Listen to Journal to Breakthrough: Self-Coaching Wisdom Unveiled

00:04 

Hey there and welcome. Are you a woman who is unapologetically ambitious, but you're also deeply focused on honoring God, loving your family well, and pursuing meaningful work? Well, you've come to the right place. My name is Dana Byers and you and I are going to be fast friends. Let's get started.  

 

00:28 

Before we get started today, I want to share with you a recent podcast review that I received. MRC said, I love everything about this podcast. Dana immediately caught my attention with her conversational pace and kept it with the quality content. I just consumed her first three episodes, and I'm absolutely ready for more. Thank you so much, MRC for this five star podcast review. If you're listening today and my podcast has helped you, please take a moment, leave me a five star review that's gonna help lots of other people be able to find this podcast as well.  

 

01:06 

Hello, hello. Welcome back to Been There, learned that This is Dana Byers. I'm your hostess on the podcast, and I'm so happy that you're here with me today. I get to share something with you. That was a really powerful experience for me, and I think it's very important to share because a lot of times people think that maybe life coaches have everything in their life together, and I just don't think that's true. I know that because I'm a certified life coach, I've coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, and my life is not perfect. So if you have any misconceptions, let's clear that up right now. So, as a life coach, I believe strongly in getting coached myself. I also have been getting coached for so many years that I've learned a lot of tactics, not only through being coached, but through my certifications that I spend a lot of time coaching myself as well, capturing my thoughts, recognizing my emotions, holding space for myself to feel the way that I do about things, so that I'm not avoiding feelings, but instead leaning into them.  

 

02:15 

And this is the way that I'm able to take new ground in my life. And I don't say that from a place of authority. I say that from a place of spiritual authority. You know, God giving me opportunities, him bringing awareness to me, giving me the ability to take new ground in his strength because of the awareness that I sit with. So what I wanna talk to you about today is an example of a couple months ago, I decided I would pull out my journal and that you and I would go through some self-coaching that I did in order to gain some awareness to kind of figure out what was going on. And here's why I wanna do this. I think it's a great learning exercise because whenever you hear about someone else's coaching experience, my personal belief is there's always learning in it for you.  

 

03:06 

What I'm sharing with you is gonna be a circumstance that you may not completely relate to, but you're going to hear the questions and the process I went through, and I believe in faith that you're going to be able to use the questions, use this process to help yourself have a breakthrough if you are feeling stuck. So I love this idea. That's why a couple episodes ago, you heard a coaching session, you heard a piece of an hour long coaching session with one of my clients that she agreed to share, because even though you may not be able to relate exactly to her scenario or her life experience, there were things that she said that can open up for you, ideas of maybe a different way to perceive whatever circumstance is holding you back in life right now. So what now I'm gonna share with you in this episode is just the opportunity to hear another coaching experience to start kind of greasing the wheels, if you will, in your mind, about how things could look different if you are interested in taking new ground, if you're feeling that you are stuck and you're spinning your wheels.  

 

04:14 

So I wanna share with you some questions I walked myself through in my journal a few months ago, questions to help me get to a breakthrough. And the reason I felt I needed a breakthrough was not because anything was bad or wrong, but because things just felt off a little bit. You know what I'm talking about? The idea of, hmm, I'm doing all the things, doing things I love working with people I love, but I'm not seeing results and I feel like something might be a little bit off. When that happens, it is easy for us to let our brains go to a place of judgment. If you're feeling that way, I want you instead to choose curiosity. Curiosity is a different type of energy. Curiosity requires less energy, and it can actually make you feel more hopeful. If you're not afraid of finding out what might not be work, you are going to be able to gain an understanding, some self-awareness, some wisdom from God himself to be open to shifting your approach to whatever you're feeling stuck in so that you can, as I said, take new ground.  

 

05:22 

So to set up the scenario for you, I was feeling stuck in my business and Dana Byer coaching, I had coaching sessions, I had clients. The podcast is going well, you know, all kinds of things are going well, but I felt like something wasn't working, and it was an intuitive sense, not of things being bad, but that God was trying to get my attention. So I sat down with my journal and I just said, okay, God, I'm listening. Things feel off, and they feel off enough to the point that if I continue on this course, I think it's gonna start to be draining. I think I'm missing something that you might wanna show me that I just do not see. So what I did was I started writing out questions that might help me identify the problem, and I had a long list of questions.  

