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Can Anyone Be A Coach? w/ Jule Kim
Chris Do and Jule Kim challenge the coaching industry's lack of regulation and explore the deep ethical responsibility of a true guide.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · November 24, 2024
The Wild West of Coaching
There is a perception that anyone can call themselves a coach. In an unfiltered conversation, Chris Do and ICF-certified coach Jule Kim agree this is the heart of a very real problem. The modern coaching industry is a digital wild west, largely unaccredited and ungoverned.
“There are very young, inexperienced people who have undergone little to no training who call themselves coaches,” Do says. Armed with social media reach, they launch courses and programs, attracting clients who are none the wiser.
One or two bad experiences with a so-called coach can lead to a reasonable conclusion: it is nearly impossible for the public to tell the real from the fake. This isn't just about money wasted. It's about intensely personal experiences gone wrong.
Kim notes that within the industry itself, a dangerous half-truth circulates. “They’ll try to tell you that you don’t have to know anything about the person’s industry or about what they do for a living,” she explains. “All you have to have is the skill of coaching.”
That is only partially true.
The danger transcends coaching. Any professional service operating without an accrediting body can drift into unethical territory. There is no ethics training. No annual recertification to ensure best practices. No license that can be revoked.
Age, Experience, and the Sniff Test
Kim identifies two major red flags in the coaching space. The first is the ultra-young coach. A 21-year-old life coach doesn't pass her sniff test.
It's not that it's impossible. Younger people can have more open mindsets, less jaded by the cynicism that can set in with age. But after four years as a coach, Kim has identified one area of expertise that is almost impossible to possess at 21: experience with people.
“You have to understand how people work and how they think,” she states. “And when you’re 21, I feel like you barely know yourself, if at all, let alone how other people are.”
The second red flag is the uncertified coach. When Kim watches them work, she sees the gaps in their ability. They cannot spot the real issue. They lack the training in the specific lines of inquiry required to get to the heart of a client's problem.
Bad coaching, like bad therapy, is an experience you never forget. It’s a deeply personal violation. This is why many people write off therapy entirely after a few poor encounters, even though therapists are licensed and have undergone years of rigorous training and clinical practice.
There are still therapists of varying skill levels. Chemistry is a factor. But the core principles of the profession are grounded in a system of accountability that is starkly absent from most of the coaching world.
The Ethical Tightrope of a Stalled Client
This lack of accountability creates profound ethical dilemmas. Kim shared a story about a client she had been working with for over two years. The client clearly received value from their sessions, including emotional support and foundational guidance on boundaries and priorities. But a destructive pattern had emerged.
Whenever it came time to do the hard work, the client would simply disappear.
“I had asked her to start a Pinterest account and then never heard back for the next two months,” Kim recalls. This was a consistent theme. The client would agree to every suggestion, a constant stream of yeses that felt unrealistic. This eroded trust. But the real killer was the silence.
“There’s no follow-through, there’s no communication on your end saying, ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I don’t want to do this,’” Kim explains. It left her in the dark, unable to help.
This wasn't just a business problem. It was an ethical one. Kim found herself at a crossroads, questioning the very nature of their arrangement. She was taking money for a service that was no longer producing results. It felt wrong. During a conversation with Do, she decided she had to have a “come to Jesus” moment with her client.
She couldn’t wait. She initiated the conversation, laying out the pattern she observed: the yeses, the silence, the lack of follow-through. Then, she drew a line in the sand.
“This has been continuing, and now I question whether I’m the right person to coach you,” she told her client. “And I don’t know if I should continue taking your money.”
The client’s initial response was understanding. But three days later, the real reaction surfaced. In a tearful, emotional conversation, the client revealed what she heard beneath Kim's words. “She heard, ‘You’re not worthy and I’m going to leave you. I don’t want to work with you anymore.’”
This is where the story turns. The client, despite her emotional turmoil, possessed the fortitude to step back. She acknowledged her own interpretation, taking responsibility for her reaction. “I know you said something else, but this is how I heard it,” she told Kim. She correctly identified what Kim was trying to say, and they found their way back to the same page.
This is the work. It is not about being a hired friend. Kim reminded her client of the ethics she is bound to as an ICF-certified coach. The International Coaching Federation’s Code of Ethics explicitly states a coach’s duty is to the client’s goals. When a client veers off path, the coach *must* intervene. This wasn’t their first such conversation, but it was the most impactful.
Then the client offered a beautiful lesson. She said, “I pour my heart and soul into the work I do. I bring so much love to the work I do. And I pay you from the money I earn, not from the money that my husband earns. This is my money, and I’m giving it to you.”
Kim realized the transaction was an exchange of love. The client was giving love and receiving it in return, then passing that same energy to her coach. Kim’s response was simple and profound: “All I’m looking for is for you to honor that exchange and make sure that you’re honoring that for yourself as well. You’re giving me the love, but where’s the love you would show yourself?”
That was the missing piece.
The Caretaker's Trap
Would another coach have acted this way? Kim is doubtful. “Given all the coaching communities that I’m in, I would say that someone… it’s like less than a 50% chance for other people to handle this.”
The reason is not greed. It is something deeper, an occupational hazard for helpers of all kinds: the caretaker personality. Kim notes that in personality assessments common in coaching schools, the caretaker archetype is consistently the strongest trait among coaches.
This impulse drives them to want to “save” every client. It creates a massive fear of conflict and a tendency toward people-pleasing. They see coaches who struggle with basic boundaries, like getting paid upfront. If a coach cannot handle that, Kim argues, there is a very low possibility they can navigate the complexities of a relationship teetering on codependency.
They don’t say anything. Not for the money, but because the dynamic feeds their need to be needed. “Somebody really needs me right now, and I can’t turn my back on them,” is the internal monologue.
Do admits he has this attribute in spades. “Middle child,” he says with a knowing laugh. He didn't recognize his own caretaker tendencies until his therapist, Joan, pointed them out. She analyzed his family structure and birth order to build a psychological profile, a practice that revealed a core pattern in his professional life.
“I was more concerned about employees who disagreed with me in their mental welfare than my own mental welfare,” he admits. He would acquiesce in the moment, avoiding a fight, but resentment would build up inside him. A passive-aggressive cycle.
The turning point for Do was internalizing a principle from researcher Brené Brown: Choose discomfort over resentment.
Do explains the framework:
- It is uncomfortable to say no to a request.
- It is uncomfortable to set a boundary.
- It is uncomfortable to express a dissenting opinion.
But that momentary discomfort saves the relationship from the slow-growing cancer of resentment. Resentment is the endpoint. It leads to disappearances, to ghosting, to the silent retreat that Do himself used to practice. “Eventually I just get tired of people,” he says of his old pattern. “I recede into the background.”
Like an addict who is never fully “cured” of alcoholism, Do knows his caretaker tendencies are always there. He has simply developed the mindfulness to manage them. He has done the inner work required to set boundaries before they are catastrophically breached. This work is a prerequisite for anyone hoping to build an authentic brand, a topic he covers in his masterclass on personal branding.
The Hidden Violence of 'I'm Proud of You'
This deep self-examination leads Do to challenge even our most common and seemingly innocent phrases. One of the most charged is “I’m proud of you.”
The topic arose when his wife asked why he was so “thrifty” with giving praise to their high-achieving 20-year-old son, Otto. Do began to unpack the discomfort he felt with the phrase. In a conversation with a friend, he explained why he avoids it, especially with his children and even his friends.
The logic is sharp and disarming. “If I say I’m proud of you, that means there are times when I’m not proud of you,” he states. This creates a conditional dynamic. You are proud when they get good grades, study the “right” subject, or give to charity. The praise becomes a lever of control.
Do’s philosophy is rooted in a different principle: unconditional love. This is not a passive feeling but an active practice. He has told his children since they were barely old enough to understand: “I want you to know that I love you and that there is nothing that you could ever do to make me stop loving you. You don’t need to do anything different than to be you for me to love you.”
Initially, he would phrase it as a question: “Do you know Daddy loves you?” His therapist advised him to make it a statement. It is not up for debate. “Dad loves you.”
Therefore, he doesn't need to be *proud of* them. He is proud *that they are* his children, always. The state of being is enough. Their performance, choices, and even their mistakes do not alter his fundamental love for them. This approach to communication is itself a form of strategy, a concept Do relates to positioning in the business world, as detailed in his talk on building an authentic brand.
He extends this to his friendships. “What did I really do to claim that I’m proud of you?” he asks. To him, it's a parental phrase that establishes an unspoken hierarchy. It is a subtle power play.
