387. Meet Jody’s Life Coach Bev Aron

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 387, Meet Jody’s Life Coach, Bev Aron.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited today to introduce you to my coach, Bev Aron. So I talk a lot about Brooke Castillo, I mention her as my teacher and coach, and she is. She’s been really key in teaching me the model and a lot of the tools that I use as a coach. But she has been a teacher and mentor to me, she hasn’t been my main coach. I’ve only been coached by Brooke a couple of times. My main coach and I’ve had several coaches. Kris Plachy has been a really instrumental coach to me.

And I have worked with other people on specific issues like emotional eating and things like that. But my main coach has been Bev Aron. And I feel so lucky to get to be coached by Bev. She continues to be the person that I usually go to if I need a coaching session. Bev Aron, you probably haven’t heard of her unless you’re a coach from the Life Coach School. If you’re a Life School coach, you know Bev Aron because she is one of the original coaches who was trained by Brooke. And she is sort of like the mother hen of The Life Coach School is what I like to think of her as.

She is just so wise and such an expert coach. She coaches Brooke Castillo a lot. She is correcting Brooke on how she’s using the model many times and Brooke defers to Bev Aron. That is how well she knows these tools. And even more impressive than how well she knows them is how she lives them. I can’t even describe it to you because it’s indescribable. So that’s why I invited Bev Aron to come on the podcast and share some of her light and wisdom with you. And I can’t wait for you to hear from her.

So before we dive in, if you haven’t got your annual pass, Christmas gift for your loved one and you want to get them an annual subscription to Be Bold, head to jodymoore.com/gift. And if you’re looking for something a little bit less spendy. Maybe you just want to take something, if you love coaching and you love what you’re learning here, and you want to take something to your favorite things party, let’s say. Then you can purchase people a ticket to my next coaching intensive. It’s a five day live with me on Zoom interactive event.

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Alright, let’s turn it over to my conversation with Bev Aron, here we go.

                                                                                                                   

Jody: Hello my beautiful friend.

Bev: Hello.

Jody: How are you?

Bev: So good.

Jody: You look beautiful.

Bev: So excited to be here. My gosh, thank you.

Jody: Thank you for taking the time to come on. How’s life before we dive into it?

Bev: Life is amazing, yeah, all round, thankfully, amazing, amazing, amazing. What about you?

Jody: Amazing also, yes. Life is amazing. Is it getting cold there in Canada?

Bev: It snowed last night for the first time.

Jody: It’s that time.

Bev: It’s that time. Two weeks ago we were having lunch outside and were like, “Okay, global warming, we don’t hate you.”

Jody: We don’t always hate you.

Bev: We don’t always hate you. Yeah, we felt terrible.

Jody: Okay. Well, let’s just chat. I’m recording everything because otherwise I feel like we say the good stuff and then start recording. So I’m so thankful that you would take the time to come on. And I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier because I talk about you, Bev Aron, I don’t know if you know this, all the time.

Bev: I love that you do.

Jody: I just am such a huge fan of yours. Let’s begin by just having you tell us a little bit about yourself personally. And then I want to dive into your work as a coach. But just give my audience a brief introduction to yourself if you wouldn’t mind.

Bev: I’m from South Africa originally. And I started out my life as a speech pathologist. About maybe 12 years ago I discovered coaching and I had lots of iterations in between, always wanting to find a way to serve [inaudible] healthcare and finding it just never felt right for me and I became a life coach. Personally, what can I tell you? I emigrated to Toronto 35 years ago. And I still live there.

Jody: What about kids?

Bev: I have four children and a brand new grandbaby.

Jody: Congratulations. I didn’t know that. That’s exciting.

Bev: [Crosstalk] three weeks old so that’s the most exciting.

Jody: So fun. How is your youngest child now?

Bev: My youngest is 18.

Jody: 18, okay. I remember talking to you just yesterday and you were talking about having a 14 year old. I guess that was four years ago.

Bev: I know, crazy, crazy, crazy.

Jody: Okay. So you’re about to be an empty nester.

