Unraveling Procrastination (Coaching Session Breakdown)

Joe: I have to be confident is running from the doubt. We all doubt. Like we, none of us move with a hundred percent confidence. The question is, how much can you welcome the doubt, is the difference, not if you have it or not. 

Brett: Welcome back to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease.

Today we're gonna do a rapid coaching breakdown and what that means is Joe and I are going to watch a rapid coaching video from a session that Joe did in a recent live q and a, which is a live call where the public can come and get coached by Joe. And if you want to do one of those, check out the link in the show notes. We'll have a link to all of our upcoming public events. In this coaching session, a woman came with a question about feeling stuck, stuck in creating what she wants in her life, creating, bringing her gifts to the world. Over the course of this session, she came to recognize a number of ways that she was creating stuckness in her system during the session.

And that became illuminating for her and for those of us watching. And so without further spoilers, I'd love to get into it and let's get started, Joe. 

Joe: Awesome. For anybody who's watching this, please don't take this as a how to coach video. How to coach is really get to know yourself and learn a couple skills and then keep on getting to know yourself and really spend all your time in self-discovery as much of your time as possible in self-discovery and then translate that into a couple of tools that, that you have. But don't take this, especially 'cause we have a lot of coaches who watch as a mechanism of, oh, this is how to coach, or here's a tool to use. Please take this far more as, oh, what can I learn about myself in this process? What is it that I can see in myself? What is it that I can see about humanity? That's what we do this for. It's not to teach people how to coach. 

Coachee: Why am I stuck moving forward? Why am I not moving forward feeling the confidence that I wanna have after 25 years of being a mental health professional. Why am I not just running in and doing this next thing that I'm ready to do? Why am I stuck? Why am I hesitating? 

Joe: Okay. Can we stop it? 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Great. So couple of things are happening right away in this coaching session. The first one, that's the biggest piece of information is she starts with her eyes closed and checking in inwardly.

So there's a way in which being in herself and being with me is a difficult proposition. So that's the first piece of information that's there. This may or may not be true, but it's a piece of information. Next is that the questions, when asked what the questions are they're all why questions, which are typically more judgmental questions that are happening.

So that's another thing that's happening. And when she goes from internal to external, she goes, I'm sitting with, which is a little bit of a separation from herself, a little bit of a separation from me to, okay, here's the question. So all of those things are happening in the first little bit, and typically it's the first little bit that will tell you a lot about what you're gonna be doing for the next couple of minutes.

Brett: Yeah. It's fascinating how that also is the shape of the question as well. Like how do I bring what I want to into the world? How do I do the stuff that I know I'm ready for? Pretends that. There's an internal sensing that she's able to recognize this is what I want to bring to the world but then there's a disconnect between that internal sense of it and then the connection with the world to bring it. 

Joe: Exactly. 

Brett: Which seems similar to the closing of the eyes. 

Joe: Exactly. And she has to talk herself into it after 25 years of, there's not just how do I do it? There's a justification that I, she should be able to, and all of that is in there.

Brett: All right, let's move on. 

Coachee: I've got so much readiness, parts of me that are so ready. 

Joe: I got it. So what's with the judgment? 

Coachee: Yeah, the judgment. It's not gonna be as good as I think I thought it was gonna be. I'm not as good as I thought I would be. 

Joe: Yeah. What's the problem with that? 

Coachee: I was always the good one. I always figured out how to be the top of my class. 

Joe: Cool. Okay, great. Now we know what the real issue is. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Brett: So she just went through a bunch of story there, and now you said, now I know what the real issue is. What did you see there? What do you see as the real issue? 

Joe: To be honest, I can't, I have no idea what I'm about to say. I must have seen it in the moment. The judgment immediately pulls out and she acknowledges the judgment right away. I also see the smile on her face that's happening right now when it moves from I'm stuck to I'm judging myself, and there's a way in which she feels called out and she's happy with that. So that's another thing. And if you look at her face right now, she's so excited.

