Three big Money Blocks for Coaches
By Michael Kline
From a recent client: “After our call, I brought in more enrollments than my entire month! It was playful and fun!”
This is the text I received the day after a session with Don (not his real name). Don is very accomplished at enrolling prospects in a two-month coaching program requiring a $5,000 investment. Whether we are brand new to enrolling clients or hate anything that resembles the idea of “selling”, or if we are an old pro, everyone bumps into blocks from time to time. Sometimes it’s about your offer, sometimes it’s your marketplace, skills, prices, etc. Often, it’s mindset, and sometimes it’s a hidden subconscious belief or energy that gets in the way.
After spending a few minutes sharing the pressure of the recent dry month, I had Don close his eyes and find the feeling of that pressure in his body – it was in his chest – as he allowed spontaneous imagination to give it form, color, size, texture and more, I had him imagine being inside the form. As we went deeper and deeper beneath the surface, using the body as the portal to what was hidden beneath conscious awareness, he eventually was surprised to find himself in a memory of being 7 years old in the apartment where he grew up.
Imagining being his young self again, he had a dialogue with his mother that didn’t (or couldn’t) happen when he was only seven. Finding his feelings in his young body and giving them voice released old beliefs about playfulness, safety, masculinity, fun, expressiveness, and creativity. Fully sensing his mother hearing him and receiving all he shared with her, Mom spoke back (in his imagination) and shared everything he never knew to be true in his early childhood. Anchoring his mother’s words and his new feelings in his young body, we then created a long series of new emotional experiences (emotional memories) of his “new” past. The new emotional memories anchored a felt sense of permission to be himself, to play, express, create, take risks, have fun, and not take on Mom’s concerns and worries. Feeling much freer and lighter at the end of the session, Don when on to start his day. His text tells you how it went.
Another client, a coach in her fifties, was certain her money blocks were related to her alcoholic parents. She had done a lot of work with her al-anon group, therapist, and her coach to understand her long-held beliefs. When a client has already done a lot of work with an issue from a conscious intellectual perspective, it may be time to work directly with what is not in conscious awareness. I had her close her eyes and settle into her body and she followed her old belief back to the same age she always goes to – her 9-year-old self. Only this time something felt different – as we continued to body-sense and safely explore beneath the surface, she found herself on the playground. The girl she thought was her friend was bullying her and none of the girls would play with her. After giving voice through a lengthy dialogue with her friend, her friend shared that she was jealous of her, that everyone liked her better. She then created a new memory as she imagined playing with her friend and all the other girls joined in. Mind you, all of this came about organically – if we tried to suggest new images, as could happen with guided imagery, it would not be as powerful as when it comes from the client’s own spontaneous imagination – it just “shows up”. Anchoring this new emotional memory in her body as a felt experience convinces her nervous system that it’s as real and effective as any factual memory.
Here’s the thing – If you have an unconscious belief that other girls don’t want to play with you at all, it’s no wonder you freeze when asking them to pay you thousands of dollars to play with you now. The trouble is, if the client doesn’t know what the root issue is, we could spend the rest of our career guessing at what might help.
Working on what we and/or the client “knows” is the issue keeps us blind to what is not available to the thinking brain. And yet, working with the intellectual models still produces great results. I’ve discovered that having clients feel better about their work, just isn’t good enough anymore. I’m looking for massive change, as quickly and efficiently as possible. When we can look beneath the surface, the work almost does itself. We and our clients become far more effective with much less effort.
So, my top three answers to the big money blocks with my coach clients? Your Father, your mother, and your friends from the third grade. Of course, it’s only true when it is. It must come up organically by following the client’s journey. That said, these common themes are often the deepest source of feeling good enough, having permission to be ourselves, and to ask for what we want. This is where we learn (or not) to set boundaries, and to know at a visceral level, not just while reading affirmations, but to really feel that we are in fact, deserving, worthy, and enough.
Michael Kline is a Master Certified RIM Facilitator and the Senior Trainer at The RIM Institute. He can be reached via mike@intus.life and more information is available at www.intus.life
By Michael Kline
From a recent client: “After our call, I brought in more enrollments than my entire month! It was playful and fun!”