 

06:13 

You know, what's happening in this element of my business? What's working over here? What's not working? And I just started writing out the questions until I kind of landed on one that felt correct. I had to figure out what problem I wanted to solve, and I loved that I gave myself permission to take the time to do that. And I say that because I'm quite an activator, so it's a little bit difficult for me to slow down sometimes and process things as much as it would honor the situation. So I'm really proud I sat down, figured out the question, and the question that spoke most to me about the thing that I could focus on that was not working yet was, how can I support and empower even more Christian working women? And I have to tell you, that question surprised me a little bit because months before, back in 2023, I had already come across that question.  

 

07:08 

And the solution that God brought to mind for me was to start this podcast. So here we are months and months into it now. And I thought, okay, God, that question does feel like the right one, but you and I have already talked about this. And then it kind of made me laugh because you know, it's not like we learned a lesson once and we're completely done. I realized God was like, well, that was the right next step for you, but now there's more. I have a new opportunity for you if you're open to looking at new ways you can support and empower even more Christian working women than you are through the podcast. So then I started getting curious. I started getting a little bit excited, and I asked myself this question, what are my best ways to help women that are a win for the women and are a win for me?  

 

07:55 

Those of you who've taken the Energy Leadership Index assessment with me, you know that I was looking for a win-win, okay, God, what's a scenario? An idea that we could come up with that would give me an opportunity to support and empower even more women, but that would be a, a big win for them and a big win for me. So I kind of let that question hang out there for a while, wasn't sure what the answer would be, was praying through the conversation. And then I started asking myself, you know, what, are there any areas that I'm feeling drained in? Ask yourself, where am I feeling drained? If something feels off, you want to look at where there might be a hole in your, your proverbial boat, right? Where can we plug up a hole so that you're not feeling drained in whatever it is that you're doing?  

 

08:43 

And so I started answering that question, you know, I'm feeling a little bit drained in my physical health. I would feel drained when I opened up social media and started working on that for my business. And I mostly felt drained because I was feeling alone in my work. So I work generally out of home. I do maybe one day a week go to kind of an open office area where I can connect with other women, part of a mastermind there. And I do, of course get to see my clients, but I wasn't feeling a lot of relational connections. And I just kind of put an asterisk by that when I wrote it down and went, okay, of course that's draining for me. I love being around people, I love having a team. And so that was something that as I engage more and more of my business, I've noticed I'm missing that.  

 

09:32 

So the next question was, what else is missing? And I decided to really just further process the previous question and just say, you know what? I don't have consistent contact with other people every day around my business. I'm lacking a community in my work. So I wrote that out and then I shifted gears and asked myself, who needs what I offer? Who could I be in community with that would benefit me, that I could provide things to that would help them on their journey? And of course, that takes me back to not shifting at all my ideal target, my focus here, and that is Christian working women. So I felt pretty confident in that. And so I thought, okay, well what could I be focusing on instead of the current goals I have, like most traditional businesses, I've been focused on, okay, what's revenue looking like, number of clients, how much time I'm working?  

 

10:30 

And I realized of the, the community that I do have, at least of other coaches, the general theme there, and no judgment for this, but it's just not really my vibe. The general theme there is fast expansion to try to make a certain amount of money. And that's really not been my focus. So if I'm involved in programs or communities that are focusing on that significantly, it takes me a little bit off some of the measurables that matter as much to me. And so that's not to say, you know, I'm not, I don't need to make money. I do wanna make money. I can't have the IRS thinking my business is a hobby by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted to shift my measurables. So whatever scenario you're thinking about as you think about a breakthrough right now, try to ask what you're focusing on that might be draining for you.  