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: So whatever it is I'm about to say, which might be complete bs we'll find out in a second. There's something happening in her right now that tells you that the stuckness that she feels is not exactly what she thinks it is, because a person who feels really stuck wouldn't have that facial expression.

Brett: Yeah. And my curiosity right now is, regardless of what you're about to say. In her response to you saying, oh yeah, I see the problem. What did she imagine the problem was? Like what? What is she currently laughing about? 

Joe: Yeah, that's a great question. 

Brett: And how relevant is that to her journey regardless of the next thing you say?

Joe: Exactly. And we'll probably find out in a second, maybe. Let's see. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: You are not the top of your class in this. No, there's no possible way. Whatever it is, the project you're gonna wanna do next, you won't be the top. Sit. Sit. Yeah. Feel. Yeah. So what I just noticed is that you went to a somatic experience to not feel, rather than feel. 

Brett: I'm gonna pause right there for those who are listening and not watching. What she just did there was, she took that information in. There was an intensity to it, but she closed her eyes and then did some breathing, like some breathing to settle her nervous system. 

Joe: Yeah. So the answer to the question is now we know what the real thing is.

What I was doing there is, it's not particularly that I'm pointing to the real thing. There's levels and levels of the real thing. But what I'm doing is I am turning the whole idea of the judgment around. So oftentimes the way a person allows themselves to judge themselves is they say, it's gonna come back. The other shoe is gonna fall. I'm not gonna be the best, and it's true. But what does that have to do with anything? What does it have to do? Yes. The other, something bad is gonna happen. Something good is gonna happen. Yes, you're not gonna be the best. It doesn't mean that what you're gonna contribute isn't amazing. So the thing that I'm doing in that moment is really talking to the judgment and for anybody who's listening, all of your judgments are like this.

All of your judgments are nonsense on some level. They're either nonsense and they're not true, or they're nonsense in the fact that they're true, but the consequences are not true. The consequences that you think they are, are not true. And so that's what I'm doing right there is just flipping that script around the judgment.

Brett: And then you also said in response to her taking that breath, you pointed out you just went to a somatic experience in order to not feel, can you say more on that? 

Joe: It's actually the same pattern repeating, which is, oh I need to perfect something.

There's a way to do this. I'm going to be in control. Like that sense of perfecting and controlling and being good enough. I'm gonna do that right now with this breath in, instead of just let the wildness of life run through me for a minute, right? So if you think about what it is to express in the world, you'll never be perfect. It'll never be good enough, whatever that means. But it does require some faith in the wildness of life. It's creativity. It's messy. And what I'm seeing is that the thing she's talking about letting herself do out in the world, she's not even letting herself do right here and so she's containing herself instead of fully feeling it.

And somatic work is really beautiful work, but it can sometimes be used to domesticate yourself rather than to know yourself. 

Brett: Awesome. Let's continue. 

Coachee: Yep. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. 

Coachee: Yeah. I use my breath to self-regulate really quickly before I have to feel sometimes.

Joe: Yeah. Saw it. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're gonna go back to, you are not going to be the best. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: Period. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. There it is. Yeah. I'm not the best. 

Brett: And for those listening, she just visibly had some sadness show up, a little bit of wetness in her eyes. 

Joe: You're not the best. I don't even know if somebody could claim best, but there's definitely people better than both of us in whatever it is that you're gonna do.

Coachee: Yes. Yeah. Survival pattern. Be the best. Be the safest. 

Joe: Get outta your head. Fuck your head. I know you can see the patterns. You're a mental health professional and that you've seen the patterns for years, but that doesn't, isn't helping you get out of it. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah, so this is a really important thing.

There's, this is for anybody who has, you can describe what's wrong with them. They have all the stories, but nothing is changing. This is a really typical thing that occurs is that you learn a new story, you learn rationale. You read a book, you get it, but it's not actually changing and one of the things that's just a really good trick for that if it's happening inside of yourself, is to say, no, if I really understood it, it would've changed, so clearly I don't. Rather than resting in the knowing of, oh, I know the story, I know that this precedes this, that this is all shame and blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever the words are, if it hasn't changed, you don't know it. And it's really quite a beautiful hack to admit that to yourself. So anyways, 

Brett: Yeah. And that also showed up in the very beginning where she opened with a question and she was like, I know that I'm ready to give this to the world. And there's a way that is that the, it's got the flavor of an affirmation to cover up the lack of confidence in that truth. So even there, there was a bit of self denial in the feeling of uncertainty.