“You're saying I have power over you. My opinion, my authority, my approval matters to you,” Do argues. “It is violent language.”
He recalls the yogi Sadhguru’s idea that children are born perfect, and it is parents who mess them up. Innocent statements, moments of frustration where a parent calls a child clumsy, or moments of praise where they say “I’m proud of you,” all become data points. The child learns, “This is what I must do to earn love.” They begin to externalize their self-worth, looking to others for the approval they should be generating internally.
Kim’s reaction to this philosophy is visceral. “The first time I heard you say this, I almost balled my eyes out,” she admits. It triggered a powerful emotional response because, like many, she questions whether her own parents’ love is truly unconditional. The idea of a parent being so explicit and deliberate about it was overwhelming.
Words matter. They shape our reality and define our emotional landscape. Using the wrong words can inadvertently shift your feelings. This is why having emotional granularity, as Kim puts it, is so crucial for clear communication and self-understanding. Clear language is foundational for the art of listening and communication.
The Genealogy of Your Beliefs
When people resist these ideas, often with the defense that “that’s not how people normally use the words,” Do pushes back. How do we know what is normal? And even if something is normal, if it is bad, should we continue doing it?
This leads to a powerful challenge for anyone listening.
First, write down ten things you hold to be true. Ten core beliefs.
Second, do what author Austin Kleon calls a “genealogy of your ideas.” For each belief, trace it back to its origin. Where did you first learn it? A parent? A teacher? A book? A TV show?
Finally, ask yourself a series of critical questions about that source:
- How reliable is this source of information?
- What was the context in which I learned this?
- If someone told me this for the first time today, as an adult, would I still believe it?
This is where everything can start to unravel. Our minds are filled with programming from childhood that we have never consciously examined. We operate on assumptions about what is “normal” based on a finite, often biased, sample size of personal experience. This lack of critical examination is a major hurdle in personal development, but tackling it is a core part of finding your purpose, as in an Ikigai workshop.
The Currency of Respect
This self-interrogation shapes another critical concept: respect. Kim puts Do on the spot, asking how one earns his respect. The question is less about gaining Do’s approval and more about understanding the foundation of a healthy professional or personal relationship.
Do makes a critical distinction. He can respect the *way* someone does something without necessarily respecting *them* as a person. The two are not the same.
He offers an example: inbound versus outbound business development. Do’s entire platform is built on an inbound philosophy of creating valuable content and attracting an audience. Others, like sales leader Neil Dhingra, achieve massive success with a relentless outbound approach of cold calls and direct messages. These are polar opposite strategies.
Do respects that Dhingra's method works. He does not, however, have to adopt it himself. The mere thought of it makes him want to crawl back in bed. Both realities can be true. One is not inherently better; they are simply different paths to a goal. This is a crucial lesson for anyone trying to get their first customers.
Respect for a person, however, is built on something else. It is built on accountability, on character, on how someone handles their responsibilities. It is earned over time as you gather more data points and see past your initial prejudices.
We all make snap judgments. It is an efficient, if sometimes flawed, cognitive shortcut for navigating the world. But true understanding requires staying in the conversation long enough to prove your initial assumptions wrong.
Ultimately, a relationship, whether with a coach, a friend, or a colleague, cannot thrive without mutual respect. And respect cannot exist without accountability and a willingness to engage in the uncomfortable, ethical, and deeply human work of being honest with yourself and with others.
That is the real work of a coach. And a human.
TRANSCRIPT
I think there is the perception that anyone can call themselves a coach and I think that's part of the problem there are very young inexperienced people who have undergone little to no training who call themselves coaches and they go and launch courses through the power of the social reach that they have in
the coaching industry they'll try to tell you that you don't have to know anything about the person's industry or about what they do for a living they'll try to tell you that all you have to have is the skill of coaching and that's only partially true the idea of like ethical responsibility I
think transcends just the coaching business anyone who works in a professional service space who isn't accredited or governed by any body we can drift into these areas where you don't have to like be recertified every single year to make sure you're doing best practices and your license can't be taken away from you
cuz you don't even have one I'm coming up on four years of being a coach and I will say that there is one area you really need to have expertise in that can be hard to have if you're only 21 and that's just hey everybody what's up it's Sunday so this is unusual
for me to be recording any kind of content but my friend juel Kim who has been a guest on the show many times had this idea that we would create some content based on many conversations that we have but aren't ever recorded so she thought let's do this unfiltered thing we're just her
and I talking about whatever's on the top of our mind in true to form she just woke up from a nap and I just got back I'm unshaven unshowered and this is how we're going to do it so luckily this is not smell Vision this is mostly just video and audio only so
juel what did you have in mind is anything that's kind of top of mind for you well right now some of the stuff kind of swirling around in my head are stuff around accountability responsibility and respect and I've had okay so that's one sorry that's one piece and and then there's the other
conversation we've been having over this past week about like our ethical and maybe financial responsibility to clients so I keep thinking about it and I've kept like teasing it apart and you know I've had a conversation with one of my clients and I find myself I'm likely to have to have this conversation
again with yet another client so the idea of like the ethical responsibility which I think a lot of people don't have those ideas associated with life coaches cuz you know how a a lot of the perception out there is you know scam or they're just out to take your money and yeah so
it's it's been really interesting um yeah plus I had coaching this past week about some of the stuff that I've been going through you know I I think there is a perception within the general public that anyone can call themselves a coach and I think there's dedicated body to certify coaches but I
can call myself a coach and someone else can call themselves a coach and I think that's part of the problem because there are very young inexperienced people who have undergone little to no training who call themselves coaches and they go and launch courses through maybe the power of the social reach that they
have and they call themselves something and people sign up and if you had one or two bad experiences with some so-called coach I think you can come to a reasonable conclusion like it's really hard to tell the real from the fake the scammers from the people who really want to contribute to your
personal professional development and and the idea of like ethical responsibility I think transcends just the coaching business anyone who works in a professional service space who isn't accredited or governed by any body we can we can drift into these areas where you didn't have to go to ethics training you don't have to
like be recertified every single year to make sure you're doing best practices and your license can't be taken away from you because you don't even have one and I I think this is an idea that a lot of people can I think sink their teeth into so why don't we pick it up
from there certainly sounds good I do think with life coaching it gets tricky because like you said anybody can call themselves a coach and even among the different branches of coaching there's so many different types so I don't think people necessarily may expect a business coach to be like a certified business coach
but it does get questionable a lot of the times with just the two biggest problems being someone who's Ultra young so like someone who's 21 who's like okay I'm going to be a life coach and it's not that I necessarily think that that can't be done it's just that in the coaching industry
they'll try to tell you that you don't have to know anything about the person's industry or about what they do for a living you know the your client they'll try to tell you that all you have to have is the skill of coaching and that's only partially true let's see I'm coming up
on four years of being a coach and I will say that there is one area you really need to have expertise in that can be hard to have if you're only 21 and that's just experience with people you have to understand how people work and how they think and when you're 21 I
feel like you barely know yourself if at all let alone how other people are how the world works why people think the things they do why do they do the things they do and it gets really questionable you know to me it doesn't pass the sniff test now I think there are some
plus sides here because people who are younger their mindsets tend to be more open I think they tend to think more things are Poss possible so the cynicism or being jaded hasn't set in as fully as you know someone who's maybe my age like in the 40s but otherwise it's just there's a
lot of blind spots man uh and then the other area with someone who's not being certified just period i find that that gets really tricky when I watch them coach cuz I'm like that person doesn't know what they're doing they can't spot the real issue that's the heart of the issue and it's
I'm not saying that I necessarily can see it like right off the bat either but I've been trained in a certain line of inquiry to help get there to help that person identify like what's the thing that's causing everything for them and I tell you it's like if you've ever had bad coaching
you never forget the experience it's such a deeply like an intensely personal experience it's just like why people when they go to therapy and you'll hear people say that it's taken them a long time they can't find a good therapist or they've tried it a couple times and then they'll just write off
the whole experience they're like therapy is not for them and it's because of the same reasons now it's weird because to be a therapist you do have to be licensed you had to have gone through several years of training both in the school and in the field right like um in the clinic
and yet you still have people of varying levels and people who may not be able to connect to the client build rapport help them feel seen and understood and still it's it's kind of the same issues like helping them get to the root of the problem I see a lot of parallels between
coaching and therapy because a lot of people and this is strange because therapists have to go undergo rigorous training in peer review and they're often checking with their mentors it it's something that they can lose their license for yet we know like different coaches teachers and therapists even if you've been trained and
