Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and for those of you just listening, not watching, I am at what people would most, most people would consider a beautiful, peaceful, zen like state, an environment that is beautiful. Uh, nature can be very, uh, assisting to us when we need to escape our busy lives, because a lot of us now more than ever getting sucked into these worlds of social media, of our phone, of our jobs, and of stress.And we're going to be talking about all that today in relation to change, to chasing after our goals, if we were really truly chasing after them, and the mindset practices along the way that can be beneficial to pursuing those. And some of those goals you're chasing may require change, but a lot of us are scared of change.A lot of us are scared of change for a lot of reasons and with mainstream media and social media Influencing us in so many different ways from very young ages. Now, there can be even more ways to That you're afraid of change than ever before, but we have an expert here to help us discuss that. And we're going to get into a great conversation.Ms. Jean Selkirk. So great to have you here. And when you please introduce yourself for us. Yes, thank you. My name is Jean Selkirk. And while I am a. Fairly recent, um, joiner of the ranks of coaches, because I started during the pandemic. Change has been my ally and companion for a really long time. So I have really taken to heart my own experiences.And done my best to make them comprehend, make the whole process of change make sense to people. Yeah. So can we talk about, I mean, were you yourself afraid of change when growing up or even later into life? And if so, how did you realize that? Well, interestingly, I, you know, you grow up, you change schools, you meet new people.Um, but the kinds of things that most people are used to being changeable didn't change a lot in my family, so there was a lot of, um, very rigid emotionality. So, like, somebody got angry, they were gonna stay that way. So there wasn't the sort of ebb and flow of, um, uh, you know, getting upset and then getting back together again.It was, it was just very rigid. So I had actually decided to become a truck driver in my mid twenties. While I was in the process of doing that, I heard some people talking about body work, you know, like massage or, or more intense things, deep tissue, that could change how their body work. And it was like, I went, tell me more change.You mean I can change something?But, but, you know, my excitement came, comes out of this background of not really feeling, you know, I didn't know about how things could change. And what I got out of the experience, as I went through it, of receiving bodywork sessions, was that I could rewrite the rules of how something worked. So I didn't realize it at the time, but I had my gold standard for, was something worthwhile?Was it going to work for me? Would it work for somebody else? Could it actually rewrite the rules?Yeah. I think now, more than ever, there's actually more research and information available to people in a more accessible way to enact change in their lives. Because you mentioned that you're newer among the ranks of coaches, but coaching in general, I mean, there's always been mentorship and coaches, but I think in these past few years, it has really, you know, bloomed into a much bigger industry, especially with podcasting is one of the biggest ways that coaches are spreading their business and advice by guesting on podcasts I've had.A lot of different types of coaches on my show and I never knew until I was a podcaster that there's life coaches Men's coaches, you know women's coaches dating coaches, you know fitness coaches You know all kinds and you know what? I think it's great because you know Not everyone needs one But there are people who need one or want one and they don't have that in their life naturally Not everyone is born with a mother or father or parental figure Not everyone is blessed to be in an environment where they have access to People who are wiser have done what they want to do or made the change that they want to make and there's a lot of Mentors out there who are you know voluntold mentors?They happen to be in your life and you know They don't want to do what you want to do or they don't want to make the change you want to make And there's so many studies now about neuroplasticity and rewiring the brain and or physically the body and mindset shift and I think There's so much access to it now more than ever, so while I know earlier I said that there's so much fear and indoctrination out there with social media and the news, while there's more factors contributing to the idea of change being scary or awful or not possible, There's also, on the counter side, so many more resources out there proving and providing that change.But you have to know it exists, which I didn't know exists growing up. You know, I would have been listening to all these podcasts while I was growing up or working with someone to get that information. Uh, so it's, it's a great thing. I know you mentioned you started during the pandemic. So what got you into coaching, just that drive to, Hey, I did this and I want people to know that this exists and that they can do this too.Well, the change had been a change had been coming for a long time. I got interested, excuse me, about 25 years ago in what was going on when people couldn't learn or literally couldn't change. And I was in business school at the time. And one of my professors pointed me in the direction of research at Harvard on how people actually change and why they can't change.So I did a lot of study on that when I was in school, but then coaching wasn't so much a thing when I got out of school. So I wasn't, if I'd known what I know now, I would have gone straight into coaching. But as it was, I earned my living doing accounting for about 20 years. But in my personal life, I work with a lot of adult learners.So I continued to hone my skills in teaching and seeing how people learn. And make transitions. Um, so when I had an opportunity to retrain as a coach, when the pandemic started, it's like, I was ready. It's like, let's go find a program and, and, and make this change. Yeah. So with the people you work with, what are some of the common, I'll say symptoms or flaws that you're seeing that are preventing people from making change in their lives, from attaining peace in their life and chasing after their goals that they truly want to.Right. Well, the way I look at it, there's, once you've made a decision to change, or you've noticed you've changed, but you haven't quite completed the transition, there seem to be three basic pathways to get