Joe: Yeah, that's right. 

Brett: Of being ready. 

Joe: Yeah. Beautifully seen. 

Brett: Let's move on. 

Joe: You're so not the best that you can't get out of this. You're stuck. That's how not the best you are. 

Coachee: Yes, Joe. What the fuck? I'm supposed to be the best I can get, i'm supposed to get out of this. 

Brett: I'm loving the joy on her face right now. 

Joe: Right? Yeah. So i'm literally telling her all of her worst fears, what should be her worst fears. You're not the best. You're so not the best. You can't even get unstuck. Nothing but joy is coming out like, oh fine. I like, it's the relief of not having to be the best, not having to pretend you're the best, not having to pretend you're good enough. All this relief is coming. Okay. 

Brett: So awesome. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Coachee: All my tools, with everything I know, and I'm still doing this. 

Joe: You're actually using your tools to keep you stuck. Yeah. 

Coachee: Yes. Master that. 

Joe: Yeah. So feel that. Yeah. Now I see. Yeah. Feel that for a second. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: It's a beautiful moment if you're listening. She's starting to tear up and she has this great fluidity of seeing the joy and the relief in it, and then being able to feel the grief, which she really shows her capacity here. She has a lot of capacity for doing the work. So you have two survival techniques that are working here. 

Coachee: Yes. And I'm just fucking tired of that. I am frustrated. 

Joe: Yeah. Tell me all about it. Tell me all about it. 

Coachee: Yes. I'm just so frustrated holding myself back. I'm only here on this planet for a short amount of time, and I have some stuff to do and I'm tired. 

Joe: Okay, cool. So what I'm seeing now is the sadness actually comes out when you're fucking angry. So you avoid anger with sadness and you avoid sadness with somatic presencing. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: What the fuck? 

Coachee: I really worked this. 

Joe: I know. Yeah. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. Interesting to see there that there's a part of her that feels, it seems to me, it seems like there's a part of her that feels proud for the way, it's at least the for the williness and the intelligence and the way that she's stayed stuck. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: There's almost a way that her system is honoring hey, you know what, maybe I've been stuck. Maybe I've felt stuck, but look at how look at how elaborate this cage. 

Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There is that, it is very sweet. There isn't a shame around it. There is a, there's like somewhat of a pride in it, which is really quite lovely. Yeah. 

Coachee: Yeah. And it's funny, like and, yeah. Anger is something that I have been playing with a little more. Oh, I feel like on fire when I get angry, there's like this fire in my belly. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Coachee: And I just wanna go and I wanna go and then all of a sudden something comes in and that's. 

Joe: It just happened. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: It literally just happened. You show up with a, just a little bit of anger and then you like. I'm angry and I wanna do something.

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Coachee: Oof. 

Joe: Yeah. So two things are happening simultaneously. The first one is that you see on some level, which is you had to be the best. But the second one is that like you were trying to be the best to please somebody so that they would stop being mentally, something abusive with you, right?

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: And that's where your anger gets repressed. 

Brett: I'm just gonna pause right there and ask a question for the audience. I'm imagining many people in the audience asking this wait a minute, how'd you just make that leap to her childhood?

And so I want to ask you that question.

How did you make that leap to her childhood? And how do you navigate that when you're bringing something up as an empathy guess or as a prompt? 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: To link something back to their history? 

Joe: I could have it a little bit wrong here and there, but we learn like it's the law of human nature, that we learn what we need to do to get love and be safe, to get attention, to get love, to be safe.

So she learned that being the perfect, best at, kept her safe, which means she needed to be safe from something. It means that she, this is the way she got love, or at least was safe. And so if that's true, there's some level of abuse in that. If you're looking at a kid deserves love and attention and to feel safe no matter what. Anything else is like some level of abuse.