accredited licensed there's all different kinds of therapists all different kinds of coaches and just it could just be chemistry like it didn't work for a number of different reasons and and that some of it I think the the client has to take some responsibility for but you know we were talking about this
where I don't know if we can say but there was somebody that you think maybe I'm just wasting my time trying to help this person because I don't think they're actually applying the things that I'm talking about and you were kind of like conflicted CU you're thinking this is not going to work
I think I just need to let them go and I think it's in that conversation we were talking I said maybe you don't have to let him go but you do I think you need to tell them somehow right and what did you decide to tell them how did you resolve this and
I'm curious how it's going well I think when we had the conversation I was like I think I need to have a come to Jesus moment with this person and I believe you asked me like what I might say and then you gave me your suggestion so how that went was I couldn't
I decided not to wait because she had delayed her regular coaching session with me and I was like I need to I need to get in here and so here's what I was seeing why this was an issue is that I've been working with this person for over 2 years now and she
clearly gets some value out of the relationship she gets a lot of emotional support she gets guidance around sort of the foundation of being you know such as setting boundaries and how to figure out her priorities Etc but every time it comes to really enforcing boundaries there was always a miss here anytime
it came to doing something hard like doing real work it would just be disappearance there would be silence for example I had asked her to start a Pinterest account and then never heard back for the next 2 months and that was like a consistent theme here I would I would say okay what
about this and she'd be like yeah yeah yeah I'll do it I'll do it so that was the first thing is to constantly say yes to everything I suggested so just being a yes man I'm like how is this realistic I know I have a pretty good look into your life and I
just don't think it's possible for you to actually do everything you're signing on to so then it becomes a question of trust and credibility for me but number two is the silence to me that's the real killer in any relationship is I don't know where you're at with something there's no follow through
there's no communication on your end saying I can't do this or I don't want to do this you know it's not that I expect her to do it I know a couple months back we had a conversation about how whenever you see something as hard you go out of communication you just stop
communicating and I've already expressed how that's difficult for me and so this has been continuing and now I question whether I'm the right person to coach you and I don't know if I should continue taking your money is what I said and so at the time because it's kind of late at night
she said okay okay thank you and she she said I'm seeing it's not okay for me to just be silent or to never respond and I was like yes and again I don't expect you to do everything I just need you to tell me where you're at and whether you will do something
or whether you're like f off juwel I have no intention of doing that I think that's a dumb idea I'm like that's fine great now I know where I stand or where we stand so then fast forward 3 days later it was it was an entire um I'm not going to say it's
a meltdown but she had some strong reactions about it it was a little bit tricky but we ended on the same page and I think we're moving forward what was the milon can you say she was brave enough to express to me that at the time my lips were saying what I just
told you I said but she heard you're not worthy and I'm going to leave you I don't want to work with you anymore how did she process that what do you mean well you said one thing she heard I'm not worthy and so what is her response to so interpreting the message like
that uh really strong emotions you know there were tears uh there there was it it it was a mix you know it was a mix bag like it was a hard moment of course mhm but can I just say like I'm so impressed by her because she had the mental fortitude to step
back and to take a look at my character and to know that what she heard probably wasn't what she heard like even look at the way she phrased it she was like I I know you said something else but this is how I heard it so she was taking responsibility for her reaction
and so she took a step back and she said I think what you were trying to tell me was this am I right and I said 100% 100 100% And so it was just the idea I was like you know just to remind you again like as a coach as an ICF certified
coach there is a like a board of Ethics like there is for therapy and so when you take on this credal you're assigning yourself to say you'll be bound by these ethics and one of the ethics in coaching that I think people don't know is that you not sell yourself as like rent
a friend you know like your client wants a certain goal achieved with you as the partner and if you see them veering off the path like this is what you have to do you have to have a conversation and this is not the first time we've had this conversation it's been multiple times
through the toe relationship and it's it's not easy so there is one thing she said which I thought was such a beautiful lesson for anyone who might ever hear this she was saying you know I want you to know because you're talking about money she said I pour my heart and soul into
the work I do I bring so much love to the work I do and I pay you from the money I earn not from the money that my husband earns this is my money and I'm giving it to you and I was like oh my God you know in a way what you're
saying is it's love right you're you're giving your clients love you're receiving love in return and now you're giving me that same love and I told her you know all I'm looking for is for you to honor that exchange and make sure that you're honoring that for yourself as well because at the
point that we keep coming back to is you're giving me the love but where's the love you would show yourself that's what's missing I'm curious are you trained required or strongly encouraged to return money or cancel clients where it's ineffective or maybe they' it's turned into potentially a codependent relationship or a dependent
one there is a strong recommendation that you end that kind of relationship and or have them seek counseling or therapy the ideal situation is if someone is in a codependent relationship or you see codependent signs number one this should never happen in either scenario therapy or coaching because both of these professions are
there to give you the tools to support yourself you know to not be the constant caretaker and to not be the person who's always going to uh pick you up and put the pieces back together it's like you're here for a reason to know how to do this for yourself at some Future
Point that's the general guidance that we get in our world of the ICF um so Ideal World is they would have coaching and also have a therapist to work through these issues in Tandem and like super ideal is if they give permission for the coach and the therapist actually talk with each other
but they don't always do that do you think that someone else in your shoes a quote unquote coach would have acted in a similar way or do you think they would just keep the money or or maybe turn them down in a way that it's hard for them to process you know I
really hate to say this but given all the coaching communities that I'm in I would say that someone it's like less than a 50% chance for other people to handle this in my coaching school there's a personality assessment that they put out and consistently so it's got seven levels and level four is
the caretaking personality of which I of course have a lot to you know all of us do but consistently as coaches that caretaking level will be the highest and the strongest it's not the highest and strongest for me but it used to be so I consistently see feeds like uh posts on Facebook
or other forums where people are struggling with not not even something which to me this is relatively complicated let's just say a client is late or a client hasn't paid they haven't received payment Upfront for a client and and the work they've done with the client and they're already struggling I'm like if
you can't even handle something so basic as being paid UPF front and on time to me there's like a very very low possibility that a coach in the same kind of situation I'm in with something that's looking smelling a little bit like codependency or someone who's not living up to their end of
the bargain yeah they're not going to say something I highly doubt it so it's not even driven by money it's just driven by their caretaker personality that says I I somehow I can I can save this soul I can I can make this work because it's giving them something like somebody really needs
me right now and I can't turn my back on them yeah and fear of conflict a huge fear of conflict that plus what they think is the identity of a coach and I fallen into this trap all the time well maybe less so these days but in the first couple of years it
was all the time for me so I've noticed that there's this like weird like effed up Vision we hold in our heads of how we're supposed to be as a person because we're a coach like we're somehow supposed to transcend all the and be better than other people and yet that I find
amongst coaches avoidance fear of conflict uh people pleasing are extremely strong extremely because of that caretaker where do you think we should take this now I think we should take it to you cuz I feel like you have a lot of caretaking attributes yourself sure do midle child oh there we go and
I think that's what people would find surprising about you because of your online your public Persona you come off like super ruthless right people have called you the razor blade and and then to really get to know you and then to watch you with some of these friendships you have in your life
and I was like oh caretaking yeah I I've struggled with this for a long time I didn't know that's what I was doing until I went to see my therapist Joan and Joan told me it's pretty classic middle child stuff here and she she before she did any work with me she wanted
to know my parents history our family tree and structure and birth order and all those kinds of things cuz it gave her a psychological profile and emotional profile probably too so when she told me I was a caretaker no it's not me but then when we replayed instances from my childhood and also
in my professional life the reason why I came to her was because I was realizing I realize something that I was more concerned about employees who disagreed with me in their mental welfare than my my own mental welfare and so I would acques but I did it in a way that I can
see now was passive aggressive where I'm like okay I don't want you to do that but I'm not going to get into a fight with you right now just let water go under the bridge but then it would build up it would build up a lot of resentment inside of me and I
I'm not one to say like I'm in the Church of bernee brown but I think there's a lot of Truth to what she says she says choose discomfort over resentment when it comes to boundaries and speaking up and I try to like remember that every single time like choose discomfort it's uncomfortable for
me to tell you no I'm not going to pick you up no I'm not going to give you this thing and no you can't stay here because that little bit of discomfort would then save our relationship for me growing into a state of resentment in which I will one day just disappear and
say you know what I don't really want to hang out with you anymore I don't find you to be interesting or I I think you take advantage of me and I've learned I've had to you know for me when I learn a concept and I feel it's true then I start to take