Bev: Well, so my youngest is spending a year in Israel, studying. But my son, my second. He still lives at home with me. And right now we have a nephew living with us. So I keep thinking it’s going to be empty nest.

Jody: It’s not happening.

Bev: There’s still people.

Jody: How do you feel about that?

Bev: It’s awesome, honestly, it’s awesome. I feel like, this is what I feel like. I feel like I’m not designed to just have all this space. Every time someone goes, “Can I come and stay?” And I just think, so this is my growth. Apparently I was given this big, beautiful house for a reason. It’s not a house for two people, so thank you for the growth opportunities.

Jody: Okay. Well, let me just add, I know Bev Aron because you are one of the original Life Coach School coaches. And I’ll have you share a little bit more about that in a minute. I just want to say from my perspective that when I went through coach training which was eight and a half, almost nine years ago, isn’t that crazy? Bev was part of the process of how I became certified as a coach. So I was introduced to you first then. I don’t know if you remember that. It was a long time ago. You helped with my certification with reviewing my coaching calls and everything.

Bev: I hope I wasn’t mean to you. Was I mean?

Jody: You were very nice.

Bev: Good, okay.

Jody: You were very nice, yes. Are you kidding me? I’ve never seen you be mean. And we’re going to talk about this in a minute because you’re never mean but you are honest and direct. I think people think those two things, I think they think to be honest and direct you have to be mean. And you’re such a good example of how you don’t have to be mean. But before we get into that I just want to say that I have just so loved, first of all being a client of yours because you’ve been my coach throughout the years.

And also learning from you as a coach myself, sometimes when I’m training other coaches, I will say, “Okay, so there’s the Brooke”, not that you guys coach differently, but her energy sort of, her approach to coaching and the energy that she comes from. And then there’s the Bev Aron energy and you guys are using the same tools and accomplishing the same result. But because your personalities are so different, your coaching styles, I guess, I would say are so different.

I’m trying to help people find their own style. And a lot of similarities in what you do but also a lot of contrast in just your coaching style, would you agree with that?

Bev: Yes, I would. And that has been an evolution because of course like most of us, when I started out, like you say, I was original [inaudible], and I just tried to copy Brooke. And I did it. I was able to kind of get that energy going, sort of really faking it. And it took me some time to find how to blend my personality, what I feel is the safest way to coach, with Brooke’s tools. And so I think as coaches we can just give ourselves time to find that, who we are. It’s okay if they start off trying to copy Jody Moore because why wouldn’t they?

Jody: Right. That’s how we start out, emulating someone else, yeah. But then eventually, yeah. So tell us, how did you find coaching and what made you decide to become a coach and give us a little of that background if you wouldn’t mind?

Bev: Okay, yes. Weight has been an ongoing struggle for me since my teens. And I’m trying to think how old my nephew is now. So now he’s probably 26, so 13 years ago I was living in Toronto and most of my class all scattered throughout the world after school because of various things that were going on in South Africa. And I was going to San Diego for my nephew’s bar mitzvah. And of course I realized I have to lose a lot of weight because I will bump into many people from high school there. And so I go on [inaudible], I’m so sick of this, I’m so tired of this.

And then on the plane I open up my O magazine, do you remember O magazine? I don’t know if they still have it but it’s like a Bible. And Martha Beck had written her article about weight loss, relaxing into weight loss which at the time was foreign. And she said the sentence, “Brooke Castillo, the best weight loss coach I know says blah, blah, blah.” So I get off the plane, Google, Brooke Castillo and Martha in her marketing wisdom was of course offering a weight loss class taught by Brooke Castillo, so I signed up.

And I just remember, I was on the phone at the time, we didn’t even have Zoom then and Brooke started talking and it just felt like, this is home, this is truth. And so then I just followed her. She didn’t have a school yet, she was a coach. So I took every course she had. I was her probably most consistent student and then she opened up the school because we were begging her, a bunch of people, begging her and I just signed up for the first, I was probably the first person who signed up.