So I could have not used the word abuse partially, I'm looking at the response and you can see when, if you're looking at her face when I say it, she's like trying to figure it out. Then she sees it out of the corner of her eye. But if you use a word like approval it doesn't actually hit the system in, in a somatic way. Because just, I remember for instance, when I was in in a therapy session with Tara early on in our relationship and our therapist is this is verbal abuse. And both of our us were like, no, it's not verbal abuse. And it's until we could admit to ourselves that it was abuse that we could feel it, own it, change it. And criticizing a kid all the time is abuse. Expecting perfection out of a kid is abuse, and until you can see it and own it and feel it, it's gonna be a long haul to actually change that pattern.

Brett: Yeah. And also in, in recognizing abuse, where abuse exists, you can apply the same thing. If you have a perfectionism mindset towards it, if this person's parents watch this video, or someone who's a parent watched this video and sees a pattern that they see in their child, for them to recognize, wait, what? That was abuse? They could be like, oh, I'm so bad. I'm so wrong or they could be like, oh yeah, there's just all of this stuff that we're swimming in our, through the generations, through our society, I've clearly carried some of it, and there's no shame in that. 

Joe: That's right. There's no shame in it. 

Brett: There's just opportunity for recognition. 

Joe: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I don't, it's odd. I don't make abuse or the abuser wrong. There's no, wrong doesn't solve the problem. Acknowledgement of it solves the problem.

Brett: Beautiful. Awesome. Let's move on. 

Joe: Yeah.

Because you either don't want to be like that person or there's some, something going on there. So let me just actually hear your anger that is not a victim anger, right? So it's not an anger of why can't I just, it's fuck you, fuck that. Like aggressive, I am going to dominate. I am not going to be dominated. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: So can I hear it? 

Coachee: Yeah. Like just, just listen to me motherfuckers. I've got something I have to say. It's important that I say this. God, I'm already feeling it though, Joe. It starts to go already, I feel it. I can't pass that. 

Joe: Yep. Keep coming. Don't let it stop you for one minute. One minute. 

Coachee: Yes. I can feel it's dampering, but I'm so tired of it. I'm so angry.

Joe: That's the victim. 

Coachee: Yep. Okay. 

Joe: Tired of it. No, fuck you. I have something to say. 

Coachee: I have something to say. I need to say it right now. You're going to listen. You're gonna back up. Something, somebody I am pissed off at there.

Joe: There it is. Oh, what just happened is you, as soon as you made a demand of somebody else. 

Coachee: Yeah. Yep. Because this is a relational trauma. Fuck this. Yeah, it's, 

Joe: Yeah. 

Do me a favor, in an aggressive tone, make 10 demands of me. It's not personal. I'm not gonna do them. Just make or make five demands of me.

Coachee: Ooh gosh. See, that's hard. 

Joe: Yeah, she said, Ooh. But she was also excited. 

Coachee: Okay, Joe, give me an answer. Tell me what I need to do. Understand me. Oh see, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. 

Brett: One thing that's interesting here is watching the way that she enjoys it when she gets into that, the moments of dominating anger.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: I see the same enjoyment on her face that she had when she talked about how she kept the cage around herself. Oh yeah, I've done all these things. I've done all this and that, and yep. I did a really good job of keeping myself in this pattern. It's like the same level of satisfaction she's getting from both.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: It seems to me, it's fascinating. 

Coachee: Yeah. I can tell the world this, but like telling you something is much harder. Like the symbol of I need something. I have needs. Oh, wow. I have needs Joe. No that's okay. I have needs, and I'm not gonna share them with you because I've got this. I'm on my island. It's all right. You go do you, and I'm gonna figure this out on my own. 

Joe: Right? 

Coachee: Which is why I almost didn't raise my hand here too, because I'm like, what am I doing being all visible? Yep. 

Joe: Yeah. You have needs and 

Coachee: I have needs. 

Joe: And you don't share them. You don't even share them with yourself. 