action against it and so the person that you you meet today probably in the social space because I did this inner work before I went on social media is that I have a better sense of who I am and the boundaries I want to set that doesn't mean that people can't push on
those levers intentionally or unintentionally and the old me comes out and then the new me has to say wait wait wait are we feeling something how do we want to respond to this cuz I also don't want to respond respond to every single little thing I feel it's too Petty and sometimes I
think that's where it starts to be this Snowball Effect where you let one transgression go by and then another and another and then wait wait wait now they're just not little transgressions anymore or maybe it's just death by a thousand paper cuts and eventually I just get tired of people I'm like no
I don't want to be around you anymore and the way I do that is I recede into the background just don't call you back I don't respond it's not like I need to have a big my own come to Jesus conversation with folks I think I'm a little surprised like surprised and not
surprised because that's where we would handle it differently yeah yeah cuz I think I would have a conversation with someone um even my friends like don't get me wrong um probably like 5 10 years ago I was a person who would just like cut you out of my life would not say anything
uh that's more sudden I think than what you're describing which just like a slow receding away like a fading away but yeah I think I'm a little surprised cuz I think I see you as someone who would just speak your mind well I would say that more so today well let me just
say this when I coach people who've had a lifetime of one habit one thought process one belief that when presented with a new idea very few people can actually just completely change their life 180 degrees turn it all upside down and just divorce themselves of the old idea and I always tell people
I'm glad that this new idea serves you but don't be so quick to just say I'm cured of whatever ailment and I would ask people who had drinking challenges an addiction to alcohol I said so you're cured and they would say to you pretty like almost to the person you you're never cured
of alcoholism you're just trying to get through it day by day and you know that if you start to tell yourself you're cured you can slip back down that path really quickly so the way I look at is my caretaker Tendencies haven't gone away they're just there and I have to be mindful
it's still there and exists and I've done a much better job of speaking up telling people how I feel despite how it may make us uncomfortable now here's the classic irony of all this stuff I have an easier time telling people that I know like and Trust what I really think versus strangers
you would think it would be the opposite like I don't know you you don't know me so it don't matter what we really think of each other so I'm going to tell you where I stand on things but in fact it's the people that I feel most close to that I can really
sit there and say you know what the thing that you do really bothers me what I would say is I'm not going to let you get away with that whatever that statement is how however in ulous innocuous it feels I'm going to have to say no you can't say that and please don't
say that about me I'll give you an example okay I remember one time my wife and I were talking and and Otto is our oldest son and he's 20 turning 21 soon and he's very high achieving and my wife's like why are you so Thrifty with giving him praise and saying to him
you're proud of him I said well I could make a greater effort and then I started to really think about this and like why I don't do something and then I was having a conversation with our mutual friend analie and I said you know I feel really uncomfortable saying I'm proud and I
want to tell you why and why I'm I'm really kind of tight on it I said usually parents say that to their children but I don't want to say it and then CH was like whoa wait wait a minute you mean you're not proud of your friends I'm like no what right do
I have to be proud of them and so this is like shocking to her well she goes well I'm proud of you I'm like well hm let me explain so we got into this kind of really big deep emotional conversation and allow me to explain this and juul I'd love to get your
perspective on this I said if I say I'm proud of you that means there are times when I'm not proud of you pretty clearly and I think most parents use that phrase as a means to control their children you might not think of it like that but often times it's oh you got
a great job you went to school and you you studied the thing I wanted you to study and I'm proud of you or it could be like you gave money to charity I'm proud of you because that's what we want you to do or you turned the other cheek I'm proud of you
so I said part of loving someone unconditionally unconditional means without condition so I love my children I would lay down my life for my children and there's nothing I would not do for them and I've been telling them this since they were like little children barely old enough to understand the words and
the thing that I would tell them them like late at night I would say to them something to the fact of like I want you to know that I love you and that there is nothing that you could ever do to make me stop loving you and you don't need to do anything
different than to be you for me to love you and if anyone else ever tells you this in your life it is complete untrue and I mean that from the bottom of my heart I would say that over and over and over again when I told my therapist that this is what I
was saying she goes just don't put any question marks on it cuz I used to say do you know Daddy loves you she said turn that into a statement it's not a question dad loves you and so I keep thinking if my children don't get good grades don't go to a good school
don't do their homework get in trouble with the law get into all kinds of things I'm so proud of you because I'm proud that you are my my child and so when I explained it to her like that I think her head was like about to split open it's like I don't want
to be proud of them I am proud of them always and there isn't a time that I'm not proud of them and I said also I don't say I'm proud to my friends because what did I really do to can claim that I'm proud of you that's like a parental thing and I
think without people realizing it it is violent language because you're saying I have power over you my opinion my authority my approval matters to you and I'm going to say it I'm proud of you now it's a very innocent thing so if this is what you say to your friends and to your
loved ones don't let my crazy ideas about this but I really do think about the words that we use and how the words shape our emotions and capture our version of reality and they record stories in our brain and so that's where I just sit there and think like why don't I do
something there is a good reason at least for me and maybe I'm radical about this maybe I'm strange but I'm I'm curious about your thoughts juel and I'm curious from our audience when you listen to this episode or in the comments let me know if you think I'm crazy or maybe this is
a point of view that more parents have to have I heard this thing I think it was said by the yogi said Guru and he said something like children are born perfect it's their parents who mess them up and so the best thing you can do as a parent is to do as
little harm as possible it's impossible not to do harm but he to do as little harm as possible because those innocent statements that you say as a parents like oh why can't you ever be on time or why are you so clumsy and it's just a little moment of frustration in your life
you don't really mean those things but your child processed these things in a whole different way just like when when they do something good and you're like I'm proud of you're like oh that's what I need to do to get Dad to like me to love me and I need to do more
of that and what they do is they start to externalize their own selfworth to you and when you aren't around like either you pass away or they're in a different Circle they're looking to someone else as a surrogate to replace you and then someone else have control over your children and I don't
want to do that now I don't want to get into whole parenting and all that kind of stuff but I have a lot of crazy philosophies and reasons why I do what I do man like I can only imagine what people are going to think when they listen to this because I still
remember the first time you expressed any version of this I I think it was 3 years ago and you were talking about this unconditional love and I remember like wanting to cry and I think because like most people I don't actually feel like my parents have unconditional love in my mind I'm thinking
if I somehow effed up or murdered someone ended up in jail or pron my parents would disown me is what I'm thinking and yet I struggle because my parents have told me almost every single day of my life that they love me do they love me there's no doubt I just question whether
it's conditional or unconditional so the first time I heard you say this like I almost balled my eyes out and I was like oh my God I want to cry and you're like how come and I was like I don't know it's it's it's so much cuz I had never actually personally known
somebody as a parent who was bold enough to come out and say this I never witnessed it with my own eyes and it really triggered like this super strong reaction in me so when you said to Annalie or whoever it was that it's not really something you say like the whole I'm proud
of you to your kids let alone to somebody else I think many people don't understand that the history of saying that phrase it's it's generally reserved for within your family especially from parent to child or those who are very close to you people who had a hand in your achievement or your progress
in some way right so there's there's like a very tight Association by implication if you use that phrase and yet I have plenty of strangers like out there people who just like my vibe they see me on online they say it and and so there is like a hierarchy Associated there of some
kind like what you're saying which I think a lot of people don't get but this other piece that you're just describing with saying I'm proud of you kind of implies there are moments that I'm not proud of you I don't think a lot of people think about that and when you are raised
in a culture like many of us or maybe really all of us where parents May unconsciously Telegraph that love is conditional upon performance of any kind I think that's where it gets really hard it gets so hard we don't understand that our children are like plants and we are the Sun for them
so every which way we turn right they turn with us and if we're not careful to show them that they can stand on their own and that the sun is always there regardless you end up with most people out here running around living their lives and being triggered with stuff and I still
feel like strong emotions coming up when I I listened to you about this um and the last bit when you said you you're somebody who thinks about the words you use that's me too again I know this isn't all people we all communicate in different channels so some people are more about the
nonverbals less about the words but the words really mattering like they really do especially in how they shape our reality like you said but also because when you use the wrong words you can inadvertently shift your emotions and what you're feeling so for instance somebody I was coaching yesterday he kept saying he
has to have like a emotional reaction to something and I was just like but what emotions it's very it's very vague like to me that doesn't really tell me much so what emotions and to have granularity in the words you're using which is the frustration I have with some of my friends where