And then she taught us how to do it. I was like, “This is what I’m meant to do. This is just obvious, and natural, and easy.” And this is how I’m meant to serve.

Jody: It’s so good. And so today you coach who?

Bev: So I coach people who know this work and haven’t yet found the reliefs that they want. I think of myself as a tertiary level coach. So in medicine there’s primary care, secondary care, tertiary. You go learn stuff from Brooke, some podcasts and then you hire a coach. You do some groups. And if there’s still more, that’s who I love to coach.

Jody: So you do the deep stuff. You call yourself the deep dive coach sometimes.

Bev: Yes, correct.

Jody: And for anybody listening who might be new to this work, it’s all useful and important to start with the primary stuff is where we all begin. But there comes a point when, I always think of it as you find coaching and there’s some thoughts that are what I call low hanging fruit. It’s just like wait, I didn’t realize that was just a thought. I thought it was a fact. You’re telling me it’s not a fact. That’s such good news. And you just let go of it right away.

Bev: The best.

Jody: Yeah, and that’s so exciting. And that’s what’s so exciting about when you first learn the model in coaching. But after a while you pick the low hanging fruit and then you’ve got to climb higher up the tree. Eventually it just requires a more intensive form of coaching or more time maybe instead of letting go of it so quickly. Is that how you would describe it?

Bev: Yeah, I totally love it. I think also I love your analogy because I think as you go up the tree it becomes a little denser. And then sometimes the thoughts are not as easy to find. And so having support to find them is helpful and then sometimes when you go a little deeper you find some thinking or some beliefs and you let those go. And then half the branches just come tumbling down. And that I think becomes really feeling work for us.

Jody: Yes. One of the things also that I love about you is I feel like you’re like a big sister to me. You’re just a few years ahead of me in life but you’re so wise. And I always know that just in passing conversations that we have that I always just get so many nuggets of wisdom from you because you’re not only an amazing coach, but you do this work yourself on choosing how you’re going to think about your life and the world around you. And that’s very apparent to me in conversations with you.

So let’s go back to, because I want to share some of that, some of those nuggets of Bev Aron gold with my listeners here. I’ve noticed over the years as I’ve known you, like I said before, that you are very good at telling the truth. I’m sure you’re not perfect at not people pleasing but you’re much better at it than most people I know. And at the same time you are so kind and loving. So can you talk about, have you always been that way? And why is that you’re so good at just being honest and direct with people? And how do you do it with kindness? That was like five questions, did you get them all?

Bev: Okay, I love those. I’ll try. I haven’t always been that way. My family tell me I was very scary when we were growing up and intimidating. I remember being coached once and being offered this thought, that truth always feels best. I think it was about money, about being really scared to look at the numbers and you look and you’re like, “That’s what it is.” And so I think the way to do it from love is to really believing the truth is going to feel best to who I’m talking to.

So I think when we start to do it maybe with a bit of sort of defenses or anger is when we’re afraid of the response we’ll get and we preempt it. But in fact we could just as easily believe that the person really wants to hear the truth which I think we all do ultimately. And then offering it from that space of I love you so much that I’m willing to risk a little bit our relationship to offer it from you, always from this idea which is what I really believe. We’re all acting from our roots. So I’m telling you this and I am no better, no worse, 100% the same as you.

Jody: Let’s give an example, that might help. So we were in the Cayman Islands because we’re fancy like that. And we were actually there both of us. You were working a lot I was just helping a little bit at a Life Coach School event there, or class there. And I had my kids with me and they met you and we talked about meeting at the pool later that night for a night swim. And my kids wanted to go night swimming and you were like, “That sounds lovely. I want to go for a night swim.”

And then just before we were all meeting up I got a text from you that said, “I’m not coming, see you tomorrow.” And it was like, I love so much that Bev doesn’t make up a big lie, this is what I’m tempted to do like, “You know what? I’m just not feeling very well.” Or even give a bunch of – you’re just like, “I’m not coming, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Why do most of us think that we need to lie about it? And why do you do such a good job of just being direct and clear? Do you get what I’m saying?