 

11:21 

It doesn't mean it's not important. I've still got to pay the bills in my business, but I wanted to shift my measurables to maybe keep some of the same goals, but to find a different way to measure influence and success. And as I processed that, the next thing that came up to mind was, okay, well what would be more rewarding? And the fact is, I had already answered that question earlier. I wanna see more women impacted, but I also wanna have a sense of community around the women that I get to work with. And I'm also really passionate about social change. And what's amazing to me is I was journaling through this a few months ago, and once my mind was kind of in the right place to be open to different things, God as he does dropped me in the middle of a conversation over coffee with a new person.  

 

12:12 

And she was asking me about my business. And the more I shared about the behind the scenes of my business and my passion for generosity and my passion for social change, she in a really loving way, challenged me and said, you know, Dana, you're not talking about this at all. I haven't seen this really much at all in any of your social media on your website. And it's very, for lack of a better term, precious to me. And I'm uncomfortable talking about generosity at times, but I do love thinking about social change and being very involved behind the scenes and seeing what God would do and the lives of the women who I serve, but also in the lives of the women who Dana, by coaching as a business, contribute to financially, to support and empower them in developing countries and also in my local city.  

 

13:01 

So that question, what would make my work, my, my passion with coaching, what would make that more rewarding? It would be to have more women impacted in a sense of community around that. So in that conversation over coffee, after I'd already journaled through all of this, I realized God was showing me I have to start opening up things a little bit more to be more vulnerable about the things that interest me to invite women in, not only to become my clients, to be, to be part of that social change that I believe God is going to do in women's lives everywhere. So then I started thinking about what could increase the impact? How could we do that in a way that would honor God, that would honor women everywhere, my clients and women in other developing countries and women in my city who need support?  

 

13:49 

And that would also honor me. And one of those things that came up was the idea of having, I guess, for lack of a better term, something like an open office hour every month, you know, group calls where clients could come in, connect with each other, and I could just do live coaching. That got very energizing and fun to think about. So that was a solution that came up from kind of this curiosity around feeling stuck and needing to get a breakthrough. You're gonna be hearing more about that soon if you haven't already. And then I asked myself, what might be broken? And that can be a scary question depending upon the, the scenario that you're considering. You know, what might be broken here. And I realized that I wouldn't say my business model is broken, but I would say my communication around what I'm trying to do to provide generously and to support women in developing areas using the funds that women pay for me to coach them.  

 

14:53 

I haven't really talked about that a lot. So my approach has been broken. I've created a disconnect unintentionally. And to be really frank with you, the disconnect is because I'm not really comfortable talking about it. I have a fear about it looking like I'm patting myself on the back. So this woman I had coffee with was I, I shared that with her. I was like, I'm uncomfortable talking about this because I don't want it to be like, oh wow, Dana's really trying to brag about generosity. And you know what she said to me? She said, well, I would've said to one of my clients, and I'm so thankful to her for this. She was like, Dana, you have to be willing to understand that people are going to misunderstand you. They're going to misunderstand, and they might judge you for it. But if you care more about the change, you have to be willing to talk about it and let people think what they wanna think.  

 

15:38 

Wow. Right. What a powerful thought. Something that I say a lot to my clients and something I've, I've even coached myself on before in other areas, but I hadn't connected the dots in this portion of my life yet to understand that I was creating a disconnect because of my discomfort. And so what I can do to propel the business forward, to coach more women, to empower more women, whether they're my clients or whether they're women, that my clients and I are supporting in various ways, I've been my own worst enemy, for lack of a better term, right? I've been the one getting in my own way. So as I was thinking about this, my energy started increasing because if we, if we recognize our role in being stuck, it empowers us to move forward. It gives us energy because it's like, oh, well, if I'm the problem, I can do something about that, right?  

 

16:30 

That's very exciting to me. So then I ask myself this question that you can ask yourself, how can I simplify my approach in order to be able to serve and reach more women? So how can you simplify whatever it is that you're facing right now in order to be able to have a better outcome? Because you want to create something that's sustainable, right? Something that is going to honor the other people involved. It's going to honor you, it's going to honor God. You want it to be sustainable. So I asked myself, what do I want? What would be an ideal outcome? And that is such an important question, you guys, I'm thinking about in scripture where it says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Do you know what it means? If you defer something, if you add student loans, you can defer those, right? You can put those off.  