This is the text I received the day after a session with Don (not his real name). Don is very accomplished at enrolling prospects in a two-month coaching program requiring a $5,000 investment. Whether we are brand new to enrolling clients or hate anything that resembles the idea of “selling”, or if we are an old pro, everyone bumps into blocks from time to time. Sometimes it’s about your offer, sometimes it’s your marketplace, skills, prices, etc. Often, it’s mindset, and sometimes it’s a hidden subconscious belief or energy that gets in the way.
After spending a few minutes sharing the pressure of the recent dry month, I had Don close his eyes and find the feeling of that pressure in his body – it was in his chest – as he allowed spontaneous imagination to give it form, color, size, texture and more, I had him imagine being inside the form. As we went deeper and deeper beneath the surface, using the body as the portal to what was hidden beneath conscious awareness, he eventually was surprised to find himself in a memory of being 7 years old in the apartment where he grew up.
Imagining being his young self again, he had a dialogue with his mother that didn’t (or couldn’t) happen when he was only seven. Finding his feelings in his young body and giving them voice released old beliefs about playfulness, safety, masculinity, fun, expressiveness, and creativity. Fully sensing his mother hearing him and receiving all he shared with her, Mom spoke back (in his imagination) and shared everything he never knew to be true in his early childhood. Anchoring his mother’s words and his new feelings in his young body, we then created a long series of new emotional experiences (emotional memories) of his “new” past. The new emotional memories anchored a felt sense of permission to be himself, to play, express, create, take risks, have fun, and not take on Mom’s concerns and worries. Feeling much freer and lighter at the end of the session, Don when on to start his day. His text tells you how it went.
Another client, a coach in her fifties, was certain her money blocks were related to her alcoholic parents. She had done a lot of work with her al-anon group, therapist, and her coach to understand her long-held beliefs. When a client has already done a lot of work with an issue from a conscious intellectual perspective, it may be time to work directly with what is not in conscious awareness. I had her close her eyes and settle into her body and she followed her old belief back to the same age she always goes to – her 9-year-old self. Only this time something felt different – as we continued to body-sense and safely explore beneath the surface, she found herself on the playground. The girl she thought was her friend was bullying her and none of the girls would play with her. After giving voice through a lengthy dialogue with her friend, her friend shared that she was jealous of her, that everyone liked her better. She then created a new memory as she imagined playing with her friend and all the other girls joined in. Mind you, all of this came about organically – if we tried to suggest new images, as could happen with guided imagery, it would not be as powerful as when it comes from the client’s own spontaneous imagination – it just “shows up”. Anchoring this new emotional memory in her body as a felt experience convinces her nervous system that it’s as real and effective as any factual memory.
Here’s the thing – If you have an unconscious belief that other girls don’t want to play with you at all, it’s no wonder you freeze when asking them to pay you thousands of dollars to play with you now. The trouble is, if the client doesn’t know what the root issue is, we could spend the rest of our career guessing at what might help.
Working on what we and/or the client “knows” is the issue keeps us blind to what is not available to the thinking brain. And yet, working with the intellectual models still produces great results. I’ve discovered that having clients feel better about their work, just isn’t good enough anymore. I’m looking for massive change, as quickly and efficiently as possible. When we can look beneath the surface, the work almost does itself. We and our clients become far more effective with much less effort.
So, my top three answers to the big money blocks with my coach clients? Your Father, your mother, and your friends from the third grade. Of course, it’s only true when it is. It must come up organically by following the client’s journey. That said, these common themes are often the deepest source of feeling good enough, having permission to be ourselves, and to ask for what we want. This is where we learn (or not) to set boundaries, and to know at a visceral level, not just while reading affirmations, but to really feel that we are in fact, deserving, worthy, and enough.
Michael Kline is a Master Certified RIM Facilitator and the Senior Trainer at The RIM Institute. He can be reached via mike@intus.life and more information is available at www.intus.life
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