Bev: Yes, I do. Okay, the first thing I think we should say is we are absolutely designed to not want to upset people. There’s this whole field of psychology, it’s called interpersonal neurobiology. And it studies relational biology, Stephen Porges, he’s one of the big people in it. And he says, “Connection is our biological imperative.” It’s not just like I was socialized to make Jody want to love me. We are biologically wired to want connection and our brains calm down when we say something.

It’s the other person looks like they’re very pleased with us. So I think it’s important to know that because we don’t want to sort of ridicule ourselves or criticize ourselves when we are concerned about not getting that pleased reaction.

Jody: That’s right. That’s right.

Bev: So I think one way that we support ourselves is we give ourselves a lot of positive regard. I don’t know if I always did but my inner narrative is very loving to myself. So it makes it easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t need connection, I absolutely do, for survival. But it’s easier for me, if I think someone will be upset with me, I know I will be very loving to myself. And then the way that I’m able to be so direct with you is the opposite of [inaudible], I always speak to the whole. When I talk to you or anybody, I’m talking to you the whole pure loving part of you that sees and knows everything.

So why would I need to make an excuse or [inaudible] protect you? You’re so whole and so able to do that for yourself. So that’s kind of always where I’m coming from.

Jody: That’s so interesting. So you’re saying, you give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re not just going to unnecessarily overreact and be unreasonable about it. And here’s what, again, not that there’s anything wrong with saying I don’t feel well or whatever. But I feel like I know what I’m getting with Bev Aron is real and it makes me feel closer to you and more connected to you. I don’t feel like you’re pretending. And I don’t want to be treated like I’m so delicate that you have to make up a story. And so it’s just so refreshing.

And I feel like that’s really hard especially for women to give themselves permission to be more honest and do less pretending. And you are so kind and loving. Do you think, Bev, I have this theory that we can’t love other people more than we love ourselves. And I wonder when I look at you, where you’ve done all this work to create this really kind inner voice and you’re so good at loving you. I feel like it makes you better at loving me, at loving everyone else around you. Do you find that to be true?

Bev: It makes sense because love is an emotion, it’s an experience. And so either we’re opening ourselves to it or we are shutting ourselves off from it. So I think it totally makes sense. And if I’m opening myself up to it, opening it means that I would experience it myself.

Jody: Yeah, that’s right.

Bev: And then yes, I do think so.

Jody: Yeah, that’s interesting, okay. So the other area I wanted to pick your brain about a little bit and again, I have all these distinct moments that stand out in my mind in my conversations with you which are not frequent. I don’t get to see you nearly often enough. And we don’t get to talk that long when we do see each other but there was a time when we were talking about our kids, this was probably several years ago. So I don’t know if you had married kids at this time or not. I certainly didn’t, I still don’t.

I was saying something about whoever they marry. And I just hope that I like whoever they marry. And you said, and I love how you always say these things so casually. You said, “Well, I just decided I already love all my future sons-in-laws and daughters-in-law.” I was like, “Wait a second, you can do that? You can just decide that?” So will you speak more to just the idea that you can decide things like that and how do you do that? And how do you believe it? That’s what people tell me, “That sounds nice but how do you believe that really?”

Bev: So this is what I love. One of my coaching epiphanies was, it must have been Brooke who said, “There’s no thought police.” And so I just love it. I can think whatever I want and no one, it still freaks me out, no one can come and take that thought out of my brain.

Jody: [Crosstalk].

Bev: Exactly. So even though it sounds ridiculous to go, “I love someone”, I’ve never met. It’s not ridiculous at all because we make up our thoughts about people we do know. I could meet you and just as easy decide that you’re amazing as you’re not. I just make it up. Then of course I keep making it true. I only see the things that I love. And I have interactions with you that make you more likely to be loving. So that’s one of the things that I do actually love about all future work.

Sometimes I just love to say in the past tense, “Oh my God, I just loved all my in-laws”, even though I don’t have them like my sons-in-laws.

Jody: That’s interesting.