 

17:18 

So if we put off or delay or defer our hope, as it says in scripture, our hearts become sick, we start losing hope, we start thinking things won't get better, and we become our own worst enemy in that regard, because we don't allow our brains and our hearts to go in the direction of the things we truly want, the desires that God has put on our heart. We say, we just aren't sure how possible that is. Or in my case, I'm a little bit uncomfortable doing that, that God, so thanks for the idea, but I might pass, you know, I'm being a little, I'm joking a little bit, but it's also a really scary thought, right? How many times you or I might reject the opportunity to take new ground to partner with God in something because we're on uncomfortable, or because we're not willing to look at it from a place of curiosity and openness and being willing to be wrong instead of, you know, just judging ourselves for it or putting off our hope, thinking this isn't really possible.  

 

18:21 

So ask yourself what you want. What could you do that's sustainable? What do you want to give and offer? And then I shifted gears. I noticed as I look back, literally in my journal that's open right here in front of me, and I asked myself, okay, here's I, I already written out the things I want, but now I ask myself, how do I accept the way things are today? I want to look at fully in the face. It's not bad or wrong, but I know there's a gap between where I am today and the vision I think God has laid on my heart. There's a coach called Dan Sullivan, and he and Benjamin Hardy wrote this wonderful book called The Gap and the Gain. I really suggest it. The fascinating thing about the gap in the gain is we tend to, as you know, high functioning leaders, achievers, we tend to look at the end goal, the thing we're moving towards, and it feels so far away from us, it seems almost impossible, and we lose our energy or feel burned out before we even get there because we're trying to do it in our own energy and we're afraid it's not gonna really happen.  

 

19:29 

I don't know if you can relate to that. I felt that in many things in my life, especially the things that matter the most to me, including Dana Bayer's coaching. So what Dan Sullivan says is, instead of looking at that horizon far off in the distance, that vision or that goal that we have, take some time, accept where you're at, really understand where you're at, but take a little bit of time to compare that to where you used to be. So for my business, it's a couple years old now, and if I can look back to the early days, things were great, but I have learned so much. I'm a different leader now. I'm a different coach now. I get to show up in an even better way for my clients. I have earned money, I have earned experience, I have earned friends, priceless friendships.  

 

20:14 

I have support around me so I can see the gain of how far I've come and let that motivate me as I shift my focus towards moving forward and getting unstuck to take new ground in my business. So what I did after that was just take a real practical approach of listing out some observations. I listed out some current circumstances that I could accept right then as they were, and give myself permission to recognize that these things that I'm observing in, in my life may or may not be related to the sense of feeling stuck. But I wanted to just admit that that's where I was at, admit the number of clients I had, admit how revenue was going, admit some, some health issues I had going on that were frustrating to me, that I was ignoring. Because to me, they didn't seem significant, but I was also just ignoring them.  

 

21:10 

I had to admit how I was feeling about my engagement on social media. I had to admit that I was feeling hesitant to commit to some opportunities that had come my way, and really look at why am I hesitant? Where am I doubting God here? And then I also had to admit, I noticed I was in a season of buffering. Buffering in the coaching world is is a term that we use to kind of, whenever we're doing things to distract ourselves, you know, buffering for different clients of mine could be anything from eating whenever she feels emotionally overwhelmed or scrolling on social media instead of engaging with people in real life, you know, shopping to solve her frustrations, which of course doesn't work, but she's buffering. She's avoiding the feelings that she has. So I also noticed this might seem like a small thing, but it was really helpful to just admit it, that I had lost my approach to planning my food, my meals, and having that structure in my life is very helpful to me.  

 

22:11 

And I had kind of fallen off that wagon. So I just wrote that out as that's an observation I have. I don't judge myself for it, but I've noticed that that's changed, and that might also be contributing to this, this sense I have that I was stuck. So all of those thoughts, giving myself a chance to just point out where I was at in the moment, allowed me to look at it without fear and just say, yep, that's all true. That's where I'm at, not a big deal. Which of these do I want to tackle first in the sense of not forcing things, but just bringing awareness to them. Like, you know what? Maybe I could just figure out what dinner will be for the next couple nights, or maybe I will, you know, put my phone away in the evenings in my bedroom so that I can engage in the evening with my family.  