Coachee: It wasn't safe to have needs and to share needs so I was self-reliant. I became a therapist. I was very good at being able to do that. 

Joe: So what's the need? What's the need that you have that's moving this thing in you that wants to go out into the world that you have to express? 

Coachee: The belief. I have a need to believe in myself. It's just like I know that I have a gift.

Joe: Oh, hold on. That's a bullshit story. You believe in yourself, clearly. 

Coachee: I believe in myself, that's why I'm confused. I believe in myself. I know I've got this. 

Joe: Yeah. So be in that belief for a minute. 

Coachee: I know I've got this. 

Joe: No, that's you trying to convince yourself. 

Coachee: Okay. Yeah. Self-belief. I do believe myself.

Joe: Yeah, you clearly do. Yeah. 

Coachee: Yeah. I believe in myself. 

Joe: You wouldn't have called raised, you wouldn't have raised your hand, you wouldn't have, yeah. 

Coachee: Yeah. And I asked this question because I believe in myself, 

Joe: So hold on, believe in yourself and tell me what your need is. 

Coachee: I believe in myself and I need to move forward with what I know. I need to go create what I am ready to create. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. 

Coachee: And do it with confidence. Do it 

Joe: What makes you need it with confidence?

Coachee: Because it's when I doubt myself, things go wrong. It is when I doubt myself that I lose momentum or I lose funding or I lose,

Joe: When you doubt yourself or when you doubt your anger? 

Coachee: Anger. Can I be angry? Yeah, some of it is anger.

Joe: Anger, in Tibetan world, they say that anger, unresisted is determination and clarity. 

Coachee: Yeah. Okay. Determination. That feels right. Fire belly 

Joe: Outta your head. 

Coachee: Yeah. And the only time I get free of this is when I am moving. When I am doing dance, if I'm lost, yeah, I will feel the spark and it gets really hella strong. It's there and I'm like, wow, like you should be doing this.

Brett: Something that's really interesting here as well that I'm noticing is that when she's in that clarity, there's just movement. And when she goes into the doubt, there is the fear of not living up to a potential, which then creates an urgency in her system. She uses that urgency to create like a sense of confidence or drive, but it's also like putting the gas on the brakes at the same time. 

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of squealing of the tires that way. Yeah, it's well seen.

Okay, so I just have, I have a hack for you and then this'll do it. So I want you to go into the doubt for a moment, all the doubt. It's not gonna be the best. You're gonna fuck it up. No one's gonna pay attention, no one's gonna listen. Yeah. You feel the doubt? 

Coachee: Yep. 

Joe: And open your heart to it. Love the doubt.

Coachee: And there's some fear.

Joe: Just keep loving the doubt. How close is that to the way you feel when you dance? 

Coachee: Yeah, much closer. 

Joe: Yeah. So you've got two jobs. Move the anger. Every day, move the anger, not that kind of victimy anger. 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: But that, that dominant anger. Don't do it at anybody. You can do it at somebody, but just not with them in the room. You can move that anger at people, but just not with them in the room or whatever. And every time you go into your head spin of doubt, move into opening your heart to the doubt.

Coachee: Yeah, I can feel that really grounded. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Coachee: Belly energy. Yeah. 

Joe: Yeah. There's one thing that I'll say. If you go back to the, when I say the heart and you see her go into, if you're watching this video, you see her, it's very similar to what happened at the beginning. So at the very beginning, she closes her eyes, she's disconnected from me. And in this particular case you can see that it's overwhelming her a little bit. You can see that it's fully embodied. It's not an escape, it's an embodiment. And so I just want to, because I'm sure people, there are people who don't understand probably when they're doing which one. And so here's a great example of it. If you look at her, let's watch the tape for a second. I wanna show you where you can see it.

I want you to go into the doubt for a moment, all the doubt. It's not gonna be the best. You're gonna fuck it up. No one's gonna pay attention, no one's gonna listen. Yeah. You feel the doubt? 

Coachee: Yeah. 

Joe: And open your heart to it.