from, okay, I'm ready to go, to actually getting through that fear of change and going forward with it.So the first one I just call leaping into action. It's like, okay, I see it. Let's go. I'm on it. That's kind of what I did the first time I was changing and talked about my body work experience. So then there's what happens when you start to make your effort to change, but you get too stressed out. There's a lot of like our autopilot and automatic thoughts that go on in our head.They're really noisy. Yeah. And so we can end up feeling like we want to do this thing, but we really don't have a choice. So the third pathway that I see being the most efficient and successful is figuring out what it is on the inside of us that's in the way of what we want to do on the outside. So it's like not only finding what's really scaring us about change.But it's unraveling it, so it's no longer causing us to be afraid of what we want to do, because often what happens is, as we go through our life, and maybe we've been through some stressful experiences, we make decisions about them. And that leads to having beliefs about what might happen if we try and change.But all of that kind of gets filed away in the part of our brain that's not really too logical. So in, when we discover a fear, then it's necessary to find out what it is, and then figure out how to create new experiences. It will give us the belief that we can do what we want to do. Yeah, no, I, I agree with that following through on that change.I think, like you said, there's the people who don't start. And then the, the autopilot thoughts, uh, it's interesting. You mentioned that because Yayoi Komiyama, she was on the show before, and I've been on her show and she hosted a series of masterclasses and episodes on her program about what she calls a NTS automatic negative thoughts.And. We have a lot of those. We have a lot of those and they can, uh, really get in the way. And like you said, it's not logical. There's a lot of emotional involvement when it comes to change and attachment as well. Comfortability when you talk about when something has been the same way for a long time, whether that's a job or relationship, which is one of the biggest examples would be toxic relationships where Or just relationships that have died in general, but you're comfortable with the person.Or the fear of the unknown applies to that and jobs and whatever it is in your life. You know, one of the scariest things is the fear of the unknown. And change can leave you vulnerable to so many options, both good and bad. And, you know, what we have to do is forge the best path to minimize the bad and maximize the good.And so, what I'd love to discuss is, where does Zen come from? play a role into all of this because I know you are a Zen teacher as well and I was wondering in your studies you've turned it into a guide to to help you you know with change and with helping others change. What role does Zen play in all of this?Well, there's certain parts of Zen that are, uh, they're definitely just philosophy that are very helpful, and I'll describe those in a moment, but really the key thing that you can get out of, um, taking up a Zen practice, which is really just, it's more than that, but it's mostly a meditation practice. Is you get really good at what I call the second stage of change.Okay. Which is being able to pause, calm yourself, catch an emotion before it really takes full flight and say, um, I don't wanna go there right now. Let's go somewhere else. Mm-hmm. As well as just having the capacity to be calm. There can be within the, uh. physical stillness of a meditation practice, of course, a great deal of stuff going on in our heads.But when you spend enough time just paying attention to what's going on in there, there can be an opportunity for it to calm down and quiet. I, I even call my, it was long before I tried anything with meditation or Zen, but when I was driving a truck, the hours, of silence. I, I had a partner, but the other person's always sleeping.So you really can't listen to the radio or anything. But honestly, those hours of just watching the white line go by, I call them my white line meditation years because stuff can come up. And part of the idea with meditation practice is that you're not running away from it. You're not distracting yourself.You're just being there with it, whatever it is. So that's one thing I do in my coaching practice, is support my clients in whether they're interested in meditation or not, to try and move to a perspective where they can accept what's going on with them. And and try to not react to it to just let it be.So let me just throw out the other thing. I wanted to there's a wonderful teaching, which is it's about opposites and it's Remembering that whatever something is, it's the whole two sides of one coin. Remembering the other side of things allows you to do things such as, which is stage one in my change model, looking at the, you can either look at the world through the lens of obstacles or opportunities, but they're part of each other.There can be opportunities and obstacles. There can be obstacles and opportunities. But how we're looking at things, that's what makes the difference. Then we have a choice. For sure. I completely agree with you on that. There's so much that is interconnected and it sounds like Zen, the practice that you mainly take away from it is emotional control and redirection.And I think that's important, especially we just talked about those automatic negative thoughts and being able to redirect those as soon as they form to not cloud your vision for change or your path forward to change. And uh, for anyone doing white line meditations, make sure it's with your eyes open.You know, I think we all know that, but I just want to make that clear. And no one's hopping in a truck and closing their eyes. But yeah, so I know you, so now you do the, um, the, the coaching. And so how has that played a role in your life? Like who, who should work with you really? I know we mentioned changed a lot, but that's a very broad term in general change.So Exactly. What kind of change and what kind of people are you looking for people who are trying to make a certain change in their life? Well, I, I catch people at all kinds of stages of their life, whether it's suddenly being made a manager and it's like, here, be a manager. We're not really going to give you any training.Just, just be a manager. Right. Yeah. To, to people who are trying to make the change from being in a toxic relationship orsuddenly getting out into your 30s or 40s somewhere and going, okay, I did it. I got my career together. I have a family, but maybe I went missing here somewhere in the