and fall, and the ones who are moving along slower will just pass them up.

So if there were no perfect, no right or wrong, and we all were just walking each other home, if you could let go of the idea of time and you only lived in the moment without worrying about what someone was or wasn’t doing, not judging, not comparing, and surely not trying to fix them, but allowing them to have their own experience as you’re having your own experience.

Because really what we’re doing is taking our stuff and reflecting it and trying to fix it so that we can fix it within ourselves. So if we just minded our own business and we allowed other people to mind theirs and we didn’t judge them and we didn’t compare and we didn’t fix and control, what would life look like? What would it be for you?

Even in your business, think about it. You know what the mission of your business is, you know what your intention is, you know who you want to help, and you know how you want to show up. If you believed 100% that that – just that intention was enough to get you the results, if you took the aligned action, how would your life be different?

Because I think back to the years where what I had or what I was offering, they kept saying if I was offering something different, then their action would be different, and how many times I tried to fix that and it simply wasn’t true. And then I went into the part about the judging and comparing, well that’s what they told me and they still don’t want it, they must not want – but I’ve come to realize that everybody wants to feel better.

Everybody wants better. They just don’t all realize that it’s available for them or it’s just not time yet. Or maybe they’re not comfortable with change and they don’t want to do the thing that it’s going to take to get there, and that’s okay. So what?

Who would you be today if you weren’t judging yourself, if you weren’t comparing yourself, if you weren’t trying to fix yourself? And then who would you be if you weren’t trying to judge, compare, or fix anyone else? And instead, you were just walking along, minding your own business, believing that belief that’s in your heart, taking aligned action, taking one step at a time, and then just allowing the results to come forward.

I guarantee when I started looking at life that way, that’s when everything became available. And did so much better than what my limited perception or my thoughts and my judgment could possibly have come up with because I couldn’t even see the potential. And the opportunities weren’t there because I wouldn’t have recognized them anyway.

I was so stuck in how I thought it was supposed to turn out and when I was able to let that go, then things just became possible. So what would it be like if you chose to just continue following along, minding your own business, and you were in a life of ease, in flow, and in the freedom to enjoy? To enjoy all the experiences and allowing everyone else to have their own experience and you being a part of that. Just that simple.

And with all that said, I’d be curious to know what our world would look like if we would just let everyone else off the hook and just allowed them to be them in their own timing and we didn’t make it personally mean anything about us but even like I’m saying about the environment and wanting it to be different in my area and me suffering because I feel like it should be, that’s not any of my business what anyone else does.

And if I truly just look down, I will notice that the thing that I’m trying to fix in everyone else is truly the thing that I am trying to fix within myself. So, mind my own business, get it done from inside, allow the circumstance to be what it is, and then we all get to live this happily ever after.

So I hope you enjoyed the show and I would appreciate if you share it with your friends, if you give us a rating and review because this helps us get the message out and find more people like you. The podcast actually reaches a greater audience if you leave a rating and review, so I would really appreciate your support so that you can help more people like you get the message and build this community. Talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Integrative Life Coach Training for Health and Wellness Practitioners! If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to mind body integration, head over to KimGuillory.com to download your Stability First Meditation today.