they're like yeah but that's not how people normally use the the words you know that's not what people normally mean like okay but so then how do we get on the same page of communication how would you handle that kind of response what's your response is someone saying that's not how people normally
say that or that's not how people normally mean the words well I would say how do you how do you know what is normal and who defined normal I would just ask more questions and while you were speaking there I'm I'm pretty sure there's going to be a couple of people who are
listening to this or watching this video who are going to get really upset for a lot of different reasons or they might have a strong emotional reaction to the kinds of things that we're talking about anytime you talk about parents or children it it is going to open up a diverse box to
a lot of unresolved childhood trauma either way and I'm I'm not going to tell you I'm any different because when I see organizations take really good care of children I get really emotional cuz I was I was a I'm really happy for those children but also kind of pining for my own childhood
like I wish I had this when I was growing up and so we feel a little bit of self-pity there I think and sorrow for our own childhood but I would ask everyone to try to do this thing write down 10 things that you hold to be true 10 beliefs that you have
whatever they might be just write them down and then do this thing that I think I read in Austin cleon's book and show you work or or steal like an artist or actually was in my interview with him he said you know try this thing where you do this genealogy of your ideas
when he was trying to do steal like an artist he was saying like who first said this to steal like an artist and just he went and traced it back as far as he could then he found like the mother or father of the idea but if you have beliefs just retrace like
how did you come to believe this thing it can almost always be traced back to your childhood and then try to see where it came from it came from a book a TV show a sibling a parent something like that and then ask yourself this question was how reliable is the source of
information what was it in response to and if it weren't in your own childhood and somebody had said this to you as an adult would you still believe this and I think this is where everything starts to become unraveled right so Joel when you said most people don't think like that or that's
not normal for people to think like that I'm like how do we even know what normal is you have finite experience you might know 10 12 people well enough to say like well that's normal and then the rest of the people are just assumptions I think and even if it were normal it
were bad should we not do this anymore like hurting people I think most people would agree is not a good thing to do but if the entire country wants to hurt people do you say well well that's what normal is let's go do normal so even if it's normal which I doubt it
is if it normal is bad should you do that and I think no that's what what it means to have conviction and what it means to have a moral code that you live by shoot man you're making me think that would have been the perfect response to a lot of the comments I
got on my Tik Tok and Instagram so I made a video about how you should probably not say I'm proud of you like it pisses people off but people are unable to articulate why so this is me going down the rabbit hole after one client session cuz I was like oh interesting somebody
has a huge problem with this so then I go research it and I'm pulling apart like all the threads I'm like okay I get it now so I make a video is very interesting the responses I get they're like either on this end of the spectrum or this end so the first end
being people who are like oh my God thank you for explaining this I could never put into words why it made me so angry when people said that to me but then on the other hand you had people who were like I've never had a problem with this no one has ever said
me you know said to me that there was anything wrong with this like maybe you maybe it's a you problem is the last comment I got like in the last week like basically I'm crazy over sensitive and I was like okay one I never said I have a problem with this I'm just
saying maybe if you are interested in having easier relationships with people perhaps not say this so that was that was really interesting uh I don't know it was I didn't expect something to me it seems so innocent to spark so many comments like you're crazy never had a problem it's a you it's
a you thing yeah I can see why they responded like that though I haven't seen that post in particular but if you said here's why I don't like this phrase and I'll tell you my reasoning for it versus you shouldn't say this cuz then now it's like well now you're criticizing me how
I versus you should I think it's a small but very big difference between those two things so I say if somebody wants to say they're proud of me I'm good with it I don't feel offended at all cuz you know why and here's the dark ugly unfiltered truth I don't really care what
you say that's the bottom line but I know a lot of people do and they they can be sent in a lot of different directions first of all let's let's explore these two two possible outcomes okay somebody comes up to you that kind of knows you and you did something that they may
or may not have been involved in you have great success they're like I'm really proud of you Jimmy or Mary and the first reaction is like wow thank you but are you taking credit for what this outcome is is that why you're proud of me or do you think I hold you in
such esteem that I care that you be proud of me or only my parents say I'm proud of me and I care what they say but who that are you and then you start going down all kinds of other emotions and reactions so a lot of them are not good possible outcomes or
we can just say we'll just ignore it it's not really a big deal so that means you've wasted words today I don't want to waste any words especially as an introvert I want to say things that matter that have impact and are intentional in align with what I'm really thinking and if I
say something wrong I'd like to know why and then I want to make adjustments I don't want to keep doing it just because it's it's a good habit that I or it's a habit that I have and so a lot of times when people say things like play paying someone a compliment and
I would say to them you know that's a violent thing you just did and they're shocked that I would say that and then I would have to go through this whole rabbit hole and explain to them like why and they said if you're curious you should watch this video on this and you'll
see and in fact the person I'm talking about is our our friend Rich and he was saying something like I'm proud of them for doing this or whatever it is and I explained to him and then he was just giving me a hard time he goes Chris I'm very proud that you told
me that I shouldn't be proud that wanker so good yeah so I'm like whatever whatever hold on to your beliefs so I think the the thing that a lot of people have a reaction to is you should or shouldn't and then all of a sudden like wait wait who are you telling me
to what to do and it's funny because I always think like this where if someone says something you don't agree with and you're not a big fan of theirs just move on why bother even giving a comment but I think everyone feels so not entitled but they feel it's so necessary to express
your opinion on every single thing that we get pulled into these polarizing conversations and debates because it gets our emotional juices flowing but I don't know if it's horribly productive if I don't agree with them they just don't watch it yeah I I did question why so many people felt this strong urge
to argue with me on my video I'm like why didn't you just scroll by and then I'm turning that back on myself too right cuz I'm like why do I feel the need to defend myself and I'm like well some of the time I'm just asking a question to see if there's been
any thought process in their response most of the time no I think what's interesting is when I ask a question and then they make it personal I'm like what the hell was that you know like like the person who was like well it sounds like a you problem based on some question I
asked him and I was like okay well sir it sounds like you're not interested in having like a real conversation so have a good day and and like that's about it but let me rewind back to something you said you don't have a problem with the phrase cuz you're like basically I don't
care what you say or what you think about me I have a different response to that so when someone says they're proud of me I don't really care but it's because I'm weighing their intent so I'm looking at their intent behind the words and like most people are not as careful of their
words I understand that what are they trying to do in this moment I think they're just trying to show me love and I'm a huge believer in just letting the love in take it in yeah I think I would I would probably take it the same way you took it which is okay
thanks appreciate it and sometimes you know I don't have to sit there and chop words because people don't think about things that that in that same insane detail so I'm like thank you and we just move on that's all hello yeah now yeah but they're right in the middle of this V okay
yeah I I'll I'll tell them this video is brought to you by the future future accelerator is all the best parts of coursework community and coaching all brought together for a single purpose to help you make a living doing what you love the accelerator membership includes a curriculum road map with over 100
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you mentioned something you wanted to talk talk about at the very beginning of this yeah I can I can talk about that but is there more to this that we want to pull apart not more to this but there's potentially a bridge cuz I was you know how I was telling you I
was thinking about accountability responsibility boundaries and then the latest thing about values remember like how I'm telling you there are some things happening where when a certain type of thing happens something I perceive as weakness and then I start to lose respect so respect is like the really yeah that's that's really hard
so I asked my husband at lunch and I was like how would you define what respect is and he was like what the hell just Google that I don't know how to answer that it's like a hard question yeah we use it but we don't know yeah and I think that's the issue
with most of the things that we are faced with as challenges today my guess at that would be to hold you in high regard High esteem and if you lose that then I kind of look down on you or I don't see you as an equal anymore okay that's interesting I think the
distinction of what you just said the very last pit um I don't see you as an equal anymore wasn't really in my picture of the understanding but I think that is what happens with a lot of people so here's I can I can respect the way somebody does something but not respect them
like I can respect that you want to live your life the way you want to live it or to eat the kind of food you want to eat or talk to people the way you want to talk to cuz I'm not king of the world no one elected me and I'm not looking
to have that kind of do Dominion or that control or power over people so I believe that there can be and and and I'm probably going to get skewered for this is multiple versions of air quotes truths and both of our realities can be real and both of them can be false until