Bev: [Inaudible] never met them yet. Apparently I’m allowed to because I said it and I’m still here and no one arrested me.

Jody: You didn’t get in trouble.

Bev: Exactly. The way we believe it is we know how things work me and you. A belief is something we just keep thinking, and we keep proving it true. So for example, my daughter brought home her future husband which it did help that I kind of chose him but I didn’t know him very well actually. I chose him for different reasons. And now my third child has a boyfriend. And I noticed that there was never that point where I evaluated them, what are they like? My brother would call me and go, “What’s he like? Tell me about him.”

And be like, “I don’t know. I love him.” Be like, “Is he this? Is he that?” I’m like, “I’m not really sure.” So we think we need to have some facts to decide how to feel about somebody but of course we don’t. We can love them or hate them no matter what the facts are. So I just took away all the facts, brought in the love, behaved super loving. I mean the truth is that it wasn’t immediately natural with my son-in-law that we just kind of connect. My daughter always jokes, that’s she’s like an interpreter, what [inaudible].

Because he makes a joke, I think he’s serious. I say something, he doesn’t understand me, it’s pretty kind of funny. And so now a couple of years later we talk to each other without an interpreter, [inaudible].

Jody: That’s fascinating.

Bev: I’m sure your listeners know the model, yes or no?

Jody: Yes.

Bev: Okay. I feel like the circumstance is son-in-law and the feeling is love because my thought is, I love him. It didn’t have to be [inaudible], has a degree or I don’t know.

Jody: Yeah. You don’t have to find something lovable.

Bev: No, there’s nothing that’s inherently lovable, humans, we are lovable, all of us.

Jody: Yeah, we all are but specific things like you said are just the stories we tell ourselves. So even somebody, I don’t know, I was working with a coach the other day and she was like, “I was getting frustrated with this client. How do I not get frustrated when they won’t take ownership?” And we talked about any ‘bad behavior’. And there wasn’t bad behavior from this client, just not really owning her own thoughts. And we talked about how any behavior that our brains label as bad or wrong is coming from pain.

Like you said, we’re operating from our wounds. And when you see it that way, when we see somebody in pain, we love them, immediately we’re naturally inclined to want to help one another. And so we remember that, all bad behavior’s coming from pain. All human beings are lovable.

Bev: Yeah, exactly.

Jody: Every time I talk about this though I get comments from people saying, “Okay, Jody, you’re harming people because there are people in abusive relationships or people being mistreated.” This isn’t gaslighting. This isn’t saying, “You’re making it all up in your head, you should stay in a situation where you’re being mistreated.” So would you speak to that a little bit? How do you speak to that?

Bev: Yes. Thank you for asking that because we never want to compound the pain by telling them they should be able to handle it, it’s neutral. It’s not neutral. And I think that first of all, yes, no one should stay in a situation, where I do think it’s true that the person who’s abusing is coming from pain, exactly what you said. It doesn’t mean you need to stay there and be the brunt of that pain, for sure. But let’s say you do leave, your experience will be so different if you hate them and you keep attacking them even in your mind.

Then if you leave and find a way to love the humanness in them. The way I think of it is like my beating heart to your beating heart. Can I just love that beating heart? It doesn’t mean I’m ever going to talk to you again. My whole experience of the rest of my life will be, I’ll just let go of all of that and just love that beating heart. Some people cannot do that and I don’t think that they need to. We don’t want to require of ourselves or our clients that they can find love. We have no idea what their trajectory is or whether they need to find love to heal. We make sure not to make it a prescription.

Jody: Yeah, good point, good point. It kind of goes back to too what you were saying earlier though of there’s no thought police. So I think there’s this assumption that if we’re going to love people then we would stay in that relationship or keep talking to them. I think people think that love is an action. And of course it impacts our actions. But you can love someone and never talk to them again. You can love someone who has passed on, who you literally couldn’t see or talk to again as long as you’re alive.

And you can decide, I don’t know about you but I have people from my past like the old boyfriends or something who I don’t talk to or see. I have no idea what they’re doing. But I decide in my head what they think of me today.