 

22:54 

Just some things that support me as I move in the direction in faith, that God is going to help me take new ground. He's going to give me awareness, but there are things I can do in my day-to-day life that are going to help me be more alert, looking for him to support me in getting unstuck. So one, actually two last thoughts that kind of came to mind through this exercise that I wanna share with you are one green flags. If you haven't listened to my episode about the Green Flag framework, go back and do that. I started thinking, okay, what are the green flags? If I'm looking, not at the gap, but at the gain, what's working right now? What have we gained? And I was looking at some really exciting statistics about my email list, about the podcast engagement, some incredible cha testimonies that clients had shared with me, or emails they'd sent me, like, wow, this made such a difference in my life.  

 

23:50 

Or Coaching with you has done X, Y, Z. I just wanted to update you on where I am in my life. Those things are really big green flags for me. So I took some time to identify those as well. And the second thing I wanna share with you is that I really brought to mind the awareness of my business as a whole. You know, whenever we feel stuck, I've been talking about what you and I can do to not be the major, you know, problem contributor in this scenario, but sometimes there are circumstances that we feel we absolutely cannot change. You might feel this way in a relationship with your boss. You might feel this way in your financial circumstances, and sometimes I feel like I can't change anything in my business. Of course, I can change myself, but I really can't impact the results the way I'm able to impact and engage with women if they're not comfortable stepping into a coaching relationship.  

 

24:46 

So I really had to look at my business holistically and look at this perspective of thinking about my business is a baby, okay? My business is two and a half, maybe three years old. It's still a baby. When my kids were three, I did not expect them to create a full, you know, to to cook dinner, for me to go out and get a job, to be able to bathe themselves and do all kinds of things than an adult would do. So let's have some compassion for ourselves. If you are feeling stuck, trapped, frustrated with a scenario, with your finances, with your job, like I have with my business on occasion, recognize where you're at. It might just be a baby scenario. You and I might have unfair expectations for the circumstances around us due to the timing, due to other, you know, other factors involved in that circumstance that we can't control, and we can release ourselves from those expectations, from putting those expectations on ourselves, and also from putting those expectations on the circumstances.  

 

26:02 

We can't control the outcome, but we can control our input. The problem is when we kind of try to force the input, we move ourselves towards burnout because we don't get the results we want. So as I walk through, you know, my journal here and share with you the observations, the questions I asked my prayer leading up to this recording of the episode was just that you would give yourself the compassion, and I think really even the freedom to let the circumstance be what it is, and to let yourself step back enough to look holistically at your approach, not only your approach to the circumstance, but how you are behaving in other areas of your life so that you can regroup, be open to the Holy Spirit, giving you insight. Maybe you'll meet someone for coffee who gives you a really helpful, challenging word. Maybe you'll get a coaching session that brings you insight.  

 

27:00 

Or maybe like me, you'll sit down and journal through some of these answers, some of these questions, and come up with the authentic answers that start spinning around in your brain and start giving you new ideas and thoughts so that over time you are in a position to be able to receive insight from God himself to gain clarity. Because here's the deal, I don't think you need certainty. You don't need to know exactly what's going to happen. You simply need clarity and direction from the Holy Spirit. So for me, I think the win is to share with you some clarity that I got in, in how that's impacting my behavior over time towards my business. You're gonna see some of those changes coming up over the next few weeks and few months, but my prayer for you would be that you would also be open to receiving the insights that can come through coaching yourself, not being afraid of the difficult questions, not judging yourselves from them and coming at them from a place of curiosity.  

 

28:02 

God stands ready to bring you clarity so that you can experience your own breakthrough. All right, friends, thanks for joining me for this episode. I hope you have a wonderful week. Hey there, podcast fam, can I share with you something that is close to my heart? It is my email list community here. I pour out my thoughts on leadership, on parenting, entrepreneurship, and Jesus. It's where we engage and grow together. If that resonates with you, join us. Just head on over to Dana byer coaching.com and sign up to receive my insights a couple of times each week. Let's journey together.