there's like objectively verifiable data then we just don't know and I have a way of living and thinking and and and beliefs that drive me that have led me to a place of contentment of Happiness of success that if people want to learn that I'm happy to share it but if something else
works for you I should say you do that thing the classic example is I'm very much softspoken inbound building content and getting people to gather around saying Chris we want to give you something and say well that's fantastic I must be doing something right at this point and there are people who are
like no you can't be passive about this you must be proactive you must go and reach out to people and outbound way and just ask for opportunities all the time those are two polarizing like polar opposite ideas inbound versus outbound I think they can work in harmony one is not better than the
other it's whatever works for you but I live my life a certain way so if people want to learn that then I want to share that thing and then I find that there are people who have tremendous success doing outbound like our our uh this person I've mentioned to you Neil dingra he's
literally a give me a give me a sales listen I'm just going to call people I'm going to DM every single one of them I'm going to leave a message in all of them and he's very very successful he's made a lot of money and just the mere thought of that just makes
me want to like crawl back in bed and it's like wake me up when it's Wednesday cuz I don't want to do that and probably for him the kinds of things that I do make him like dude that's infuriating why would you sit around and wait for it to happen it's just two
different ways of existence and that's why I can respect the way that you do something while not having respect for you and us usually it's because of this idea of accountability and AK broader term weakness okay so what's the difference between respecting what someone is doing versus respect for someone how does how
does one gain respect from you Chris as a person then shoot you set yourself up for this man shoot well I I don't think I set myself up for this but now you're asking a really hard question I I would ask this first question why why would anyone need to to earn my
respect what does it do for anybody I admire certain people should I answer the question that way who do you admire why I don't know I feel like you're dodging the question because like can we be in friendships or relationships with people where we knowingly or we know that they don't respect us
I feel like that's a ton of oh that's a good question yeah I don't think like true friendship can exist from a place where you don't respect each other but it takes a while for us to understand for example if you meet someone who looks totally different than you comes from a different
culture uses different ways of saying things your initial reaction is to associate them with someone else or some group of people and you might assume okay those people talk like this and act like this and they're not trustworthy they're not ambitious or driven whatever it is that you want to put it on
some form of like low-key racism or Prejudice let's just soften the word and not call it racism but call it Prejudice okay because it doesn't have anything to do with race and you put them in a category so you might not have any respect for them the example would be people who wear
very baggy pants men who like let it hang around their waist and we see all kinds of people Asian white black latino all kinds so you look at them you're like uh your pants are really low I can't take you seriously but that person could be the CEO of a company or who
could have graduated from Ivy League school whatever metrics you want to use for success and you think that person deserves my respect so I think initially when we encounter people people we jump to conclusions about who they are and I don't think it's necessarily horrible that we do that because it's a way
of using our brain efficiently so we're not sitting there processing every single person on an individual level we're making decisions if we should fight flight or what's the third one some other freeze freeze yeah so we don't know if it's one of these three that we should do so that's a shorthand like
we process things but when we get to know someone I think then we say to ourselves I was wrong my assumptions about you were Y and Z and they're totally different like people might see one video of me and think what an arrogant a-hole who has is just talking out of both sides
of his mouth who doesn't know what he's doing and they may watch another video another video or they might see me in the street somewhere and have a real conversation with me they're like wow Chris I was wrong about you and at first I appreciate that it takes a lot for especially men
to say I was wrong and to then approach me and to stay in that long enough to say my bias got the best of me but I stayed in it because I was curious and then it led me to this place and I was brave enough to say this I really do appreciate
that but on the other side I was thinking why do we have such strong assumptions about people and so little information you know I I drive people crazy when I say this they didn't have enough data points one or two things should not be the entire thing it's like two shreds of evidence
that you think okay I'm done hung not hung jury but it's like unanimous done you're guilty you're innocent and that's where it gets really dangerous so I think there's a natural period of time in which two strangers get to know each other and they may swing back and forth of giving taking receiving
respect and at some point they they arrive at a place where they can really say I don't really respect that person I I think this is one of the hardest questions like I've ever started exploring and I don't have it fully figured out yet I think what you're saying is interesting because I
started Googling this today I started asking chat GPT to help me like tease out some of these nuances in the thinking and it kind of says the opposite of what you're saying or or maybe it's the same cuz it's saying that you can not respect someone's actions and yet still respect them as
a person perhaps you're a respect for the overall person lessons because of what you see them doing and yet you're still able to hold respect of them the big picture of them as a person while acknowledging in your own disappointment in seeing the actions that they're choosing and I thought my reaction in
the moment was I think that's a more enlightened like that would require a fairly enlightened person to draw those kind of distinctions I don't know that I'm there yet it's it's me struggling with my own judgment when I see my friends acting in a way that does not align with my own beliefs
or my values and then there's this thing of my boundaries like how much of that do I want to be around and now if we're talking about respect so the interesting bit when I was asking my husband was respect and I was describing some of the scenarios that I've been seeing over the
past like month and he was like I think what you're talking about is really admiration and I was like Oh that's oh same words I used yeah see and I feel like if you ever meet Jason you would like him he probably thinks similarly we're all three a little bit you know we
have stuff in common I was like admiration so I take a step back and look at it and I was like oh I see so when we're talking about the meanings of words shifting right like how they're actually defined in the dictionary or in Psychology versus how they're used in the mainstream this
is one of those words that has a split here so if you look in the dictionary it means to have full awareness and appreciation for a person's humanity and I was like okay I don't think I ever really lose that for anybody out there not even like criminals so then I asked chat
GPT I was like okay but I don't think this is how people normally use the word this is not what we mean and I give it an example and so then it comes back with something that's actually pretty good I thought it said it's it's conditional and I was like oh ouch it's
conditional so there's this intersection between your values your boundaries and then um maybe like a resonance and that intersection there in the middle is respect that's how we're typically using the word so there has to be some alignment ignment between all three of these areas for us to then say because what I
told chat GPT was I feel like we generally use the word in regards to seeing someone doing something that we think was hard something that is deserving of recognition or is noteworthy you don't say I respect you for doing your laundry I'm like that's the bare basic like to life but you know
one of my people that I coached yesterday he's coming up on a year of having gone to the gym working out five days a week every week and I was like I have mad respect for you man that is crazy like I love that so then that had me dialing back and I
was like okay so what about the moments when I feel like I'm losing respect for someone it's exactly like this thing with Chachi BT so the reason why I'm talking about this is cuz I had a coaching session where I was the one being coached and I was telling my coach that I
think it's like me losing respect for someone is primarily rooted in a conflict in Val vales I don't think she agreed with that she was saying that it's the conflict I'm experiencing is because of my filters like my filters are different from other people's filters and I'm like okay isn't that what values
are like like at least part of that you don't look like you fully agree no I do agree okay and as you described this because I've done zero research I've talked to zero robots I was trying to map out what you said like did I describe myself clearly and is this really how
I think if not I look at it like everybody get to live their life the way they want by their own rules and their values and somebody might look at me and say you're not a very ethical person I might look at them and say the exact same thing so there's no Universal
like this is this is it it's heavily based on context and what's going on so I think when we say like I look down on somebody that means I think I've lost all respect for them and so there are different different criteria for that I can respect that they're hardworking they're a good
friend that they take care of others and they're generous but there's things that they can't or don't seem to take accountability for and so for me it's it's I'm very flexible with this kind of stuff and I give people lots of latitude because I know I'm an imperfect person myself I do dumb
stupid things hopefully less as I get older but I still do dumb stupid things all the time it's not fair to judge myself in such a way that every time I mess up I'm like oh you're such an idiot you don't deserve respect or love or appreciation or admiration and so I think
the same it's like what is good for me must be good for others so I think there's a large latitude there so I think rephrasing my statement I think I I respect the fact that people have a different way of moving in the world that their individual actions sometimes I have challenges with
myself and when they do enough of them that hint at a core value then something feels funny inside like I don't know if I want to open the fullness of my heart to this person because there's something misaligned in values so I must be very enlightened juel because that's what you said H
everybody how convenient man yes you you are correct in describing my exact belief better than I could have okay so let me describe this coaching session I had with my coach mhm towards the end like if you've never had coaching you're listening to us it generally starts with what do you want to
talk about and then towards the end it has to move to some sort of conclusion which is not always the case with therapy this is a major difference between the two modalities here so coaching is meant for you to like take action like you realize something or even if you don't it's meant