Bev: I love that.

Jody: I get to make it up. And I make up a story that serves me.

Bev: I love it.

Jody: People are looking for what’s true and sometimes that’s useful. But sometimes it’s more useful to just decide what the story’s going to be.

Bev: That’s our strength and our power because if I can make up any story of what that old boyfriend thinks of me I could just make up a story where they think I am the best thing that ever happened to them.

Jody: Yeah, the one that got away.

Bev: The same amount of sentences, she’s the best thing that ever happened, she’s the worst. We could do the same activity in our brain so we might as well.

Jody: So good. So good.

Bev: So good.

Jody: Okay. So I know when I ask you, how is life, how are you doing, that you’re always going to say, “It’s amazing.” And you genuinely mean it. But you have to get down at times or have negative emotion. Tell me your darkest secrets. Just kidding but tell me about, I mean you mentioned that food was a challenge for you at least at one point. What else is challenging for you and how do you cope in those situations when you’re struggling?

Bev: Yes, okay. So the one thing is I know I’ll always be on my own side. So even if I do something that I later wish I hadn’t done or I create a result I wish I hadn’t created, I’m always going to be on my own side. And being on my own side means I just get help. I have multiple coaches, some on call, some are regular. I don’t think I should do any of it on my own. My most recent one is there’s some challenges going on in my extended family. And I see myself very sort of pulled into the emotion of it and it was very harmful for me to lift myself out.

Just went and got some help with it. I got some coaching, messaged my energy healer, because sometimes it’s just a quick way to clear the energy. Then I can get the coaching. So yes, for sure, I do think I can rely on myself in general. If there’s two ways to look at it, mostly I look at it in a way that serves me just because that’s how my brain has been trained. Most of us who usually go the other way, this is how brains have been trained. But yeah, sometimes I’m irritated, sometimes I’m petty. My worst one is gossiping. I gossip and then I find [inaudible] people offering you thoughts.

They’re in your brain, you can’t not think them. And so then [inaudible] I’ll act on them irritatedly towards a person. But when I come back to myself is thank you for the reminder.

Jody: What do you mean by that?

Bev: Thank you for the reminder, thank you for the reminder that gossiping is just really not an activity that serves me. So I could spend days feeling really terrible about how I reacted. And I just tend not to. I’m just like, “Okay. Okay, yeah, human.”

Jody: Sometimes I coach people who say, “But how can I not feel bad about it?” It feels like we deserve some kind of punishment or something. And that if you just tell yourself, I’m not going to feel bad about it, I’m a human. That you’re letting yourself off the hook and you’re going to behave worse, which we know is not true but could you speak to that?

Bev: Very common. Kind of many of us sort of were raised on this idea that punishing yourself is the way to get yourself to do better. The evidence suggests the complete opposite. So I think it’s worth for those people who believe that, really going back and examining, when I was punished, what did I do? When I was loved, what did I do? What do I do now when I punish myself? If I punish myself I just hide. I go to bed, I overeat. I continue to be mean because I’m so embarrassed. So I’m even colder to that person.

And so it’s really, it’s just a matter of examining the beliefs. We all were offered so many beliefs when we weren’t in a position to choose them. And I think that’s one of them. You do something bad, you must be punished, that’s how you’ll get better. Now we get to examine them and really from a very rational kind of objective point of view, okay, I punished myself with this, what did I create after? Punished my child. What did they do after? And if it’s working go for it.

But I think the work that me and you do suggest to us that when we feel better is when we do better. And we don’t feel better after being punished, no one does.

Jody: Yeah, so good. Okay, final question I have and then any other thoughts that you want to share with us. But I have really appreciated watching how respectful you are and how devout you are towards your faith. We’re of different faiths but you’re such a good example to me of certain classes or events that you’ll opt out of if it interferes with a religious holiday or an observance that you want to keep. And that’s a challenging things to do.