When you say doubt, she's looking down. You can see the shame. You can see her tucking her belly a little bit. Now you're like, oh, the heart now watch what happens right here to her face.

Coachee: And there's some fear.

Joe: That, so it's like that moment of like she's, it literally feels like the emotion is moving her physically in the body. So it's not about how do I suppress this emotion? It's actually alive in her. You can see her head move like a wave. And that's a, it's an interesting thing to know the difference between, oh, I'm closing my eyes and I'm dissociative, or I'm separating myself from myself, or I'm closing my eyes and I'm stepping more deeply into myself. Yeah. 

Brett: Yeah. It's amazing how subtle that difference is from the very beginning of the session, doubt creeps up and she did some breathing to suppress or to get to move away from that experience. 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: End of the session, some doubt shows up, she opens her heart to it and her system moves. And visibly on the screen, it takes a trained eye to even recognize the difference. But if you imagine over the course of a lifetime built up of many weeks, months, days, where little moments like that occur and you open your heart to that doubt rather than somatically move away from it and what happens in your life.

Joe: Yeah. And the other thing to say is, if you notice right at the beginning, she's 25 years of therapy, like that's running from the doubt.

There's a perpetual, if you look through the tape, there's this perpetual running from the doubt. And this is her first time stepping fully into the doubt.

I have to be confident is running from the doubt. We all doubt. Like we, none of us move with a hundred percent confidence. The question is how? That's not even right the way. I was gonna say, how well can you be with the doubt? But I would say, how much can you welcome the doubt is the difference, not if you have it or not.

Brett: Yeah. It's like how much of the struggle that we associate with doubt in our lives is actually the reaction to the doubt. 

Joe: Yeah, that's right. 

Brett: Our doubt comes up and we go into a trigger response and try to manage. 

Joe: That's everything too. How much of the issue isn't the issue, it's how we react to the issue.

Brett: Yeah, or react to the reaction. Also, just for those listening, maybe put a couple more signposts around the anger. You mentioned yeah, you basically prescribed her, move some anger every day. 

Joe: Yes. 

Brett: And we've done a couple episodes on anger that go into that in a little bit more detail, but just for those who might have this be the one episode that they listen to of our entire podcast. What does that mean when you. Invite her to move anger every day? You can move it at people, but not with them in the room. What does exactly that look like? 

Joe: Yeah, so if you're listening to this, go listen to the Anger Podcast before doing it. It's important because it can bring up a lot of emotions and nervous system responses.

What it means is that typically the way we're taught is that you can either contain your anger or you can get angry at somebody. You're either yelling at your mom or you're trying not to yell at your mom. So that, and there's this third option that for whatever reason, very few people do, which is go move your anger. Just don't do it with your mom around. Let it move, get that happening, and then come back and be with your mom. And if you are feeling stuck, in particular this particular case, it's one of the thing, one of the big signs, symptoms of repressed anger. So then you start moving your anger and you move it on a regular basis, and then the anger over time becomes a little less personal.

It becomes more like you're going to the bathroom and less like you believe the story. It's just an energy that needs to move and when you do it, one thing to know is that it'll increase for a while. The anger, all of a sudden you'll feel more and more anger, and then it'll dissipate over time. And the important thing is to not judge or have shame over anger. We all have it, and it's to let it move so that it turns into the anger that is decisive, that is clear. That is the anger that Gandhi had, or the anger that Martin Luther King had. The anger that's full of love. 

Brett: Beautiful. Thank you Joe. And I also want to thank our participant for being a willing guest on the public Q&A and onto the podcast. 

Joe: Awesome. Thanks Brett. 

Brett: Yeah. And thanks everybody for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. We also love it if you like rate, give us five stars or whatever many stars on any of the podcast platforms or follow us on YouTube at Art of Accomplishment.

You can also follow us on X at Artofaccomp, at FU_Joe Hudson and at AirKistler. The Art of Accomplishment was produced and hosted by myself, Brett Kistler, and Joe Hudson. Mun Yee Kelly is our production coordinator, and this episode was edited by On Replay.