for you to take action and move forward in some way so at the end she asks me what do you want to do and I said I think I need to re-evaluate some of the relationships in my life and possibly take a step back and she goes why and I said because it's
now been long enough that I believe I have a fairly clear picture of someone like a a well-rounded picture of people in my life it it's not like I've only known them for like 2 weeks you know I'm seeing a difference in values and if you've been listening to this and you don't
understand this bit about the boundaries the boundaries are I don't want to be around that anymore so this is where it can get a little bit murky here because in coaching and I'm sure they tell you this in therapy too when you're a therapist you cannot be attached to someone's out out comes
so if a client comes to me and they're like I want to do this I want to do this and they never take action you're not supposed to be attached to whether they take the action and so for me I'm not it's more that I need them to have honesty so honesty is
probably my Top Value and my coach was like yeah like that's like the first word I think of when I think of you and she did a really good job in pointing out attachment though so attachment to my values and I was like but don't I get to be attached to that so
it the irony I think is I felt like she was judging me for making the decision I made at the end of the session she's like don't you be so judging juel wait what irony yeah so me saying I just don't want to be around certain kind of energies and by energies I
mean it's really a difference in values like I want to be around people who are honest who are brave enough to be honest who speak up and ask for what they want who will try to help themselves instead of relying on me for 100% of the help always like that's what I want
in my friends and my family and I don't think like she took exception to that for some reason so yeah I was like uh okay attachment and judgment but we're human right like that's part of human nature see I respect that you get to have your own world viw and if you wish
to set up boundar since I don't want to be around that I think that's your prerogative because I think when I judge you for that then I say I hold a superior position that I have some Enlightenment over you and to say like my way is better I think it's a dangerous position
to take I mean it can be you know I think it would be different if I had come to her and said these are my views and I don't want to be around this kind of energy and yet I'm still having some kind of problem so in my mind a coach and a
therapist they share the same mission where they will point out like the problems and where you say this is what you want and yet there's a gap here there's some sort of discrepancy but for me there was no discrepancy I was like this is the conclusion and I I think this is the
right Next Step for me and to have her questioned that I was a little bit like what just happened that was weird so yeah so perhaps it was attachment and judgment as well see it's this is what I mean though as a coach and probably for therapist this attachment to the identity of
what that means if you're in those professions like you're somehow supposed to transcend this yeah I see I I think I have a very specific way of looking at the world like here's what I want to eat here's how I want to move my body and use energy here's how I want to
nourish my mind and these are the kinds of relationships I want to build and this is how I want to parent my own children and this is the business I want to build and this is how I want to show up online this is how I want to dress and send signals out
into the world and I'm okay with someone else else saying everything you said is totally not for me I'm like I'm good with that but then I say for the people who want to have what I have or think what I think and eat what I eat and wear what I wear I'm
going to help you but like you said From Any teacher coach point of view if you have misalignment between what you express your beliefs or goals and outcomes are but the actions are in congruent with that outcome then I think the relationship is such that I I must say something the degree will
probably depend on what the stakes are between the two of us but I feel compelled to say something because if you want to do these things then you got to just let go of some old ideas so share one thing with you I think I'm okay with saying this one of my buddies
Rich who produces our podcast who most likely his team will be editing this very episode and releasing it I notice a pattern and Rich and team if this feels uncomfortable for me to disclose please just has put that out there I think he has a very high moral code he's ex-military and I
think what I understand from people in the military is in the world of military life everything works in a very binary way it's right it's wrong you're on time you're late you're neat or you're sloppy there isn't a lot of gray and I think that's beautiful for a lot of people and milit
ex-military people then sometimes struggle with the idea that civilian life is anything but black and white it's not binary at all it's like super gray and murky and they have a hard time adjusting to that and so in the military you are going to lay your life down for someone and you're not
going to leave somebody behind in the battlefield and they require that kind of care for each other so that they don't abandon one one another and so your word means a lot in the military because you're honorable or you're dishonorable it's kind of really black and white so in civilian life people say
all kinds of weird things and they change their mind and you can get really upset because you're still using that framework or that mindset from the military right and so it's kind of like led into a lot of ways of Rich thinking about things like for example I find that every time I
talk to him about a business or a client idea that's new and foreign to him his first kind of reaction his default is no that's not going to work that's problematic and I'll tell you why and I'm like okay that's fine and then we get into like fashion which is seeming like so
disconnected from business and I say hey show me what you're looking at and so he'll show me a bunch of clothes that look almost just like what he wears but slightly different and he's asking me Chris I really need help with learning how to dress I'm like cool but everything I show you
say no to and everything that you show me is just 10° different than what you already wear so I start to feel like the disconnect like you asking me for help so I kind of have to just ask you to just try I don't want you to buy it but just try so
I tell him sit in the discomfort for a little bit and the first word that comes out of your mouth should not be no it should be let me see what happens so we did this weird exercise it's almost kind of like really strange like we're two Junior High kids on a sleepover
although he didn't sleep over here I sent him into a room and there's a full length mirror I said try these things on and he's bigger than me so he's like how could I possibly fit into any of your clothes Chris I said well that'll be my problem wouldn't it okay again all
that negativity let's see where it goes okay so I would go from my closet over to him like one piece at a time because I was looking for things that I'm like these are oversized loose cut things that he could possibly wear lots of things won't fit I didn't give him anything that
wouldn't fit and the simple thing of putting some some bracelets on him some beads or whatever the first time he put it on I could tell you looked at it like no I said remember just give it a try and so he's able to do that and then I come back and in
between going back and forth from where he was into my bedroom or my closet he had enough time to sit in the discomfort that he's like oh this isn't bad actually this is kind of cool I like this so he went from no no no no to like wow I'm I'm shocked as
heck that I'm even liking this right now Chris so from baggy pants with suspenders to loose fitting coats that look like you're a child wearing them it's just a different cut with drop shoulders and he just walked away and he sent me this really lovely message he goes Chris I don't know I
don't know exactly what it was but I think you opened or unlocked something in my mind this weekend and I would just wanted to thank you for it and I'm liking this new frame that I'm looking at the world cuz I kept telling him man I'm not super intelligent but I can spot
a pattern when I see one and you keep demonstrating the exact same pattern you say no before you say yes I said flip it around if someone presents an business idea for you and they're eight dumb ideas but two good ones look for the good ones and don't even listen to the bad
ones totally okay but you let the bad ones be so loud that you cannot pick up what's good anymore and you're missing the opportunity and that's going to hold you back for the rest of your life so we can play with business and we can play with fashion but like you've heard me
say this before how you do one thing is how you do everything that's a masim velli line so it's like if you can open your mind about fashion then you can probably open up your mind about business and possibly even about people and so that's kind of where we netted out on that
that's really cool also can't wait to see Rich's updated wardrobe it's going to look like me dude I when he said well first how am I going to fit your clothes or like I'm bigger whatever he said dude I cracked up because that was my literal first thought cuz I had the same
first thought when you did the same thing with Trio I was like aren't they like a foot taller than you when I'm like literally you're like stoping wait hold on hold on let me D's not 68 all right he's 6'4 he's probably actually 65 I think he lies he's one of the few
people who lies down instead of Lies up dgo 6'4 I'm 5'8 so that's not quite a foot I mean he was 68 I'm like yes it feels like a foot I give you that and there are things that I own that he can try on and he's tried on he's like huh okay
but yes I do have things that are not all like slim cut you know for 29 in weight cuz we're we're built very different even though rich and I are very similar in height he's got a much bigger pronounced muscular chest so those that's not going to fit and his waist is a
little bit bigger he's just got bigger meat on him bigger meat I don't know how else to say that oh dude this is this is the unfilter this bigger meat yeah um I'm going to hold up this picture because this is something that I've been showing my clients this week so I think
what you described really aligns with this it's not exactly the same but there's like a very similar pattern here yes right like the people who constantly say no um who are looking for the reasons why something won't work instead of why it might work for me it's this constant question of my clients
in the last I don't know three weeks month but just in general like the entire lifetime is a Perpetual focus on what they don't want instead of what what they do want so a lot of people asking me for help around finding their purpose and when I ask them okay so what what
do they want you know what all their answers are is what they don't want so then I ask them again and I keep asking them again and then we reach a point where I'm like you realize all your answers are like what you don't want and while that can be helpful to some
degree it's not really going to help you laser in on like the thing if you're truly seeking that same energy that I feel motivated by every single day and I think all of these are really connected right the habit of saying no before yes so maybe that's the exercise like one of the