We both have religions that don’t always fit into the world’s schedule. And so we can be viewed as odd and none of us want to be that person. Can you talk to me, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question but I’d love to hear your thoughts about your faith and how you fit it into your life. And again, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve observed that in you and I love that so much about you, and respect that about you.

Bev: Thank you. So that has been a journey for me and challenging. When the school started, the last coach school where we both trained there was zero awareness of anything to do with other religions. And so events were constantly being put on days when I should have been home. And sometimes I would kill myself to get there. I remember once we had a festival, our festivals end at sundown and there was an event I was asked to teach at the next morning and I twisted myself.

I flew to San Diego [inaudible] brother and sister-in-law because I found out there was a flight I could get overnight to get there. And it was holy crazy. And just so you know, I have been really scared in the past because I remember one time, mastermind’s a big event for us, was scheduled on our new year. I mean there was no way I could go. And so I in my bravery and magnificence that you think I always am, messaged Kara Loewentheil and said, “Did you see it’s on our new year?”

Jody: Because you’re both Jewish, yes.

Bev: We’re both Jewish and I was too scared to say it because I knew Kara would for sure say. So I was like, “You take care of this.” And she did. I have slowly become more so, I think as my journey has grown, my family and me have become more direct over the years. And I’ve just come to appreciate how much that gives me also kind of in coaching, how much that brings to me. And there’s been an openness in the world to celebrating more diversity and to being willing to be more open to it.

So I’ve been able to take advantage of that openness to step into it. And I guess lastly, being in somewhat of a sort of leadership position in this community, I want to make it easier for other minority religions to be able to speak up. So sometimes I invite myself to do the hard thing and speak openly about it. But I’m not always sure how safe it is.

Jody: Yeah, that’s amazing, I love that. And because it has done that for me. There’s certain days that I observe that I think I don’t want to be difficult. I’ll just go along with it, it’ll be fine. And then I think, well, Bev mentioned this thing and she’s opted out. And I could opt out and she’s still around. I don’t think anyone got, as far as I know, nobody got super mad at her. I could mention it. And so I have been the reciprocate of the benefit of you doing that. So I really appreciate that and I really respect that. It’s not an easy thing to do.

Bev: Thank you, yeah. I do find also, I don’t know if you find this but the more in touch with my faith I get, our faith believers are drawn to me and the more I love coaching them. So I find, interesting the more I sort of delve into the Jewish faith the more able I feel to coach just people who believe that there’s a god, and a system, and there’s things that we do in that system and we don’t. And I think the work that we do is so available in that.

Actually I was coaching today somebody though, I think our challenge is that we don’t want to use our belief to make us accept whatever and believe I just have to love whatever’s given to me. Because all coaching has to never feel like we’re making ourselves wrong I think. So today somebody was given a situation where she couldn’t have biological children. She was fostering, it was very hard for her. And what we were able to come to is I wish that I hadn’t been given this [inaudible], but I was.

And so I’m going to grow into it, I’m going to step up to the challenge. Sometimes I think our faith means we’re not supposed to say, “I wish I hadn’t been given that one.”

Jody: Yeah, I see what you’re saying.

Bev: But we do and that feels mean. It feels sort of self-negating, if I’m not allowed to say, “I really wish, I would have rather had my own biological child.”

Jody: Yeah, that’s true, I like that. I think the same can be said for even wanting more. If I want to make more money, or have more success, or more whatever that it must mean I’m not grateful. Sometimes in our faith tradition we take it to mean that when you can be grateful and appreciate what you have and want more. And don’t you think that’s part of the human condition to constantly want to see what we’re capable of, and what we can create, and what we can achieve and have in this life?

Bev: Oh my gosh, yes. I totally love it. Grateful, thankful and also grateful and thankful that there’s more I could do and that you created this world where there’s just no limitation to what I can do. Yes, oh my gosh, it’s so good, so good, so good.

Jody: Well, do you have any final thoughts or anything you want to share, Bev, before we wrap it up?