equation. Yeah. Yeah. So looking into all of that. Or any, any one of those situations. And finding out what the client really wants.Sometimes that's step one, they're like, there's dissatisfaction, but okay, what do you want? What's really important to you? I think it's one of the roles that a coach can provide is, is helping us sort out what's really important to us. Because we might not have really taken the time to think about it. So, so I meet people at, at various stages in their lives and needing, there's, there's so much you learn in, in your coaching program and then you go out into the real world and you discover people having different kinds of, Issues than you be found anything out about.Andwe sort of put them under the heading of mental wellbeing. You know, they're, they're not quite serious enough that they need to go spend time with therapists, but it's something that's in the way of what they want. So I also took a trauma informed coaching program so that I would know more about how to help people who were stuck and couldn't really figure it out.And, uh. Needed to needed to in order to get on with their lives Yeah, I you know, we've actually talked before on the show about how so many people Know what they don't want, but they don't know what they want. They can give you a list of well I don't like this part. I don't like that part. I don't like this, but then it's like well, what do you want?and it's very broad or it's a lot of You know very different goals that don't align with what their life is or what they want So I do think sometimes we need someone to help us filter through all of it because we can get caught up in Our fears and our wants in even greed can really lead us astray from our goals.Pride can lead us astray. There's so many things that can, you know, cloud our vision. And as I mentioned earlier, social media, society, your parents, whoever it is telling you what you want and what you need compared to the change you actually want to make. And so we'll have your website in the description below for anyone who wants to find you.And have you helped them make that change and set up a better life or for them to send to anyone they know who needs it. But one thing I want to address before we closed off here was you have everything branded as mountain moon coaching. What role does the mountain and moon play in all of this? Why did you end up going with that style?Well, actually, when I took up Zen practice, I discovered there was, um,A practice. It's it's similar in a way to a Jewish bar mitzvah, which is about learning about the Ten Commandments. So in Zen practice, there's there's It's not the same thing, but it's a similar set of guidelines that you agree to study and take up, and you have a relationship with a teacher, and the teacher gives you a new name.And my name I was given was Mountain Moon. Okay. Oh, I have continued to enjoy pondering what it all means, but it's, it's mostly, you know, there's. There's the solidity of the mountain and there's the transitory state of the mood. I mean, it's constantly changing, right? So that relationship is actually very evocative, I think, of my life.Wow. Okay, that's that's that's pretty cool. I've never I've learned something new today. I didn't know about that Zen practice. So that's pretty awesome. And I'm excited Do you know, is it like the teacher just picks a name or it's based on like an astrology chart or how does that work? Do you know? The teacher gets to know the student and you actually get a name in four parts.So one, two parts of it are how the teacher sees you now. And the other two parts are sort of the teacher's vision for you. Okay. So, uh, and some of them are very, uh, like. Esoteric like yeah, I I know so much about this and I'm drawing a blank at the moment They have a lot to do with with um mind and you know the moon and Jewels and pearls like like wisdom words that evoke wisdom, right?So yeah, and a lot of uh stuff drawn from nature Which is uh, definitely awesome I think I didn't know that so that's really cool that you um You get like that new name and title. And so mountain coaching is because you're the mountain and moon. So that, that's, I do think it's, is very appropriate with the, uh, the whole thematic part of change.And, I think, you know, it's a good thing that the moon changes, uh, if it didn't, you know, we wouldn't be here. So, yeah, that's definitely something awesome. Change can be refreshing, you know, it's, Not just Russell. Yeah, for sure. So We'll have that website in the description below for anyone who wants to check it out and I highly recommend it And yeah, well ms.Selkirk. Thank you for coming on the show today I appreciate having you and I think this was a great conversation and I hope we inspired some people To reanalyze where they are in at life. And I think there's a lot of times where We don't realize we need to make a change. And so it's good to always be reassessing our lives, our goals, our wants, and looking at all those factors and reforming our path and maybe making that change as needed.Great. And there's one other thing I will add. Um, I'm also, I'll, we'll also have a link for my course on change that is now available. Awesome. Well, then if you wouldn't mind sharing with us, what exactly is in that course and why should we check it out? Well, as I've referenced several times in our conversation, I've broken change down into five stages.And those five stages sort of fall into the categories of preparation. And then as you're learning about why you're scared of change, there's some prevention that might need to take place. And then implementation. How do you actually take change forward into your life? And throughout the course, I have put in information.About how to support yourself in feeling more safe, because often that's why people are stuck too. They just don't feel safe enough to address what they need to in their life. And little Zen philosophy strung throughout it. But my basic belief is that if we know where we are in change, Then we know where we need to go next.So I have actually a blueprint for change that I call it your house of awareness. So the course helps explain what this is and how to get better at doing the inner work that's really necessary in order to have outward changes and engage in personal growth. Awesome. Yeah. I highly encourage everyone to check that out because it just lays everything out for you to easy to understand and to.but again, if you want to work one on one with Ms. Selkirk, the website will be in the description below. So thank you again for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time today. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much.