things that we have the audience give a try right instead of your Perpetual no like your habitual no instead replace it with why don't I just give it a try cuz that was one of the lessons um my mentor coach she has this book called life's little lessons something like that her name
is Marian Franklin and one of the things in there is every day for a month just say yes to everything as long as it doesn't harm you just say yes I remember reading that and I was like oh that seems a little scary but I did it yeah and you're still alive Joel
I am yeah a lot of people like to ask something like why and she just add one extra word why not just have the word not why not hey you want to go out and try this super spicy uncooked food why not hey you want to listen to this kind of music that's
a little weird why not and just go for for it now juel I know you and I can talk literally for hours at a time but I'm thinking this might be a good time to conclude this very first episode of unfiltered one in which if you all let us know in the comments
that you you want to hear more of these kinds of conversations and let it Meander totally unstructured and to kind of see what kinds of things it's your brain then let us know comment the word unfiltered and we'll do more episodes like this oh my God but are you actually going to respond
no I won't respond in Ord or remember I'm like unil why why the hell are they saying that Jo I have no freaking clue but I will end this with a conver like a quick question for you okay I mean it's a question but I'd like a quick response when we ask ourselves
like what is it that we want I'm going to just build on that so I'm going to put you on the spot I don't want you to overthink this don't give me some middle of the fence kind of answer middle of the road Str fence battling answer when you have prospects clients come
to you as someone that needs your coaching what do you want from them as in what is the ideal student showing up or the ideal client showing up as what do they do what do they think how do they behave the ideal student looks a lot like me they're an immigrant or the
child of an immigrant they feel a strong sense of responsibility of their own life they know that they own their life and they're ready to do something about it they're usually pretty smart they are frustrated by something going on in their life for me when I say it's it's really like me like
my earlier self a lot of the time I think I've spent most of my life just really feeling uncomfortable with myself I felt like terrified to put one toe out a line cuz it's like oh my God people will judge me and then what so I wasn't moving up in the corporate world
in one of my jobs had no idea why now I look back I'm like of course makes so much sense so that's the ideal person for me who's like they have some idea of where they want to get to but they don't know what's what's getting in that in their way cuz they're
lacking a lot of people skills so if you're saying don't be middle of the road it's the people who are immigrants lacking people skills and they just want someone to tell them like give them the map and be like I'll break it down I'll break it down I'll tell you what to say
and if that person tells you something I'll tell you how to respond because that's what I wanted I'm going to take my own question and throw it out there because people do ask me often times what is it that you look for in someone you want to Mentor or someone that you're going
to coach okay I'm in this stage in my life where I need to be mindful of how I spend my time money is good I'm not going to turn money down but I don't find it particularly fruitful fulfilling to take someone's money and to coach them through something and as we said earlier
today the line I would use is hey I Endeavor to be the best coach that can be so in order for me to best be the best coach I need you to be the best student and here's what the best student looks like and if you can honor that part of the agreement
we're going to do great things together I can I can almost guarantee it and where this always breaks down almost always is you come in it with great intention you spend the money but you actually don't commit yourself to doing the work so in a weird weird way I just want somebody who's
totally fed up just like you juel who's frustrated who has a ginormous problem that if they can't get fixed it's going to ruin their personal life business life or something else in between and to come to me with an open heart an open mind to say like I've tried a lot of dumb
ways I'm tired of doing that I'm ready to do what you say and we can move mountains together in a very short amount of time CU nothing would make me more excited to pour into someone and see them do that I mean I'm electric or electrified or or whatever it is I'm I'm
through the roof with energy and adrenaline like I am ready to do the next thing with you because you just kick major butt and all you needed was a little piece of information maybe was permission or the words that you need to say and if you just say it you're going to do
great and that's why people ask me how long am I going to do this job for this job of educating this general public I said for as long as the messages keep coming back that because of X I was able to achieve y I just want more of them to be my my
students my mentees my clients and that would give me great joy the problem is people will ask for advice and not take it so in the world of fashion there are three gentlemen in particular who've been asking me for help and I'm starting to get really fed up with all three of them
I don't want to mention names but I was like why do you keep asking me for my help I tell you what you need to do and then you resist resist resist I'm not even getting paid for this Jewel so I'm thinking I got better things to do luckily for each and every
one of them it just took enough of that kind of resistance for them to have a small breakthrough but I'm telling you right now jul the next person comes to me I'm like nope we're not have this conversation you must commit I don't want to hear any lip from you if I tell
you to do this and you don't do it I'm done that's the agreement because I I don't have time to waste on this that would be it I think I'm going to add something like that to my contract yeah you should I have this extra page to my contract which is not normal
it says what to expect when working together and there's like all these things of what you say you're going to do like you're agreeing to do and you have to initial each one of them and yeah I think I need something like this what you're were talking about I don't think it even
needs to be an extra page you could reduce all the other words and just bring it down to this because without this everything else is moot if you if you want to search Carlos a guro's letter to clients the agreement right and you can do some version of that it doesn't have to
be comp that complicated you have a problem I have answers it's something like that you pay me and then you do the work or we cannot work together it doesn't have yeah I bet you with a couple rounds of GPT it's like I want you to do the most violent aggressive version of
this agreement and keep it as simple as possible you'll come up with that agreement really quickly and I think wouldn't that be great like if everybody joined a gym membership or if everyone who whatever it is you committed yourself to with your word that you actually just follow through it's been the biggest
secret to my success jeel hire smart people listen to them and know that you didn't have answers that's why you hired them and just do whatever they say do it to the best of your ability exactly the way you were instructed don't try to change it just do it over and over again
and then when you really tried and you know you try try one more freaking time and if it still doesn't work out then try another thing but what happens is people self-sabotaged from the jump they don't do it exactly with they instructed because they think they know better and then when it doesn't
work out well you've manifested it not to work out if they tell you to make 100 calls and you make 14 and you're like well it didn't work in 14 calls well you didn't do the 100 calls or if they say do I don't know end the call with this call to action
and you change that you don't really know if it didn't work or if it was you who made it not work and so that's why I think gosh I'm just getting too old and too cranky now it's if you want to work with me this is the way it's going to work otherwise
save your time save your money save some of my grief please your age is the excuse for crankiness now yeah yeah you notice how old people ain't got time for BS oh so you agree you're old I am old I tell people I'm old and I'm delighted when there are other people on
stage that are older than me I'm like God dang it I'm the Young Gun up here right now it's not often I could say that I mean I remember looking at my students at Art Center and saying okay so I've been running my company since 1995 and they just gasp like literally they
don't it's not even like an imagine that like I was even born in 1995 so I say so I've been running my business longer than you've been alive so the smart person in this room would say well let's take your experience condense it down so I could avoid some of the mistakes that
you made so I can get a shortcut to achieving what it is I want and that's the whole point of Education we would not go to school if we thought we only going to recommit all the same mistakes again then just save your money save your time just go explore the world yourself
and make up make all the mistakes in the world yep I agree well thanks for the call man this was fun as always thanks Joel let me tease the next episode next time I won't remember any of this but next time we'll talk about a spiritual walk that I had with my wife
and my kids recently in Mount Shasta and my wife has been exploring quantum entanglement Quantum particle quantum physics and Alternate realities and timelines and everything and it's her trip into like mysticism and sometimes the occult it's been fascinating for me to watch and I want to share some of the things I learned
I cannot wait I I love this this side of you with everything Jesse is learning and I cannot wait to learn everything about this I love this I'm just going to give you fragments of what I've over heard so uh of course then we we'll see what happens there you know what the
answer is you got to bring her on I I can try we got to talk she's practicing some things and she's like let me do a Sonic bath a sound sound bath for for your audience I'm like babe how are they going to feel it they'll feel it so maybe we'll have her
off camera and she could she could do something she has a hand pan too she plays quite well but she's like too self-conscious to play that oh my God I love this yeah I love this I was thinking of getting one that's so cool yeah they're pretty cool yeah so she maybe she'll
Jam for us just off off the Record we'll see what happens okay that's it so this is an unusual and different approach to our content everybody so bear with us as we work through this but I think sometimes when we're having these conversations I think real gems come out and it's it's a
Pity that you can't always be there with us to hear what we hear and to kind of learn from each other and this is an to help bring you in in that conversation thanks for sticking out to the very end with us I'm Chris doe and I describe myself as a loud introvert
sometimes I'm critically sharp I'm a middle child and a recovering graphic designer this is juel Kim and I love teaching people how to talk to other people without being so freaking awkward perfect sorry awkwardly perfect perfectly awkward I'm demonstrating my own awkwardness
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“It is violent language because you're saying I have power over you.”
— Chris Do
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