Bev: One thing may be helpful, just because we talked about people pleasing. And I had been thinking about it a little bit before is one thing we want to be careful of, sometimes we just hear phrases and then we think that’s a thing. So we might say, “I’m a people pleaser.” Or, “I’m an honest person.” But the truth is I am just none of those. I’m just sometimes somebody who says yes rather than no because I would like to have that experience of you being pleased with me.

And so I think for all of us in our own work and as coaches we want to always really be careful when we identify ourselves as anything other than a human trying to do the best we can with the wounds we have and our pure heart.

Jody: That’s such a good point and I think your really keen awareness of that is what makes you so good at the deep dive coaching that you do. Because sometimes I notice even with my clients in Be Bold after I’ve been teaching them for a long time or they’ve been listening to the podcast. And then they’re taking the very things I’ve taught them and they’re making them facts, like people pleasing for example. Where I’ll have someone say, “I buffer with food”, as though that’s a fact now, I buffer. But I buffer is not a fact. It’s still just a thought.

Even though it’s a thought I taught you, and it can be a useful way to bring awareness to yourself but it’s not intended to judge yourself or label yourself. And we do that, sometimes we use these very tools, I shouldn’t be thinking this to now create more problems. How do you help a client become aware without being ashamed of what their model is creating?

Bev: I just think we [inaudible], I think it’s such a relief. Somebody comes and go, “I’m a people pleaser.” And I just go, “No, you’re not, no such thing as a people pleaser.”

Jody: I love one thing you said, “I just don’t believe anything my clients say.” It’s like, I’m a people pleaser, you don’t believe that when they say that?

Bev: No, there’s no such thing. So I mean I just assume it’ll be such a relief to them. Shame, I think we always want to address. We never just kind of want to gloss over and go, “Okay, but let’s look at that thought.” Because any time our clients are feeling ashamed they’re thinking they’re doing it wrong and then they shut down and then there’s just no, that space, that healing coaching space is gone. So that I think is when we want to come what we’re talking about, listen, let’s just go find the humanness in you, that had you do it that way.

Part of you that thought it was just very best thing to do at the time, which it was because you thought it was.

Jody: That’s so beautiful. I love what you said about one beating heart to another beating heart. I was thinking about this because I have two little kids who still have stuffed animals that they like to cuddle and everything. But they really love to cuddle the pets, the dog and the cat. Now, of course the dog and the cat don’t always want to sit still. They want to jump off of their lap. But I was thinking it is so different to hold a live cat than to hold the stuffed animal cat because there’s no beating heart in that stuffed animal.

There’s something about our spirits and the aliveness of our bodies that we viscerally feel and you don’t have to be holding someone to feel it. There’s a difference and that’s – obviously there’s a difference but I just mean a live animal or person, I just don’t know how anyone could deny that there’s something divine that created that live thing. And that is lovable and good even if it’s been hurt and it’s showing up in terrible ways, at its core it is amazing.

Bev: 100%, I totally love that. I totally love that, yes, by design.

Jody: By design. Well, Bev Aron, I love you so much. Where can people get more of your beauty and wisdom?

Bev: Thank you, Jody. So I don’t put a lot out. It’s funny, as I was getting ready for this my nephew said, “Why don’t you have your own podcast?” And I said, “I’m just not consistent enough.” So if people want to…

Jody: You might be coached on that later but anyway.

Bev: Except it does cause me pain. This is me, I put out at bevaron.com, I do send out a monthly video, very, very short, usually six minutes on how to dive deeper in your own inner work. So it’ll just be like a little insight and a little exercise. So if people want to sign up for that and then I’ll usually send out information about groups I’m running or trainings. But that is the place to find me.

Jody: So if they want some deep dive coaching, they can go to bevaron.com, learn more and sign up for information, yes. And it’s Bev Aron A-R-O-N?

Bev: Correct.

Jody: Okay, alright. Well, Bev, I love you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Bev: I love you, Jody. And I have to tell you, I am hearing amazing things about your advanced training wherever I turn.

Jody: Oh, good, thank you, that’s been very fun.

Bev: Oh my gosh, amazing. Thank you.

Jody: Thank you.

                                                                                                                   

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.